My first contact with ESXi has left me bamboozled, frustrated, and disappointed

Proxmox may be the head honcho in the home lab ecosystem, but things were radically different in the past. For years, the home server community heralded ESXi as its virtualization platform of choice. Unfortunately, ESXi’s time in the limelight was cut short after Broadcom implemented the mind-boggling decision to remove the free version of the hypervisor last year. Fast-forward to April 2025, and for some reason, the company decided to reinstate the ESXi free license.