Comment by lostlogin
So much this.
I’ve migrated a home server to a Mac mini. It was awful to achieve. Trying to get a machine to boot, connect network shares and start containers was a week long effort. I can do it in Ubuntu in about 10 minutes from a clean install.
So much is disgusting UI options hidden deep some in the (awful) settings app.
But the result is a server that is fast, powerful and using 6-7W per hour, compared to the old Nuc 9 it replaced that used 70W.
It’s just so good. The OS lets it down.
The new Intel NUCs are only like a hundred something dollars for an N150 CPU and come with 16 gigs of RAM and a SSD.
Why pay so much more to fight an uphill battle?
Unless you desperately need the hot garbage that is Xcode there isn't much reason to deal with Mac Minis running MacOS as a server. One update and it will suspend and be unwakeable without physical interaction.