You can try seeing if you can set the speed/duplex of NIC/ports manually if auto-detection keeps getting it wrong.

Unifi I like the APs for mesh & multiple SSID+vlans but I keep them on dedicated vlan with zero internet access because I don’t trust that I properly followed instructions to disable opted in analytics/telemetry. The mgmt software is alright but new UI wastes a lot of space. The PoE switch was alright until it stopped being able to keep a config last year. USG router I kept less than a year because it was too slow with any useful features enabled. I’ve glanced around at replacement APs here & there but pretty much waiting until I have more wifi 7 compatible devices and that’ll be another couple years.

There’s a feature to allow charging from USB ports while a computer is off, Lenovo calls it “Always on USB.” That feature is constantly using power even when nothing is plugged in. To test if any ports have that feature power off the computer then try plugging in a simple 5v 500ma usb device to charge. If it starts charging then it has that feature and will drain power. If no options to disable in BIOS then as far as I know stuck :(

I’ve worked on a couple recent gen refurb laptops (dell and lenovo) with that feature but lacking any disable option in BIOS. I’ve tried to get into the habit of plugging in whenever not being used but still end up with things empty more often than I like. Very frustrating and I think only hope is future bios update to give that option.

On ‘Startup’ section, what options are available for ‘Boot Mode’ ? May want to try using something other than Quick during OS install. Should be able to change it back afterwards for faster boots.

Hot Wheels has Marvel series of cars too and took picture of this “well known” one recently.

I had issues with DNS checks and traced it to my pihole. I changed that container’s resolv.conf to use cloudflare DNS and it has been working fine since. It was with Caddy so needed to change over to use IPs.

Another thing to remember is the client needs to support decoding the video in hardware or have enough CPU to handle it in software. I have intel i7 (3rd gen) with no hardware HEVC/x265 support but it has enough CPU to power through.

I’ve had good luck with refurbished Dell laptops. My primary laptop is a refurbished Dell Latitude 11" 3120. Bought it for ~$250 at beginning of this year and currently have Fedora on it. It’s not very powerful. I use it primarily to browse the web, watch movies/tv, and vnc/ssh to my other systems. Can last about 5-6 hours streaming video from jellyfin at 50% brightness, other stuff barely uses any power and can stretch out to 9-10 hours if I set display brightness even lower.

I’ve always bought Windows laptops then put linux on them so I’m used to verifying that tools such as TLP are installed, configured, enabled, and working. There is too much variety with laptops for all of them to be handled automatically unfortunately so I always verify it. If a laptop came with Linux pre-installed then it might be good to go ootb but I’d still verify.

Quick way to check if a program is using hardware video acceleration is with a gpu top utility.

Intel - intel_gpu_top

Nvidia - nvidia-smi / nvtop

AMD - radeontop / nvtop / amdgpu_top (just did quick search, don’t have any AMD powered on to verify)

Self-host your own ACME server. Then you can use certbot pointed there.

These instructions are old so not sure if newer/better ways, https://blog.sean-wright.com/self-host-acme-server/

Is MariaDB on spinning disk or ssd?

I initially set up Nextcloud with MariaDB on spinning disk but it was slow even completely empty. I moved that container to ssd & performance was a lot better. The web UI may still have some slow loading parts but I can’t say for sure since rarely use it. Caldav+carddav+Nextcloud client are how I usually interact with it.

Sounds like bridge mode is needed for the vm’s network interface in virt.

I would say proxmox ve is easier to start with.

The container method used should be whatever you are more familiar with or prefer. They both have their own quirks, pros, & cons.

SELinux - If you don’t want to deal with SELinux then set it to permissive mode. If you want to keep in enforcing mode you need to create the appropriate policies, https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/using_selinux/configuring-selinux-for-applications-and-services-with-non-standard-configurations_using-selinux

Firewall - If you don’t want it’s protection then look up instructions to stop & disable it on your distro.

Port forwarding - From linux container side you either need to specify host networking or the ports you want to allow through, there is no avoiding that if it needs to be network accessible. If you want it internet accessible then you need to setup port forwarding on your router.

Have you looked into something like yunohost? It may be the kind of thing you’re looking for.

EndeavourOS on desktop and laptop side of things.

For the sata drive behavior it’s probably finishing the writes from buffer. I like to use the iotop utility to watch storage IO activity on my systems. Could try running it on both systems to get a better picture of what’s going on.

I currently use NFS and CIFS but have used iSCSI in the past. I like the simplicity of NFS & CIFS and they meet my uses. iSCSI has it’s strengths as others have stated.

• /var/lib/mysql - I would say iSCSI in it’s own image+lun. Should get lower latency as well as higher transfer rates compared to NFS for DB but it depends on the kinds & how much usage.
• virtual machine images - I prefer NFS mounts for same reason, easier to work with the files directly. If you do go with iSCSI you can have different disk images for different kinds of VMs. Should be able to use both at same time on most hypervisors if you want to play with them too.
• lots of small files - NFS should work without issue

Another benefit to LXC is you can map devices, including GPU, to multiple LXC while keeping them accessible to the host. For my home setup I currently have 3 LXC with access to the iGPU, 1 for jellyfin+caddy via podman nested, 1 for moonfire-nvr via podman nested, and been trying to use 1 to figure out hardware transcoding with owncast through multiple install methods but no luck so far. I’ve also been playing with mapping rtl-sdr v3 devices, zigbee stick, zwave stick, and coral usb for a variety of projects lately.

edit: I forgot to answer the question and went straight to ranting, lol. LXC is like a bare-metal VM. You can install & run multiple things on them like a normal VM including podman or docker.

This project, https://neko.m1k1o.net/#/getting-started/examples , looks like a good base to try running regular GUI apps via docker & web.

edit: and here’s the git with Dockerfiles, https://github.com/m1k1o/neko-apps

On proxmox you should be able to share any GPU (integrated or dedicated) to multiple LXCs while keeping it accessible to the host. I use intel integrated GPU in LXC for plex, jellyfin, and one with just ffmpeg I use to convert videos occasionally. I used these instructions as starting point/base when I set mine up on proxmox v7.x, https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/plex-hw-transcoding-lxc-and-jasper-lake-igpu-passthru.116163/

I had looked at instructions to assign the GPU to a specific VM but it looked like way too much work and people were saying it didn’t always work for the 11th gen iGPUs. Thankfully I ran across the sharing method and it’s been running stable since.

My info may be outdated as I last had G Fiber about a year ago but have moved out of their service area so stuck with AT&T fiber along with their horrible modem+router :(

When I first got the 2G down/1G up G Fiber service there was no bridge mode & had to use their provided device as modem+router+wifi. They updated it to add in a bridge mode option but I never tested it. I had dropped back down to 1G down & up before that option was available.

edit: forgot to mention I had read some people had luck using Unifi Dream Machine to plug in G Fiber’s 2.5G SFP looking module but I wasn’t willing to spend any more money on anything Unifi besides WiFi APs.

My last NAS & ESXi box were 12 years old when I retired them. I had thought about sticking with used enterprise gear but wanted a break to be a little lazy for a couple years. Storage is on Synology (DS1520+) and Proxmox runs on Asus PN63-S1 mini PC. Hyper Backup was primary reason I chose Synology (always been lazy about off-site backups) and docker feature has come in handy for things like secondary pihole & DNS. LXC with docker or podman have been able to cover majority of my needs in proxmox but still have Home Assistant & Unifi Network Controller on their own VMs. Home Assistant I have zero plans to move. Unifi I eventually plan to move over to docker but it works for now, albeit on an older version. Really need to up my documentation & diagram game, it’s all a huge mess, lol.

Future plans would love to have closet full of used enterprise servers running proxmox with all flash ceph storage backend then can do whatever NAS distro I want as a VM. My budget is focused elsewhere for next year or two unfortunately so gonna be awhile unless something breaks.

Always like to hear about other setups as I am constantly re-thinking my own.

I have public wildcard DNS entry (*.REMOVEDDOMAIN.com) on Cloudflare on my primary domain that resolves to 192.168.10.120 (my Caddy host)

Caddyfile

{
  email EMAILREMOVED@gmail.com
  acme_dns cloudflare TOKENGOESHERE
}

portal.REMOVEDDOMAIN.com {
  reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8081
}

speedtest.REMOVEDDOMAIN.com {
  reverse_proxy 192.168.10.125:8181
}