Krik

Google was already shit for years. Its purpose nowadays is not to deliver whatever search results the user requested, it’s purpose is to keep the user dangling so that he clicks on one of the sponsored links - that’s money.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason you won’t find anything anymore on Google.

You can try DuckDuckGo. They are pretty open on what they do. The search engine is Bing and the maps come from Apple and you can chose your preferred AI from a list.

I haven’t heard about the decentralized search engines. Are they any good? Or are they more in like a proof of concept stage?

Firefox for iOS ist based on WebKit like Safari. Mozilla stopped porting Gecko over to iOS years ago as Apple’s policy doesn’t allow anything other that WebKit browsers. Even Google Chrome on iOS uses WebKit.

Do I use BTRFS or ZFS? I tend to use ZFS because of its advantages when making backups. What would you do?

Usually VMs are usually I/O starved therefore I would try to go as lightweight as possible and chose Ext4 or XFS (depending on what the VM is used for). The VMs can be backed up whole by Proxmox. You have more than enough space to do that and it’s considerably easier to set up. And honestly how big could the containers and VMs be? I guess the containers are 50-200 MB and a VM a few GBs. That’s almost nothing.

Do I use QEMU/KVM virtual machines or LXC/LXD cointainers? Performance wise QEMU emulating the host architecture should be the way to go, right?

LXC containers are way more lightweight than VMs. I depends on what you want to do. Docker and a file server work better in a VM so far but Pi-hole and Jellyfin run perfectly in a container.

I shy away from running all services as Docker on the same machine for backup/restore purposes and rather have VMs per service. Is there anything wrong with this approach?

I would go for LXC first. If that isn’t possible or too cumbersome I would try docker (in a VM) next and one-VM-per-service last as they need the most resources.

I’d love to keep NextcloudPi (because it’d make it easy to migrate settings and files) and there’s an LXD container for it. Would you recommend doing a switch to Nextcloud AIO instead?

Sorry, no idea.

I’ve equipped the Deskmeet X300 with a WiFi card and antennas. AFAIU trying to use WLAN instead of LAN will create some trouble. Has anyone running Proxmox on a machine with WLAN insteal of LAN access successfully?

I would always try to connect it to LAN.

I’m aware that Proxmox comes with a firewall, but I don’t feel very confortable using a software firewall running on the same machine that hosts the virtual machines. Is this just me being paranoid or would you recommend putting a hardware firewall between the internet access and the Proxmox server?

No idea. I wouldn’t mind a firewall container. If something breaks through you are fucked one way or the other. The firewall in your router isn’t much different than any other.
You should always go for Wireguard or another VPN to access your network from the outside.

What else should I think of, but haven’t talked about/asked yet?

Helper scripts for beginners: https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/
Just give them a look.

And it seems you are ignoring Proxmox’ LXC. They are one of main reasons to pick that software.

Edit: As an additional note: I ran about 6 or 7 VMs on a mini PC (Intel N100) with 16 GB RAM. RAM was almost used up and the cpu was at ~15 %.
I then switched mostly to LXC and only one VM. The cpu was now at ~1% and RAM usage went down to 3 GB while still providing the same services as before.
The power of containers, baby! :D