Oh great, but I guess this wasn't unexpected.
I run a free ESXi install at home on a ten year old Dell rack server. It runs multiple VMs, running such diverse things as various Websites, Minecraft and other games servers and my main *nix development environment, to a couple of foreign language installs of Windows I use for testing one project. Several VMs run multiple docker based services, but not everything can run that way, and it's useful to keep some services isolated from each other.
What I like(d) was how easy it is to set up a VM.. A simple "wizard" to lead me through the principal questions, the chance to amend things like number of cores, memory, etc., point the cd drive at an iso of the relevant boot/install disc, away we go.
I tired Proxmox a couple of years ago on another box, and whilst it installed fine, never managed to get as far as getting one VM up and running. It just seemed overly complex and very non-intuitive. Whilst I could appreciate the potential, I simply didn't have the time to overcome the learning curve. I don't have a lot of time for what is these days just a hobby, and I'd rather spend it on constructive stuff than learning a new backend that I only need to touch maybe twice a year and will consequently forget how to use even quicker..
Do any of the free alternatives come with as user-friendly a GUI as ESXi's Web interface?