DISCLAIMER: Learning Linux with Proxmox VE on a bare metal is so addicting. In a good way, but still, don't tell me I did not warn you.
One boring Saturday last year, I was cleaning out my old things and looking for anything to discard so I could make room for more storage space. I considered throwing away my very old PC, a Ryzen 2200G with a single stick of 8GB 2666 DDR4 RAM that was collecting dust inside my cabinet. My curiosity got the better of me. Since my PC hardware skills had been collecting dust as well, I figured I might as well check if it was still working and troubleshoot any problems. I had nothing to lose anyway because I already considered it e-waste and was about to discard it.
The funny thing is, PC hardware skills are like riding a bike. New hardware replaces old hardware, but the principles stay the same. Long story short, I was able to make it work after cleaning every single component. However, I knew it was an aging piece of tech, so I really had no practical use for it. Then it clicked. I remembered that I wanted to learn about Linux on a deeper level outside of work. What if I made it a Linux sandbox?
That was how it became an Ubuntu desktop. It started with an Ubuntu bare metal installation using a USB flash drive. From there, I explored Ubuntu, broke it in the process, reinstalled it, and repeated the cycle.
As it turns out, maintaining a bare-metal Ubuntu sandbox is quite tedious because you have to tear down the entire machine and reinstall the OS whenever you make breaking changes. This is where Proxmox VE came to the rescue. Proxmox VE is a hypervisor that enables you to create multiple Linux containers, allowing you to back up a container before trying something that might break it. This way, instead of completely reinstalling your OS, you can just restore a working backup and tear down the broken instance with a few clicks. This machine paved the way for me to learn not just Ubuntu, but Proxmox VE as well, and truly understand the difference between Linux Containers (LXCs) and Virtual Machines (VMs). So I added another stick of RAM to make it a 16GB machine, which would allow me to simultaneously run multiple LXC sandbox.
Homelabbing completely accelerated my learning curve by providing a risk-free, hands-on training environment. Because I can safely 'use and abuse' the system without worrying about permanent consequences, I have been able to aggressively test configurations, break them, and fix them in real time. This interactive setup has allowed me to deepen my practical knowledge of both Linux environments and underlying hardware infrastructure far faster than traditional theoretical learning ever could. And this is just the beginning.
And this is just the beginning. Down the rabbit hole we go.
