I remember when I was trying to break into the Linux sysadmin role. Every job required 3-5y professional experience. I’d had a homelab for a while and was reasonably experienced with a number of things, but there was absolutely no willingness to bring on a newbie and train them up. It was super frustrating. How will I ever get any experience if you won’t hire anyone without years of experience?
I had an in-person interview lined up after a phone interview went really well. However, I got offered a different position before the Linux interview was scheduled and I had to take it because I was unemployed and couldn’t gamble on it not working out.
I just got back into virtualizing Linux instances on Proxmox (had been on ESXi before the Broadcom fuckery). I’m considering going that route again as of just very recently.