I use three systems for manager nodes so they don't get much work. Mostly Traefik and a few other administrative services. I have about 80 containers running on the six worker nodes.

I have a home lab consisting of 9 mini PCs running Docker Swarm. They're from various manufacturers, Intel, ASRock, Minisforum, etc. I originally tried to use Debian to build out the environment but it couldn't find the network interfaces, or storage, or whatever else. So I made a Rocky 9 install drive and tried that. Every machine came up with all hardware recognized on the first try. So, that's what I've been running for just about two years now. No complaints.

Seems fast compared to self-hosted GitLab or Bitbucket. I don't see a way to add an ssh key or gpg key for code signing. No dark mode so expect to burn your retinas out in the middle of the night. I'll wait until it's a little more fleshed out before thinking about replacing Gitea in my network, though.

I don't have a favorite. I use Cinnamon because it disappoints me the least.