Proxmox with various VMs is what I use, and I do like it. Also it's a very light OS, I have a 4c4t Ryzen chip running three Linux (Ubuntu and Debian) VM's running a few services and one Windows 11 (this is just to mess around) and at most 50% CPU usage.
If you want to still mess with containers you can use Prox, load up a VM, and then run containers in that VM.
Sounds like you need to run a hypervisor and then you can pick and choose plus test different options. You can then create templates and clones that will save you so much time time. Proxmox or ESXi will get you going.
Proxmox is the best option here
Get a hypervisor first. VMWare or Proxmox. VMWare if you expect to support corporate environments of any size. Proxmox if you don't care.
Thanks to everyone for your inputs, I'll fiddle with Proxmox :)
And another vote for Proxmox just in case. For containers, just spin up another Linux VM.