I’ve used Openmediavault in the past and had a short look at Proxmox but I’ve been running two servers on bare metal Ubuntu for years without any problems. I feel like I don’t really see the added value, I can run docker, SMB shares fine on without Proxmox and OMV. What do you want to do that Mint wasn’t able to do?

Those two are very different imo. Proxmox as a hypervisor would give you the most flexibility, but the question is whether you’d actually need that flexibility. You would also need to decide further how you implement your setup within it.

unRAID would have the advantage of a large community and lots of guides. Downside is that it costs money, which could also be used towards better hardware.

Personally I am reasonably happy with openmediavault and have my media server setup with that (jellyfish+and arr apps with docker compose). That could also be an option.

Another alternative might be something like CasaOS, which would give you a probably simple to use app store that maybe covers your needs already.

Why not openmediavault?

I haven’t used Unraid. I am fan of Proxmox. It is on the one hand lightweight, as you can use unprivileged LXC+Docker, and on the other hand very flexible and powerful. It probably requires more manual work than Unraid though.

Proxmox is great, but if your goal is just a NAS, then you should probably go with either Unraid or a NAS os. Unraid specifically makes it pretty easy to add drives if you run out of space, and I find that very attractive as somebody who also runs all the arr apps.

If you just want a basic NAS and don’t plan on adding any extra features later on, you can’t go wrong with TrueNAS, Unraid, or another NAS OS. I’m biased toward TrueNAS, but only because I’m a sucker for a good UI. TrueNAS Scale has official support for the Starr family of software, but I’m not sure about Unraid. If you end up going with another NAS OS, you’ll need to do your own due diligence to ensure you can run Starr stuff on it.

If you plan on adding anything extra at any point in the future, use Proxmox with a TrueNAS or Unraid VM. Proxmox itself uses very little system resources and is relatively easy to use. From there you can create add’l VMs to run your *arr apps on.

My motto is: “When in doubt, go with a hypervisor. I use Proxmox on my smaller quote-unquote ‘servers’ (repurposed desktops) and ESXI on my proper servers. (PowerEdge, Proliant, etc.)”

Hope this helps