Proxmox VE is often listed among the best virtual machine software options, although it belongs to a different category than most desktop virtualization tools. Rather than running as an application inside Windows, macOS, or Linux, it is designed as a server virtualization platform that manages workloads through a web-based interface.
At its core, Proxmox VE combines KVM for full virtual machines with LXC containers for lighter workloads. This gives users the option to run complete operating systems when needed, while also deploying more efficient containerized services where a full VM would be unnecessary. That combination is one of the main reasons Proxmox has become popular in homelab environments, where users often want to run many services on limited hardware.
