Your approach works too. Something like CasaOS answers OP’s question directly. I was thinking about how I started on this journey. I wanted to play with enterprise level tools at home on repurposed e-waste. So I started with proxmox. But I also came to the table with a couple decades of Linux experience under my belt.

Those scripts make it so easy. You can paste a command, accept defaults, watch some text scroll by and finish with instructions on how to access the tool you just installed.

My homelab is low power as well. I’m currently running zero VMs. Everything is done with LXCs. You can run a pi hole on 512 MB RAM.

Step 1: Install proxmox

Step 2: run the post install script here, disable anything enterprise, test or related to high availability.

Step 3: check out the other scripts on the link. I suggest starting with a pi hole and experimenting from there.

https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/

I’ve been daily driving Linux since the early 00s and docker confounds me too, especially the networking. I’m not familiar with bottles. I just play all my games on steam and it’s seamless.

I’ve been a slackware user since the late 90s. I take for granted how easy it is to install today. I’ve been tinkering with a socket 7 build, and nothing is easy. Installing slackware 8 is a pain in the ass. I can’t even get half my hardware working on win95! It’s not like riding a bicycle.