# Proxmox VE 208 Hacker News commenters recommended Proxmox VE and 60 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (16 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A free Debian-based hypervisor for VMs and containers that's easy to install on cheap hardware, with clustering, HA and Ceph built in; setup and networking can feel complex. ## Why people recommend it - Great for homelabs on cheap hardware (5 comments): "I can't attest to Proxmox in a production/cluster environment but (barring GPU passthrough) it's very accessible for homelab and small network." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980649)) "being able to throw together a bunch of old dead boxes and put proxmox on them in a weekend is a game changer" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152391)) "ex-lease micro PCs are a fantastic deal and can be fun to setup and learn Proxmox and Truenas etc.." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47304084)) - Easy clustering and high availability (5 comments): "PVE's high availability will auto evacuate a box when you put it into maintenance mode, so you get something akin to VMware's DRS out of the box, for free." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46154151)) "tools like proxmox just add a node, you add new hardware, mark the VM for that node to mirror, and it is taken care of" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820198)) "I was able to set up a multi-node cluster with more complicated networking than I was normally comfortable with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577150)) - Smooth, reliable upgrades and stability (5 comments): "My cluster went from 6 to 7, 7 to 8 and recently 8 to 9, along with Ceph - all without a single problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45985637)) "my current proxmox servers never had issues in updates, upgrades, migrations, and obviously restarts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48767656)) "the glue around, the good updates, the stability, the great integration with ceph, make the whole difference" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49047052)) - Free VMware alternative with cheap support (4 comments): "PVE's high availability will auto evacuate a box when you put it into maintenance mode, so you get something akin to VMware's DRS out of the box, for free." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46154151)) "if they had something as nice as Proxmox (for free), I'd probably be using RPM distros for my hypervisors right now!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136327)) "It's honestly been easy as hell to support and upstream support contracts are available for cheap as chips" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581231)) ## What people warn about - Complex and unintuitive to configure (4 comments): "I have a Proxmox system but hate how much (IMO unnecessary) complexity managing VMs entails." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48626582)) "Wtf is a storage pool? What do I do with all these clusters, high availability thing it keeps asking about?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46967150)) "but it’s less intuitive and usually involves setting up additional components like Proxmox Backup Server." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577653)) - Networking setup is painful (2 comments): "wasn't too bad once I got it working... but man was it rough figuring out getting my IP allocation routing right" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797680)) "proxmox's netoworking is fundamentally wrong: its configured with consistent interface naming set the wrong way" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46612795)) - Less mature than VMware at scale (4 comments): "Don't get me wrong, its "ok", but I was coming from a VMware World and had gotten used to certain things." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50006292)) "Proxmox isn't quite there yet for scalibility and hyperconverged but it is getting there really fast." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46961191)) "the much less mature (both organizationally and technologically) proxmox VE is the best thing since sliced bread" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858715)) - Easy to break VMs or storage (2 comments): "so many things in proxmox that would normally release space, instead become nonfunctional when the disk is full" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48941071)) "I always somehow managed to break it in such a way that I can't remove the container/VM or start it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49786197)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Incus](https://hackerapproved.com/p/incus.md): 90 recommend - [KVM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kvm.md): 32 recommend - [bhyve hypervisor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bhyve.md): 17 recommend - [Sylve](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sylve.md): 17 recommend - [Xen hypervisor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xen.md): 12 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Proxmox VE", https://hackerapproved.com/p/proxmox-ve/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).