After a couple of years of using my beefier NUC to run Ubuntu with VMware Workstation, I decided it was time for a switch. Naturally, this has nothing to do with the current state of VMware/Broadcom. Definitely not.

Looking for a switch and wanting to build my homelab out a bit more I thought Proxmox would be a great fit for me. Fortunately, it couldn’t have been easier.

After downloading and flashing the ISO to a USB, I fired it up. I also apologe in advance for the photo quality.

Booting to the USB, I see the install screen where I choose I want to GUI based installation.

As with most things, the next screen is a EULA:

Following the EULA, Proxmox asks where it should be installed.

This choice is at the bottom in tiny font. It can be easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it.

Basic geographic and time info is requested next:

Next, it wants an admin password and an email for notifications:

Networking is next, and it is where I had my only issue. In the screenshot, I chose to use the wifi adapter. Proxmox will install like this, but it won’t work. After much digging, it seemed the only way to get it to work on wifi was to make several additional networking changes after installation. I ended up going back and reinstalling at this point and chose the ethernet port for ease of use.

Lastly is the Summary page with all of the input information:

After the installation was completed and my NUC was rebooted, I hit IPAdress:8006 to login.

That’s it. I was honestly surprised with how simple and quick the installation was. I look forward to adding some VMs and containers to Proxmox and sharing my ongoing homelab updates here.