I ran it manually installed for years in a vm, then an LXC. It broke…a lot.

Then I ran it as docker containers with MySQL for a few years. It broke…less-ish.

Then I ran the AIO container. It was (and is) quite irritating because it’s so opinionated compared to regular docker containers. However, it hasn’t broken. It works pretty well. It’s faster than my old install and the office stuff seems to work better. However…want to do something different to the way Nextcloud AIO recommends? Nah, fuck you go kludge something together. You kinda have to do stuff their way, including things like backups.

It’s annoying to have all my other compose containers work with volumes and similar settings and Nextcloud be kinda its own thing, but I’m sticking with the AIO container. Takes a while to set up, but at least the documentation can’t be accused of being sparse.

That’s been my experience anyway. I’m sure smarter people than me have managed to bend it to their will a bit more.

Looks like one of the qotom/topton boxes you can find on aliexpress.

Can also pick them up with preinstalled *sense from Protectli (which I did I regretted nothing, totally great experience.)

But this post didn’t suggest Docker, it suggested a VM. This would be a totally sensible thing to do as you can just recreate it if you mess it up. Virtualbox works fine on Windows and Linux. Install it and spin up a distro.

Mate, the suggestions you have been given for VMs and docker are to help you recover easily should you mess up. If you are going to moan about that…maybe just install bare metal and get on with it yourself?