homelab

Debian.

It's stable. Everything has support for Debian. I'm comfortable with Debian. Also everything that is not available as a deb-package goes in a docker container.

I run a bunch of Minecraft servers, the *arr stack, and pihole on a single NUC.

I also have a VPS. Also Debian. It is my VPN gateway for my home network (tinc is nice) and everything that needs to be public facing (minecraft proxy+a website that I host for my sister).

My work laptop + gaming rig is LMDE which is also Debian.

I'm not so much a Debian fanboy but my tinkering days were in the past, if I would still have the time I would probably run something cool like Arch or NixOS. Now I just want something that works.

Oh yeah, my media player is a Pi with LibreElec. Write to SD card and you're done :)

Currently using Unraid. I like the docker management, plugin support, and the flexibility with adding storage. But I do already have a lifetime license that I got for cheap a few years back. They've raised the price significantly since then

If I had to choose today, I'd go with TrueNAS Scale

3 Devices: Main, Storage and Compute

• Main is a Futro S740 running Debian, it handles my Cloudflare Tunnel, Nginx Proxy Manager, Git (Forgejo), Portainer, Paperless and some smaller services. Debian just like others said, rock solid, super small and just works.

• Storage is a custom built Unraid Server with an ASRock N100M, an SSD and a bunch of HDDs, it runs Plex and some Media related containers. Unraid is amazing as it turns off the drives and only spins up the one drive that has the file I want to stream. I get under 17W at idle with 9 HDDs with no stream running.

• Compute is an M1 Mac Mini running Asahi Linux Fedora. This one has a Minecraft server, Immich, Handbrake to transcode. Things that need a little more horsepower.

All systems have their pros and cons, I wish there was another Server OS like Unraid that had a great WebUI just like Unraid, but others like TrueNAS put their focus on ZFS, which is great but not for power efficiency.

I run Slackware on most of my systems.

Servers run Slackware, hosting Linux Containers running Slackware. Containers run my domain, web hosts, file server, and game servers.

Desktops run Slackware.

Laptop is a MacBook Air, so runs macOS.

openSUSE Leap has been amazing on my home server. YaST makes tasks like setting up a Samba share or even something like a DHCP server incredibly easy, and for anything I can't do in YaST there's a massive variety of command line tools I can use (for me mostly Docker). SSH access was a breeze to set up too, as it's just an option in the installer or in YaST after setup.

Debian for work.

• stable
• feels lightweight (as compared to Ubuntu)

EndeavourOS for home usage.

• Mostly Arch Linux, but has useful preinstalled stuff that makes configuration easier
• get the latest kernel for the latest hardware
  • tends to run much faster than Debian on the same hardware. Also actually uses the CPU
• don't need too many additional packages if I want to build from the master branch of any project, so I can make do without kdesrcbuild
• also, I get my time's worth pretty soon after pushing to upstream
• Steam (Native)

Recommendation for NAS: Debian of course. Choose hardware a few gens older though.

If you have old laptops, use OpenSUSE. It should be fun

NixOS, because:

• I can have my entire system be declaratively configured, and not as a yaml soup bolted onto a random distro.
• I can trivially separate the OS, and the data (thanks, impermanence)
• it has a buttload of packages and integration modules
• it is mostly reproducible

All of these combined means my backups are simple (just snapshot /persist, with a few dirs excluded, and restic them to N places) and reliable. The systems all have that newly installed feel, because there is zero cruft accumulating.

And with the declarative config being tangled out from a literate Org Roam garden, I have tremendous, and up to date documentation too. Declarative config + literate programming work really well together, and give me immense power.

I use it on my desktop, in my homelab, and built and maintain a NixOS desktop for my wife and my mom, too.

I've a Synology nas, so it's running synologys os. It started as my docker container manager but it's a pretty basic one, so my laptop became the docker manager for the more hefty stuff. My Nas just acts as a qbittorrent and file server now. Laptop is opensuse tumbleweed.

My home server is running OMV (which is really just Debian with a web GUI), and all the services (outside of SMB/Wireguard) are running in Docker containers. I used to like to tinker, but as my server got more mature, I just wanted it to work. If OMV went away tomorrow, I would pivot to Debian because of its stability.

Laptop/desktop are running Pop_OS! Like the relative stability, but the frequent updating of the kernel for hardware support.

For my home server I'm using unraid, super simple and i can add drives as I got. I have a bunch of containers running all the arrs, plex, jellyfin, steam-headless, immich, ollama, speedtest tracker, nextcloud, bunch of databases, rss, mastodon and a ubuntu vm for minecraft servers and a windows vm for when I need something windows related like using 360 tour software that i haven't figured out how to use on my Linux systems yet.

For desktop and laptop I'm running arch with hyprland

Truenas

I run a bunch of stuff because I like to tinker as well, and because like you I want to own my data and not be treated like shot by big tech.

• thinkpad: currently dualbooting arch and openSuse. This is my machine for tinkering and breaking. Have also run fedora on it.
• server: Ubuntu server. At the time I set up the server Ubuntu was what I knew and was comfortable with, and I wanted a dependable base for all my tinkering with docker and services. I periodically think about switching, but this is my production environment now and I want it stable so I'll likely stick to Ubuntu.
• Mac mini: asahi fedora. Only option here. Looking to integrate this and put it to use. Might become a new playground
• 2014 iMac: fedora. This is my work machine. By that I mean I do my financial and other bookkeeping and household paperwork on this. Chose fedora because I wanted something stable and I got tired of fighting Ubuntu over the Firefox snap.
• assorted Raspberry PiS: all on raspberry pi os. One is my nas, others are doing various jobs I wanted separate from the server.

My desktop and laptop run Windows 11 and I have a couple servers running Active Directory and related services, all under Proxmox. And one Alma server for Docker stuff, since I didn't want to bother migrating them to something else when I switched to Proxmox

I am a basic bitch when it comes to hosting -> Nothing exotic, but I have messed with somewhat exotic things before. It is fun, but time consuming, and as I get older the time becomes more precious than money.

Fedora w/ KDE on Workstations, user platforms - every day browsing, gaming, etc. The installations have lasted since fedora 34, and have had very few hiccups (Framework 13, Dell T5820)

Proxmox as Hypervisor hosts (Basically Debian) - been rock solid stable since PVE5.4, and while not perfect has been pretty easy to work with. I am a ZFS evangelist, and ZFS support is excellent.

Debian 11/12 for most vm guests - again, easy to use, straightforward, seems to "just work"

Centos/fedora server for Podman host - IDK, seems that podman has worked the best for me on Redhats own platforms, but this could very well be just personal experience.

OPNsense for firewall/router - Was a longtime pfsense user, but the way the company approaches their userbase started to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

NIXOS for experimentation - its a trip, and loads of fun, but because it drives the tinkering in me I tend not to use it for daily driving.

As I said, its pretty basic, nothing exotic or crazy. I have about 10 machines in my household (5 user facing, 4 servers, firewall)

OS on what?

@w3dd1e

Depends on the application.

Linux for the most part.

Whatever OS is needed for retro games (DOS, Kernal - c64, etc)