What operating system do you use for your home server? I’m planning to do unraid but what are the other options and why would you pick one or another?

proxmox. i fine its very easy to work with and manage. also proxmox backup server is amazing

Arch. No Window Managers or Desktop Environments. Its easy to work with when no extra fluff is installed.

Debian. I use mostly docker containers and super easy to spin up and manage.

Home Server: VMware ESXi NAS: Unraid

Debian, I wouldn't pick another one.

Debian

Proxmox 4 lyf

Debian. All day, everyday.

Debian Stable. Clean, easy, and reliable. Upgrades smoothly without drama.

Debian, FreeBSD. Proxmox is awesome for hosting VMs, LXC, and Docker Containers (via a VM).

I don't have much of a homeserver, its more of an experiment - but I have Fedora IoT as hypervisor OS running a Open Media Vault guest and another Fedora IoT VM for container services.

I'm a big fan of Fedora's Ostree setup, and have used Silverblue on the desktop for a while now, so IoT makes a lot of sense for me.

If you want a beautiful front end for docker containers

CasaOS/ZimaOS Cosmos-server Unbrel

Otherwise

• proxmox
• truenas
• unraid

Ubuntu server, some bash scripts, and a docker install. KISS

NixOS

Ubuntu LTS server. I chose it because it's got good support both in community and enterprise support. Also it's pretty simple to use and almost forgot it's got zfs built in.

Proxmox, truenas

VMware esxi. The only one I tried, and it works amazing.

I use TrueNAS, mainly because I wanted a solid storage solution. I don't really need many VMs, so I'm happy to run jails for stuff I need.

I also run a small RPi4 server with a few docker containers (a secondary Syncthing server, TVHeadend server, etc).

If I had a need for VMs, I'd run Proxmox (as I have some experience with it).

If you’re looking for a NAS and don’t want to invest on all disks right now, unraid. Otherwise truenas

Denian stable, openSUSE Leap

I think it really depends on what you intend to do with it... Many answers here will mention what they use but not why.

In my case I want to have various services installed in docker containers, and I have the skills to manage Linux in console. A very simple solution for me was to use a rock-solid, established Linux distro on the host (Debian stable) with Docker sourced from its official apt repo. It's clean, it's simple, it's reliable, it's easy to reinstall if it explodes.

Why containers (as opposed to directly on the host)? I've done both over several years and I've come to consider the container approach cleaner. (I mention this because I've seen people wondering why even bother with containers.) It's a nice sweet spot in-between dumping everything on the host and a fully reproducible environment like nixOS or Ansible. I get the ability to reproduce a service perfectly thanks to docker compose; I get to separate persistent data very cleanly thanks to container:host mapping of dirs and files; I get to do flexible networking solutions because containers can be seen as individual "machines" and I can juggle their interfaces and ports around freely; I get some extra security from the container isolation; it's less complicated than using VMs etc.

TrueNAS scale. Why: my main concern is backup and data protection, and TrueNAS offers just that. On top of that it's flexible enough to build a media suite on top of it, and it's easy to manage. I could have also gone unRAID, but since trueNAS is free and offer a bit better protection imo (at the cost of flexibility), I picked that

Truenas for the nas, proxmox for everything else

I went from freenas to unraid and couldn't be happier.

Unraid has a ton of really amazing features, it's super easy to use, the docker support is great (freenas didn't have docker support when I left), the parity drives are magic, and just being able to slap random disks of any size in your NAS is great.

I've had a few issues with freenas, but I've never had a single issue with unraid. That shit just works.

Edit:

I have a live stream porn downloader, that'll watch when people come online and start capturing the stream. I don't want this to be part of my system and putting strain on it, so with unraid I'm able to put disks in my system and use a plugin called unassigned devices, which allows me to add them to the system, but have them be separate from my main array.

That's why I just love unraid. The flexibility is great.

Proxmox, TrueNAS, Ubuntu server.

Proxmox, unraid, pihole ftw

FreeBSD with its jails

Anything that can run docker works for me.

Clean Debian + Docker w/ portainer, without installing anything extra on it. SOLID.

• Device support is great for older enterprise stuff
• Stable as it goes.
• Easy to find solution for problems you may come across due high userbase.

Arch, because I've always had a better experience with it than Ubuntu, be it server or desktop. I also daily drive it on my desktops.

It's so much easier to setup. Only with Docker and MergerFS it's a command and easily updatable, instead of the PPA setups or bash installs you have to do on Ubuntu. The wiki is still the best.

And it's way easier to maintain when there's less stuff.

I used unraid last year, excellent experience learning how to use docker + vm in a user-friendly interface.
Now I use debian (installed via debootstrap) headless (docker only).

Currently running 1 server. Ubuntu, with docker because I'm not doing a ton, but I don't want to have to take down my pi-hole if I need to reboot jellyfin. etc.

RHEL 9 for all my servers home and abroad. I have a few vms that run with kvm and I use docker for everything else that I can

Truenas scale and xcpng

I tried Unraid - left due to annoyance of losing server function when I had to take drive arrays down and only scrubbing on demand

Went to True Nas scale for the promise of ZFS and liked it, but had issues with the interface and getting GPU passthrough to containers was impossible.

Ended up ditching my large server case (still have it - anyone need a large 12 drive 3U case with a big threadripper and bunch of ram - hit me up) and switched to a NUC running ubuntu with portainer managing my dockers on it and all my data stored on a Synology NAS.

Alma, Talos, OpenBSD

Proxmox or Debian minimal!

Fedora Kinoite + podman

Ubuntu server with ansible playbook and docker services

unRAID is fantastic. I used to use it as a monolith server, now it acts as my NAS.

I currently run a Kubernetes cluster on a handful of Ubuntu server nodes.

windows server, I don't like raid software

Proxmox, Debian containers.

I've been on Unraid for years now with no complaints, much better then all the other NAS platforms. The docker app catalog is great. I also run a number of VMs on it including GPU pass through.

I use Debian stable just because I'm so familiar with Linux

Almalinux period. Use smb for fileshares, rsync for backups and docker for everything else.

I use a mix of truenas, debian, and proxmox

Harvester HCI

VMware on one, runs Ubuntu (and then docker) and various appliances. Xpenology on the other. Xpenology also runs Docker for more OOTB containerized apps.

Arch Linux for my primary server. Raspbian for my SBCs.

Proxmox cluster for containers,alerts.etc

Openmediavault for my NAS

ESXi 8 with ISCSI shared storage. Love it.