Wanting to run Qwen3.6 and Gemma4 models on a gaming PC, the author avoided cluttering Windows with multiple toolchains. Windows updates repeatedly broke GRUB, and USB boot media were frequently lost. With two NVMe drives already holding games, a remote‑boot solution using an existing NAS presented a cleaner alternative, letting the machine stay Windows‑centric while Linux runs disklessly for development today.

On a Proxmox host the author deployed Netboot.xyz, TFTP‑HPA and DNSMasq, then created a 32 GB ZFS ZVol named tank/debian‑disk‑12700k. Using targetcli‑fb the ZVol was exported as an iSCSI backstore, complete with mutual authentication and write‑protect for unauthenticated clients. Custom iPXE scripts point to the iSCSI target, and the Debian 13 installer assets are served via the same web server.

The result is a fully functional Debian 13 system booting over PXE and iSCSI without touching local disks. Although network boot incurs slower start‑up than a native install, ample RAM mitigates the impact for AI model inference. This configuration preserves the Windows environment, eliminates USB juggling, and showcases a practical use case for ZFS‑backed iSCSI targets in a home lab.