If you’ve got Debian already installed, I cannot resist advocating for Incus (stable branch from Zabbly repo with web ui blog.simos.info/how-to-install…) in lieu of proxmox. Does the same thing but you don’t have to rip out the kernel Debian uses.

With Debian 13 you have access to podman quadlets, use that for any non-vm needs. The ease of docker compose files easily removes reason for programs in LXC containers, and podman removes reason for docker in an LXC. LXC is left only for programs that aren’t containerized. VMs for security DMZ. Podman for bulk of stuff you want.

Good luck!

How to install and setup the Incus Web UI

Share this: Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit Click to email a link to a friend (Opens i…

^{Simos Xenitellis (Mi blog lah!)}

I concur. Podman is superior in my opinion. It’s more secure by default (rootless containers) and can do pretty much everything docker can do naively (you can literally alias docker to podman in your shell and it will work)

It’s not as easy to find info on some of the systemd specific stuff (Quadlets), but once you figure that out, it’s pretty amazing.

I ended up making up my own scripts to allow me to create new system users, pre-loaded with aliases and shortcut functions to make my life easier ( automatic quadlet container file generation, pre-set network rules, etc), but it is not required.

All the info is there, but starting out it can be a bit overwhelming.

My containers are pretty much self sufficient now. I just intervene when something needs major updating or config changes

Proxmox is a hypervisor. I would install that as your os if that is something you want.

If you just need containers, podman is good. Docker is fine, but podman is open source.

That being said, I run proxmox on my server and have various vms running. I have a laptop that I will use to play with containers and if it turns into a service I want I'll make it run on proxmox, either as a container itself or as something running on a VM on the hypervisor

Proxmox and Docker don't really do the same thing. They live in the same area, but the coverage is very different. You can always use docker when your host is running proxmox: either individually or in groups inside of an lxc, or all in w dedicated VM, or even natively on the same house if you prefer chaos. But you can't do the opposite: Sometimes you just need a VM. Maybe you only need a couple of devices, and you know they run on or are even designed for docker, then that's the better option. In all other cases, and when just getting started, proxmox is just the way more universal solution if you're only planning on having a single host (for now).

The management tools in proxmox are great. The community scripts are a fantastic resource and only work with proxmox. I would suggest you set it up natively, not on top of Debian though, even if that's already installed. Not the least of the reasons are to be able to use ZFS easily, including on on the boot partition (select that in the installer).

Finally, if you're gonna stick with docker, like others said: consider podman. That really does the same thing docker does, but it's fully open source. Arguably it's better in some areas, but on the flip side might, in occasion, require fiddling with something intended specifically for docker and using advanced setups.

Also there really is no wrong answer, either. And you can always change whatever you choose.

I run Proxmox in my small cluster. Proxmox runs multiple VMs that each run various groups of docker containers.

They're on different levels.

Proxmox can run lxc containers natively.

Personally I keep a Debian VM for docker, a holdover from before hypervisors supported containers natively. I use docker compose and it Just Works™.

Don't go Podman. When I started years ago I installed Fedora with the "containerization" option. This installs podman, not docker as I'm sure most know. I did not.

Podman works great for the most part, but it's slight differences from docker will have you fighting tooth and nail for certain services to work correctly. And not many (if any at all) have any documentation on getting their containers working with Podman of they don't start. If you make a GitHub issue asking why or how to get things running in Podman because their docker stack doesn't work flawlessly like it will in docker, good luck getting help (Mailcow comes to mind specifically here).

Looking back, this decision really shoehorned some very fundamental ideals about containers in my mind, but it was a long fought road I would not choose again. The knowledge I gained about containers with docker would have come soon enough on the easy road.

And yes, you can install Docker on Fedora, but I was much too far down the Podman track before finding out. My environment has changed drastically as of late and most things have been migrated to docker apps in Truenas now, living directly next to their storage as intended (the arr stacks really take a performance hit running their databases over NFS once you have a lot of media for example).

Quick note about Proxmox after coming from ESX myself - it sucks compared to ESX. I've tried to move away from it and Nutanix was the closest I could find to ESX, but after my server started complaining it's drives were not compatible I jumped ship to avoid any write damage to them. I'm downsizing my lab now, I have proxmox running in 3 small NUCs with CEPH storage share and it's working pretty good. Would love to run ESX or Nutanix instead, but they require a loaf of bread in resource requirements where proxmox only needs a slice of bread in comparison.

Maybe use Docker with a UI like lazydocker or Portainer.

If you feel safe with Docker, perhaps experiment with Proxmox as a base. Then you can separate your environments into different VMs.

docker in a vm in proxmox!

no but really. I don't like that the vm host's kernel is shared with all the containers.
then maybe have 2 or 3 VMs, one of which hosts essential services (not like your nextcloud, but services that are necessary to make the (internal or whole home) network work like DNS and DHCP, maybe monitoring, and another that hosts your convenience services (jellyfin, nextcloud). the first is easier to fix if it breaks, the second is not the end if the world if it does. maybe also have a third for services that would be painful to have offline (nextcloud), but try to limit it to few tasks because the goal is simplicity. this setup can help with distro upgrade difficulties, and vm custom configuration issues when you have set up something that seems to work but will prevent VM startup sometime in the future.

podman could be a good idea too.

Proxmox with all of its warts appears to be the better hypervisor. If your host has the headroom like others suggested: proxmox with a VM hosting docker/podman.

I have to say running proxmox saved me from running to the basement or opening up IPMI a few times already when making suspect changes to a VM that otherwise would have taken down the network of my host.

ATM I’m running Proxmox with Nixos VMs running mixed docker/podman containers. It works out pretty well for my use case and with some opentofu fiddling I have most of my infrastructure defined in config files if that’s a rabbit hole you want to go down.

As for my experience with docker vs podman I have to say podman can pretty much do whatever docker does with the exception of docker swarm. You may have to do some digging to handle more advanced networking/gpu setups.

The only thing I have running docker atm is a gluetun container because container to container networking took more than 15m of research with podman so I fell back to the very well documented path using docker.