Ubuntu LTS server. I chose it because it’s got good support both in community and enterprise support. Also it’s pretty simple to use and almost forgot it’s got zfs built in.

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.

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.

NixOS. Only been running it on that server for a couple of weeks now, but so far I’m happy with it.

I like being able to manage almost every aspect of the system from a single declarative configuration file.

I don’t do any fancy NAS and/or RAID stuff though. Just the OS living on an nvme, and a logical volume running across two spinning disks. If I need direct file access I use scp, but the storage is more for jellyfin and a syncthing node.

Proxmox 👍👍👍

Homeserver? Surely you mean home serverS.

Proxmox, unraid. Ubuntu server vms

windows server, I don’t like raid software

I’ve been on Unraid for years now with no complaints, much better then all the other NAS platforms. The docker app catalog is great. I also run a number of VMs on it including GPU pass through.

I use a mix of truenas, debian, and proxmox

Anything that can run docker works for me.

Proxmox because it’s just Debian with a pretty UI for QEMU

I’m liking it a lot more than ESXi - it’s just better honestly

good support keeping the compatible packages readily available is one of the feature you might do well with

I use OpenMediaVault, with a Docker plugin and a few containers for Plex and Transmission. Although, I don’t actually remember if OpenMediaVault is the OS itself, or running on top of it, which is a testament to stability, I suppose.

Proxmox or Debian minimal!

Fedora Kinoite + podman