UNIX
I am a lover of UNIX or Unix-like operating systems. I use macOS on the desktop which is UNIX, but on my servers I use different Unix-like operating systems.
As a hypervisor I use Proxmox. I can also recommend XCP-NG as a hypervisor, it moves much slower than Proxmox, which I, in a way, prefer. If you use the free version of Proxmox they push a lot of updates to it.
Virtual machines on Proxmox are Debian, Alpine Linux, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Some of them are containers like LXC which I prefer to Docker, some are real KVM virtual machines. To know: LXC is using the hosts kernel, and hence must be Linux.
As a firewall I use OpenBSD with their superb firewall Packet Filter (pf). I have both an internal firewall that filter between my subnets, and an external firewall that filter all outgoing and incoming traffic. This is great since all internal traffic continues to work even if the external firewall is down, or off, or rebooted.
As VPN service I use OpenBSD's inbuilt WireGuard wg interface, which also is superb.
WireGuard has in my case revolutionised how I can use VPN, since it works perfectly whether I am on LTE or WiFi and changes in connection does not impact the tunnel. I am always connected today. In that case I am protected by my firewall, and by the DNS filtration at home which is filtering ads and other threats. Nowadays I have set it up with three tunnels, all three have different access rules, and my management tunnel has two options; one that goes through 0.0.0.0/0 or a split tunnel VPN where DNS, and only my subnets goes through the tunnel. I am mostly using the split tunnel on LTE and the 0.0.0.0/0 when using a foreign WiFi.
My network is heavily segregated with multiple subnets and VLANs, which is easy with a good switch and OpenBSD.
Some of my WiFi SSIDs requires a certificate to use, and for now I am using pfSense and freeRADIUS to handle all WPA3-Enterprise connections, because it is easy to deploy certificates that way.
Security and privacy are very important for me so at home I host a webdav-server on my NAS for my Joplin clients, which of course are encrypted. You may find a great guide here for Nginx.
I also host on my internal firewall an Adguard home server, which filter away ads, tracking, telemetry, and other unwanted things on the internet.
I host all my calendars and contacts in the Baikal CalDAV/CardDAV server on an OpenBSD virtual machine, and its backend is a mysql-server, which is easy to backup.
I pay for Bitwarden, it is well worth it price of $10, but I use Vaultwarden to host my own Bitwarden service, it is running on an Alpine Linux virtual machine.
I host my files on an Asustor NAS with Debian installed so that I can make use of ZFS, which is a great filesystem, and it is very robust. With an OS like Debian on your NAS your options and nearly endless.
I am planing to cancel my IDAGIO subscription, and host all my music on my Navidrome music server; right now I am planning, and ripping my music or downloading it from archive.org (what a great resource), and tagging it. All of it resides on my NAS as mostly flac files.
All my photos are hosted on my NAS through the great software Piwigo, which also have a great iOS app.
I host a local syncthing-server so that I can write from whatever device I want. You can of course save on a smb-share, but if the file is big and you are sitting on a bad LTE connection you have no problems since it saves locally and then syncs to the server.
All of this are possible through all these great open source software and a VPN connection, and through a mini PC like an Asus PN52 which you can install Proxmox on and have up to 64GB of RAM, which can host countless virtual machines. This is a great way to stay clear, at least to a point, from intrusive companies as Google, Apple, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Microsoft.
From time to time I might publish something regarding UNIX, which you may find through the TAG Unix.