You should look at the External Funds thing mentioned in the article. It gives a different spending breakdown than Purchase History.

Help > Steam support > My account > Data related to your Steam account > External funds used. (Its the 13th item on a huge page full of stuff.)

Invest!

Your profile page will say your account birthday. Float your mouse over “Years of Service”.

Meh. You were late to the party. Musta got Steam to play Half Life Episode Two or Portal.

I got Steam so I could play Half Life 2 when it was released. May 4, 2006. 153 games. $1,725 spent.

This thing about not owning the games … um … Steam is a more reliable, stable, all around better repository for my games than any device I’ve ever owned. Other than the Ubisoft games that are designed to not be re-usable (never buy Ubi again) I have access to every game I’ve bothered to spend money on for the last two decades.

Proxmox is Debian, so much of your ideas could translate directly across. That said, I try to mod the PVE server as liitle as possible.

Proxmox makes it so easy to spin up yet another VM or LCX to handle services with its core offerings. Also google “proxmox helper scripts” to find tteck’s additional stash of ready-made LCX.

Boy. You asked about Proxmox. Nobody said anything.

How does Proxmox make it easier? Have you used it? All sorts of ways. Like, its a full virtual infrastructure management system instead of just an OS. Proxmox loves ZFS. It does many of the things you’ve mentioned here.

Proxmox does have its own backup system that can work with an NFS target or with their smart dedupe storage and replication server product. https://www.proxmox.com/en/products/proxmox-backup-server/overview

You’ve got some pretty advanced ideas and perhaps have already moved beyond the Proxmox question. But if you are curious and haven’t used it, spin up a server and give it a whirl.

Do it. Jump in. Just start with whatever you can assemble.
It’s a great way to keep your room warm.