PiHole, HomeAssistant, etc. at Home – Beginner Questions

Thenta

Hi everyone,

This might not be exactly the right place for this, but I’m sure there are plenty of experts here who can help. 😉

I’m planning to add a mini PC to my home network (probably a small Intel NUC). To start with, I want to run:

PiHole
HomeAssistant OS

Which operating system would you recommend for the NUC?

How should PiHole be installed on it?

I’d like to run HomeAssistant OS in a VM on the NUC for now, since I’m completely new to containers.

Any tips or advice on setting this up would be greatly appreciated!

Computertek

Thenta

A NUC (or something like a Lenovo Tiny) is a great choice to start with. I’d also recommend installing Proxmox as the base OS. That way you can run:

Home Assistant OS as a VM – you’ll get the full experience including Supervisor and add-ons.

Pi-hole in a lightweight LXC container. The Proxmox community scripts
make the setup really easy and save a lot of time.

This setup gives you flexibility and a nice way to manage everything from a single interface. Later on, if you get more comfortable, you can also explore Docker/Portainer, or add things like a reverse proxy to make services easier to reach.

Good luck with your setup – once Home Assistant is running you’ll quickly see how much you can expand it.

tobias

Hi, welcome to the community!

An Intel Nuc or another mini PC such as a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny (often available second-hand and inexpensive) is the right choice.

I would install Proxmox on it and create Home Assistant as a VM. Pi-hole can also be installed as an LXC container. There is also a script for Pihole available at
[Hi, welcome to the forum!

An Intel Nuc or another mini PC such as a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny (often available second-hand and inexpensive) is the right choice. I would install Proxmox on it and create Home Assistant as a VM. Pi-hole can also be installed as an LXC container. There is also a script for Pihole available at
[Proxmox VE Community Scripte - Pihole](Hi, welcome to the forum!

An Intel Nuc or another mini PC such as a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny (often available second-hand and inexpensive) is the right choice. I would install Proxmox on it and create Home Assistant as a VM. Pi-hole can also be installed as an LXC container. There is also a script for Pihole available at
https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/scripts?id=pihole)

Slad

tobias I highly recommend the community scripts. They allow you to quickly set up a small home lab.