I decided to go with IncusOS when I got a new HP EliteDesk i5 8th gen as a server a while back.

I've had some issues with it mostly regarding my setup with iSCSI. Of course me running iSCSI on my NAS is probably not the best way to do it but the whole incus install froze up as soon as it got disconnected in any way. Which includes the NAS updating or the router updating.

There's also some limitations as Incus is rootless that makes a few things difficult like setting up an SMB share in a container since that'll require some kernel permissions. If you have the RAM or storage to do this in a VM instead it wouldn't be much of an issue as they're not limited to the rootlessness of the instances. Different workaround for file shares would be fuse like sshfs since it happily runs as a normal user.

I do love the experience of manually managing the servers in Incus very very much. On my machine I can just run incus shell instance-name and I'm in. Inside of my instances I often run Debian with Podman quadlets or Docker if needed and it works great. With podman updating the containers is also a breeze.

On top of that if you read into cloud-init a little but you basically get a Hetzner like experience. Fully configured and updated distro with your favourite packages and your own certificates installed, if you use that, directly and ready to go. It's amazing and a great time server when starting a new project.

IncusOS has gotten some nice updates in recent months like Netbird support and Wireguard as two examples. They seem to have a keen ear on community wishes. The forums are great too and project maintainers are nice and respectful from what I've seen.

The installation procedure with the secure boot keys where a bit of a hassle but once running it is nice. Updates are automated and shows you if a reboot is required. The web UI makes handling most tasks and doing maintenance a breeze.

I can wholeheartedly recommend it from my experience with a small "but". If you want to automate or use kubernetes or learn more enterprise "what is mostly used" stuff it can be difficult. I wanted to see if I could get K3s running as a bit of a test and learn but it doesn't seem to want to run in a rootless container. Giving the explicit required permissions also seem difficult to do or find and isn't straight forward. There is some plugin stuffs for kubernetes to use Incus directly as well but I couldn't wrap my head around it or feel like it would give me anything for my small homelab.

I tried automating the instance updates with Ansible but it failed 90% of the time with context cancellations. Having to continuously rerun the Ansible playbook until I gave up and did it manually. Eventually I just wrote a bash script using bash arrays and for loops to do what I wanted.

In short, it's great if you just want to manage some stuff in your homelab and separating things. I'm sure it's great in larger enterprise-esque setups too if you can take the time and brain power to learn everything around it since the availability and support is there but the instructions and documentation for those things requires existing knowledge around it. Unlike getting Incus up and running in a more basic setup which is greatly documented and easy to follow along most of the time.