What is Proxmox VE?
Proxmox VE is a complete, open-source server management platform for enterprise virtualization. It tightly integrates the KVM hypervisor and Linux Containers (LXC), software-defined storage and networking functionality, on a single platform. With the integrated web-based user interface you can manage VMs and containers, high availability for clusters, or the integrated disaster recovery tools with ease. -https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-ve
The Hardware
The laptop I used in this video is an Asus G74Sx. It sports a 4 core/8 thread i7-2670QM @ 2.20 GHz, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 560M with 2GB of vRAM and a Kingston 120GB SSD.
Things You Will Need
- A USB flash drive, at least 8 GB https://amzn.to/3wkR5ju | https://amzn.to/3qkrJ1p | https://amzn.to/3Nhu9b9
Preparing the Installation Media
- Download the Proxmox VE .iso file Download
- Download the Ventoy installer Download
- Extract the downloaded .zip file
- Run Ventoy2Disk.exe
- Plug in a USB flash drive at least 4 GB in size
- Click the refresh icon
- Select the flash drive from the device dropdown
- Click the Install button
- After the installation completes, copy the downloaded Proxmox VE .iso to the Ventoy partition
- Safely remove the USB flash drive
- Plug the flash drive into the target laptop and power it on
- Boot to the flash drive
- Select the Proxmox VE .iso from the Ventoy menu
Installation and Setup
- Select Install Proxmox VE and press Enter
- Click the I agree button to accept the EULA
- Select the appropriate Target Harddisk from the dropdown > Click Next
- Set the Country, Time zone and Keyboard Layout > Click Next
- Enter a password and confirm, Enter an email address > Click Next
- Give the Proxmox device a hostname, confirm the network settings > Click Next
- Click the Install button
- Wait for Proxmox to be installed and configured
- After the installation succeeds, take note of the IP address and port
- Click the Reboot button
Installing a Desktop Environment
- Log back into Proxmox
- Run the following commands
# update software repositories
apt update
# install available software updates
apt dist-upgrade -y
# install xfce desktop environment
apt install xfce4 chromium lightdm sudo -y
# create a new user account
adduser <%username%>
# follow the prompts to set the user's password
# add the new user to the sudo group
usermod -aG sudo <%username%>
# reboot
reboot now - After the reboot, a graphical login screen should be displayed
- Log in with the new user account
- Launch the Chromium web browser and navigate to https://localhost:8006
- Welcome to Proxmox VE running on laptop hardware
Optional Configuration
- Launch a terminal and run the following commands
# elevate to root
sudo su
# disable proxmox commmercial repo
sed -i "s/^deb/\#deb/" /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list
# add the proxmox community repo
echo "deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve $(grep "VERSION=" /etc/os-release | sed -n 's/.*(\(.*\)).*/\1/p') pve-no-subscription" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-community.list
# update software repositories
apt update
# remove no subscription nag popup
# if running promox 6
sed -i.bak 's/NotFound/Active/g' /usr/share/perl5/PVE/API2/Subscription.pm
# if running proxmox 7
sed -Ezi.bak "s/(Ext.Msg.show\(\{\s+title: gettext\('No valid sub)/void\(\{ \/\/\1/g" /usr/share/javascript/proxmox-widget-toolkit/proxmoxlib.js
# restart pveproxy service
systemctl restart pveproxy.service
# download the dark theme setup script
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Weilbyte/PVEDiscordDark/master/PVEDiscordDark.sh
# run the downloaded script
bash ./PVEDiscordDark.sh install
Source: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Developer_Workstations_with_Proxmox_VE_and_X11