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

Debian. All day, everyday.

Debian

Proxmox 4 lyf

Debian, I wouldn’t pick another one.

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

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

Home Server: VMware ESXi NAS: Unraid

Denian stable, openSUSE Leap

If you want a beautiful front end for docker containers

CasaOS/ZimaOS Cosmos-server Unbrel

Otherwise

• proxmox
• truenas
• unraid

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.

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 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.