Help selecting best virtual machine installation option for me

My Dell Wyse 5070 (pentium) finally arrived. After looking through the various install options I’ve settled on running HA OS in a virtual machine for the least hassle.(My main use case includes zigbee2mqtt (conbee or sonoff), node-red and probably frigate (with a usb coral adapter if I can get one at a less than insane price))

As I’m intending to run the machine headless (and I don’t need to run any windows programs) I’m thinking my best option would be to install ubuntu server (or should I go debian as I have some raspberry pi experience already) and run HAOS through either virtualbox or VMware workstation and run other programs like homebridge in the ubuntu base OS. Or proxmox with separate VMs for HA OS and ubuntu/debian).

So which is the better virtualisation path in terms of reliability/compatibility or does it not matter much either way? Thanks for any advice!

My limited experience as a Windows user, VMware is MUCH more stable then vBox.

Thanks. I’ll have a go at using proxmox for a test install to see how it goes.

Proxmox and then you can install anything on top

Got it all running in proxmox. 100% satisfaction!

Did you manage full Bluetooth control?

I’m new in vm and running VMware on windows but BLE devices do not show op in home assistant. Only phones and headsets.