i posted this on linux instance, ill copy it to here too.
Hi, so I want to building a pc for a home server (?) or NAS. I dont really know whats the most appropriate term but what I intend to build is a one pc for my household. currently my requirement is one work ‘pc’ capable of heavy 3d modeling one light work pc. two 4k gaming tvs. (they most likely wont be used at the same time)
my knowledge of technical stuff is bretty basic so please be patient with me.
before, i used my steam deck to stream my work pc using parsec but i thought i just want to jump all in on linux and using vm to use more niche 3d softwares.
my budget is flexible as long as i dont need to use enterprise hardware. also i heard nvidia is not good for linux so i’d like to confirm if that is still the case as im thinking of using 5090 if not, i hope amd releases an equivalent capable card or if any according my quick research suggest.
as for linux, the only distro (?) i ever used is the steam deck one and i love it. im not a programmer or even remotely capable one so i’d like to avoid anything that has to be manually typing commands at terminal but im open to surface level tinkering.
thank you for your time
Proxmox is a great place to start. It has a nice web ui, it’s easy to install, and has loads of useful features for running VMs.
You can easily run windows or whatever Linux VMs you want.
Before spending big money on a beefy server that may or may-not do what you want, I’d suggest buying a cheap NUC (intel N100 nucs are cheap, and have an iGPU).
Then you can follow one of the many tutorials out there about Proxmox, Windows and GPU pass through.
Once you have a windows VM working, you can play around with remote desktop stuff, and see if it is responsive/suitable - things like Apache Guacamole or Rust Desk can make for a very nice end user experience with a bit of extra upfront config.
If remote desktop stuff isn’t working for you, you could try buying some used Crestron NVX from eBay. Can’t remember the exact model, but they are about £160.
They have very little latency, but they will saturate 1gbe so need a home-run to the same switch (or 10gbps+ trunk links between switches).
Once all that is feeling good, think about other services you want and get them running on the (starting to get overloaded) n100 nuc.
When you have everything feeling good, then you can invest in a beefy machine with all the bells and whistles.
Considering the n100 is for learning, with the idea of rebuilding the entire server: document what you do!
There will be lots of trial and error along the way, and you will mess things up. So make sure you take lots of notes about what you do to configure things, and take snapshots of VMs before you start tinkering with them.