Unraid vs Truenas vs HexOS vs Proxmox

[Burnas]

I'm a complete newbie.

I wanted to jump into deep waters (I found out for me that its the best way I can learn) but I kinda lost my footing.

I have an N5 pro with 96gb Ram, 2 m.2 2tb NVME ssd (Samsung), Sparkle Intel Arc A310, 5 HDD WD 26tb Drives.

My aim is pretty simple:

Basic:

1. Plex\Emby
2. Immich
3. Pihole

Down the line to learn:

1. Vms
2. Containers
3. Optional Seedbox
4. Store recordings of security Cams


I would very much appreciate your input which is the best OS to use and why.

 

[kapone]

 

[CyklonDX]

Unraid is a paid solution. I use it. I find it better than truenas for most part, and most definitely proxmox.
(unraid, proxmox, truenas is meant for 'server' system, not a desktop - keep that in mind)

 

[i386]

Is this learning "for fun" or for a job?
If it's for jobs look at proxmox (smal to medium businesses), windows server with hyper-v (upper small to large businesses) and esxi (the largest companies will continue to use it, like oracle and db2)
For containers I like to use podman, it's available for windows, oci compliant & it's not problematic (no gpl, no evil letters from docker) to use in different environments and scales