Written 9 Sep 2026. This is a how-to, not a product card.

A hypervisor can wait

Debian or Ubuntu Server on the leftover box first. Proxmox and a VM farm wait.

Forums treat Proxmox as day one. The leftover box does not need a pretend computer so ads can skip. Pi-hole is a package: the first useful thing. The OS pick is Debian or Ubuntu Server. One leftover box is enough: one leftover box.

What a VM is for, later

A VM is a pretend computer inside the leftover box. Useful when you want to break something without breaking Pi-hole. That later reading is what a VM is, and when you don't need one. Peek first: see if the computer can run a pretend computer. You still do not install Proxmox this weekend.

What next

Weekend path: your first weekend. Tick Lab plan after SSH and Pi-hole work on one OS.

Optional: leftover box vs a later hypervisor as a sandbox in ByteRush — same Labthrift passkey as Plan. Skip if you just want to keep reading.

Skip

• Skip Proxmox, ESXi, and Hyper-V this weekend.
• Skip a second leftover box so VMs can “fail over.”
• Skip buying an N100 because the leftover box “is not a hypervisor.”