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What distro do you use for your servers?

I’ve only ever used desktop Linux and don’t have server admin experience (unless you count hosting Minecraft servers on my personal machine lol). Currently using Artix and Void for my desktop computers as I’ve grown fond of runit.

I’m going to get a VPS for some personal projects and am at the point of deciding what distro I want to use. While I imagine that systemd is generally the best for servers due to the far more widespread support (therefore it’s better for the stability needs of a server), I have a somewhat high threat model compared to most people so I was wondering if maybe I should use something like runit instead which is much smaller and less vulnerable. Security needs are also the reason why I’m leaning away from using something like Debian, because how outdated the packages are would likely leave me open to vulnerabilities. Correct me if I’m misunderstanding any of that though.

Other than that I’m not sure what considerations there are to make for my server distro. Maybe a more mainstream distro would be more likely to have the software in its repos that I need to host my various projects. On the other hand, I don’t have any experience with, say, Fedora, and it’d probably be a lot easier for me to stick to something I know.

In terms of what I want to do with the VPS, it’ll be more general-purpose and hosting a few different projects. Currently thinking of hosting a Matrix instance, a Mastodon instance, a NextCloud instance, an SMTP server, and a light website, but I’m sure I’ll want to stick more miscellaneous stuff on there too.

So what distro do you use for your server hosting? What things should I consider when picking a distro?

harsh3466 ,

Ubuntu LTS. Currently on 22.04.

traches , (edited )

It’s not conventional wisdom, but I’m happiest with arch.

  • I’m familiar with it
  • can install basically any package without difficulty
  • also love that I never have a gigantic version upgrade to deal with. sure there might be some breaking change out of nowhere, but it’ll show up in my rss feeds and it hits all my computers at the same time so it’s not hard to deal with.
  • Arch never really surprises me because there’s nothing installed that didn’t choose to put there.
  • arch wiki

Tempted by nixos but I CBA to learn it.

data1701d ,
@data1701d@startrek.website avatar

Debian backports security updates to most software, including popular server software. Stable also always uses an LTS kernel, which stays supported upstream. So long as you’re using latest Debian Stable (Bookworm as of this writing), run apt update often (in fact, ‘’’unattended-upgrades’’’ is probably not the worst idea in this case) and do common sense security practices like a firewall and (brain is not working), you should be good.

In brief, it’s totally fine to use Debian and in fact one of the best options in my opinion.

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Debian but mostly Ubuntu LTS with the free Ubuntu Pro that gives 10-year support. If I get hit by a bus, chances are the self-hosted systems I’ve setup would continue to work for years till my family can get someone to support or migrate the data. 😅

Codilingus ,

Unraid is amazing for getting into servers. It’s just the right amount of WebUI and minimalism. Very safe and comfortable defaults, and the ability to start tweaking and adding more.

TheBigBrother ,

Debian

itslilith ,
@itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

NixOS for my homelab that I like to tinker with, Debian as Docker host for the server people actually rely on

Deckweiss ,

I have one server running arch and 3 running debian.

So far they are equally stable after running for about half a year.

Autoupdates are turned on on all of them. Which I am aware is against the arch wiki recommendations, but the server is not critical, easy to migrate and has nightly offsite backups anyway.

visone ,
@visone@fosstodon.org avatar

@communism
I use alpine, but void is a good option too, for me the host should be minimal and lightweight. At the end I have all on containers

LeFantome ,

I mostly use Proxmox these days which runs on Debian be default.

secret300 ,

I just use debian cause it’s rock solid and most of what I set up are in containers or VM’S anyways

pnutzh4x0r , (edited )
@pnutzh4x0r@lemmy.ndlug.org avatar

I currently use Ubuntu for all my machines (desktops, laptops, and servers), but I used to use Void Linux on my machines for about 6 years, including on a couple of VPSes. Since you are familiar with Void Linux, you could stick with that and just use Docker/Podman for the individual services such as Matrix, Mastodon, etc.

In regards to Debian, while the packages are somewhat frozen, they do get security updates and backports by the Debian security team:

www.debian.org/security/

There is even a LTS version of Debian that will continue backporting security updates:

www.debian.org/lts/

Good luck!

DarkMetatron ,

I use arch on my servers. It is the distro I am most used too, because I use it also as my daily driver.

Olap ,

openSUSE worth a consideration. More frequent releases than debian, but still pretty conservative

gencha ,

If you are already familiar with one package manager, pick a distro that also uses that package manager.

When deciding on the release track, the harder it is to recover the system, the more stable the track should be. Stable does not imply secure.

As you move up through virtualization layers, the less stable the track needs to be, allowing access to more recent features.

Steer clear of distros that pride themselves on using musl. It’s historically slow and incomplete. Don’t buy into the marketing.

Think about IaC. Remote management is a lot more comfortable if you can consider your server ephemeral. You’ll appreciate the work on the day you need to upgrade to a new major release of the distro.

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