Correct. I’m running two AD DC’s based on Samba, all running on Zentyal. Super simple to install & setup. I them run a VM in Virtualbox on my laptop for the rare occasions I need to use the Windows RSAT tools.

Other than that, all my Linux VM’s, ProxMox hosts & unRAID NAS all set to auth against the Samba DC. It has been working perfectly for over a year now.

https://www.zentyal.com/

I daily drive Debian and use Windows for work. Only have one Windows VM for playing games via Moonlight.

I use an Ansible playbook to do fresh install stuff such as app installs & joining my local Samba AD.

Another option, that I’ve never tried, would be to put your /home directory on another partition. That only solves the settings though and not your app installation bit.

I’ve been running OPNsense as a VM in Proxmox for a year on an AliExpress box that doesn’t have ECC. If I might ask, why do you have a requirement for ECC?

Before this box, I ran a Dell R230 with pfSense but got tired of the noise and 40 watt power draw.

I’ve had zero issues without ECC, so I’m just curious about your need for it.

Two users and a handful of service accounts. I use it so I have a centralized user authentication system instead of managing multiple individual user accounts.

I tried a couple of LDAP solutions out there; Windows Server AD, Open LDAP, Samba4 in Debian, TurnKey Solutions LDAP before finally settling on Zentyal. It has a nice to use web GUI and can work in conjunction with AD RSAT tools that I have installed in a throwaway Windows VM for when I need more granular controls the web GUI can’t do.

All my Debian VM’s and laptops connect to Zentyal AD via SSSD.

I just cannot find a use case for Nextcloud. I have gone as far as installing it and sync’ing it with my LDAP for user auth and sync pictures from my phone to my NAS. All the other features are just a big ole m’eh for me.

This has just been my experience, so maybe I’m missing something that would just make it all click and make me not live without it. So far though, I’ve spun up and spun down an instance 3 times and never missed it afterwards.