I Ditched Ubuntu for openSUSE MicroOS 🚀 Cockpit + Podman + Pi-hole = Faster Easier Homelab! #MicroOS

Ready to make your homelab boring-reliable and blazing fast? In this Gumshoe Tech deep-dive, I spin up openSUSE MicroOS (immutable, transactional, Btrfs snapshots) and show how I manage it entirely through Cockpit—then deploy Pi-hole with Podman. We cover why I’m moving servers off Tumbleweed/Slowroll and Ubuntu, how MicroOS keeps updates atomic and rollbacks instant, and why it feels snappier on the same hardware.

What you’ll learn:

What MicroOS is and why it’s perfect for container hosts

Cockpit setup (web UI at :9090), snapshots, updates, and safe rollbacks

Enabling/locking down root vs. creating a normal admin user

Podman basics on MicroOS and a clean Pi-hole deployment (volumes, ports, autostart)

Quick Proxmox install flow, then why I still prefer bare metal for performance

Chapters:
0:00 Why MicroOS (vs. Tumbleweed/Slowroll/Ubuntu)
1:10 Proxmox demo install
3:20 Cockpit setup & transactional updates
6:05 Snapshots & rollbacks
8:10 Podman directories under /var
9:30 Deploying Pi-hole (and fixing the admin password)
12:00 Reboot test & container autostart
13:20 Final thoughts + what’s next (Frigate on MicroOS!)

If this helped, smash 👍, subscribe, and drop your MicroOS questions below. More Podman/MicroOS how-tos coming!

#openSUSE #MicroOS #Cockpit #Podman #PiHole #Homelab #Proxmox #Btrfs #ImmutableOS #GumshoeTech