

This. ProxMox will save you many times over while you are learning. It makes it so easy to backup and restore, try out new projects in a sandbox, and much much more.
I credit ProxMox with making me bolder about what I wanted to accomplish and having the courage and time to take risks while knowing I could always restore from backup in an instant.
Making it pseudo-public and not using docker would be a mistake, in my opinion. Anything public-ish can benefit from the extra security of docker’s sandboxing.
It will also make it much easier to run things through a VPN with Gluetun—something you definitely want to do if you have strangers using your SearXNG instance.
You should really consider a container of some kind.