I have no experience with it, but generally my view is that a home server is NOT a “devops” project, its more like an iPhone. You want backups, and you want whatever is running to restart if you lose power (whether that’s a new toaster tripping a breaker or the weather killing power, it happens), but you dont need “infra as code” and all sorts of automation. Just update as you go, and move on. Docker et al. have enough tooling that you can run everything as its own container (basically a phone app) and you’re done.
If you want to try out <insert tech here> to learn something, then just learn it, don’t try to fit it in your normal life and eat at your existing stuff. Don’t replace your mac with a chrome book just because you’re learning webdev, and don’t replace your home server with terraform just because you’re learning it. What if you learn it but stop needing it or never use it professionally? You’ll now need to maintain that skill to maintain something at home.
If you want something more than a blank Linux box for your home server, check out HASS.io, synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, or one of the many “hold your hands” distros/tools designed to make it less work. Even Portainer/Proxmox will give you a bit of a GUI without being too opinionated. I use a blank Linux box primarily, but only because I live with other SWEs who all want to mess with the shared server, and everyone wants their own thing and we couldn’t agree on anything else. We plan to switch to TrueNAS and give everyone a VM but haven’t coordinated the switch yet…
If you want to try out <insert tech here> to learn something, then just learn it, don’t try to fit it in your normal life and eat at your existing stuff. Don’t replace your mac with a chrome book just because you’re learning webdev, and don’t replace your home server with terraform just because you’re learning it. What if you learn it but stop needing it or never use it professionally? You’ll now need to maintain that skill to maintain something at home.
If you want something more than a blank Linux box for your home server, check out HASS.io, synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, or one of the many “hold your hands” distros/tools designed to make it less work. Even Portainer/Proxmox will give you a bit of a GUI without being too opinionated. I use a blank Linux box primarily, but only because I live with other SWEs who all want to mess with the shared server, and everyone wants their own thing and we couldn’t agree on anything else. We plan to switch to TrueNAS and give everyone a VM but haven’t coordinated the switch yet…