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rysiek ,
@rysiek@szmer.info avatar

HAproxy cannot serve static files directly. You need a webserver behind it for that.

Apache is slow.

Nginx is both a capable, fast reverse-proxy, and a capable, fast webserver. It can do everything HAproxy does, and what Apache does, and more.

I am not saying it is absolutely best for every use-case, but this flexibility is a large part of why I use it in my infra (nad have been using it for a decade).

miau ,

Honest question: why not use nginx?

I have run it in so many different scenarios, both professionally and personally, its crazy. Nginx has never failed me, literally. My homeserver is quite limited but nginx has a very small footprint, it performs beautifully well and it satisfies all my hosting, proxying, redirecting and streaming needs.

It works for modern and legacy applications, custom code, webhosting, supports all the modern features and its configuration is very easy with literal thousandsof examples available online.

Apache probably can do all that but I hate how unintuitive its configuration is to me personally. HAproxy cant do half the stuff nginx does.

As for caddy Ive heard of it but never really used it. What does it offer that nginx doesnt?

Flax_vert ,

Because everyone told me to

d00phy ,

I use nginx & docker-proxy. Because the model I copied used that setup. Having messed with it a bit, I’m understanding it more and more. Before that, the last time I messed with a web server (Apache), nginx wasn’t around. Lately, I’ve seen a similar docker setup to mine that doesn’t use docker-proxy. If I find time, I’ll probably play with that some on my dev rig.

fmstrat ,

Because modsec.

somenonewho ,

I think a large factor is because so many people use it. A lot of people come to self hosting without much knowledge and just copy configs etc. from a Tutorial. Those tutorials will 90% of the time use Apache or nginx. I remember back when I set up my first servers I mostly followed instructions and copied configs. Years later I understood I had set up Apache with virtual hosts and what that means/how it works but it might as well just have been nginx.

As for why so many people use these two I think it also has to do with “adoption” in another way. Back before nginx Apache was the standard everything else was “different”. Then nginx appeared to solve the Problems of Apache and then there were 2 … These days you can probably do anything you want/need with the 2 servers so no reason to use anything else.

Professionaly I usually use either HAProxy and Apache or Nginx (or sometimes HAProxy and Nginx) but if there are special requirements that might change.

tburkhol ,

I came to MySQL and Apache because they were the backend for other services I wanted to start,. Later, when I wanted to build my own, I already had Apache running, so why would I add nginx? I did let other services add sqlite, but have (in most cases) figured out how to switch those to MySQL.

All of that has been running for 20 years. I’m sure it would be good for my dementia-risk to learn how to start ngnix and migrate all those services, but it’s far more attractive not to mess with what works.

thebardingreen ,
@thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz avatar

As a security professional, what finally got me to move from Apache to NGINX was OpenResty.

I sometimes still put Apache behind it, depending on my goals.

0x0 ,

When NGINX showed up it beat the then dominant apache on resource utilzation hands-down.

It’s also very configurable and has a lot of modules, both in-house and third party.

The only downside for me: as of late the whole commercial part of the project has been gobbling up everything to shove the non-free version to the point where it’s hard to find info on the free version, e.g., the wiki page that lists all the third-party modules. The nginxtutorials site seems to be a good resource.

Btw one of the main devs forked it into freenginx:

Dounin writes in his announcement that “new non-technical management” at F5 “recently decided that they know better how to run open source projects. In particular, they decided to interfere with security policy nginx uses for years, ignoring both the policy and developers’ position.” While it was “quite understandable,” given their ownership, Dounin wrote that it means he was “no longer able to control which changes are made in nginx,” hence his departure and fork.

Also, fun fact: this is probably the only instance of russian software muricans don’t cry Commie! all the time (maybe because the parent company was acquired).

tombond ,

Me personally, as a newb regarding proxy and homelab, I use nginx because it was super easy to set up (proxmox script) there were many tutorials available and it just works great. I had to debug some things and this also worked great, so just a perfect package.

hendrik ,

It's easy to use, reliable, and doubles as a webserver so I only need one software to host my websites and also do the reverse proxying to the other webservices.

pcouy , (edited )

I’ll probably look into newer fancier options such as Caddy one day, but as far as I remember Nginx has never failed me : it’s stable, battle tested, and extremely mature. I can’t remember a single time when I’ve been affected by a breaking change (I could not even find one by searching changelogs) and the feature set makes it very versatile. Newer alternatives seem really interesting, but it seems to me they have quite frequent breaking changes and are not as feature rich.

That being said, I’d love to see side-by-side comparison of Nginx and Caddy configs (if anyone wants to translate to Caddy the Nginx caching proxy for OSM I shared earlier this week, that would make a good and useful example), as well as examples of features missing from Nginx. This may give me enough motivation to actually try Caddy :)

(edit : ad->and)

best_username_ever ,

Back when Nginx started, Apache was the only alternative and a big pain in the ass. That’s how it became popular.

onlinepersona ,

Apache still is a pain in the ass. The only guide I found useful were from 20 years ago or so. All “modern” ones I found didn’t explain stuff, but were more like “copy paste this, now you’re done”. They never fit my usecase.

I honestly don’t know why people new to webhosting even bother with Apache when NGINX is around. It’s just so much easier.

Anti Commercial-AI license

kolorafa , (edited )

Because Nginx Proxy Manager exists.

And also because for me it started from web hosting where Apache and Nginx dominate and later because of many easy to understand example configs from the net including many “docker letsencrypt” examples.

Takahe ,

Very much became it exist. Its way simpler to do in the GUI.

Did not have to learn anything specific, and can work for things not in docker containers too, like the Nextcloud Snap.

lemmyvore ,

And it makes it very easy to get and maintain certificates.

DarkMetatron , (edited )

Because I have it in use as my main webserver, sure I could put that behind haproxy too but why? I like to keep my server setup small and easy, without unnecessary duplications. Nginx can everything that haproxy can, and more.

wjs018 ,

Some good answers in here already. It boils down to a couple points for me:

  • Back when I started selfhosting, it was either nginx or apache, and I found nginx better and easier to set up
  • All the nginx knowledge I learned years ago still works just the same as it did back then, so why potentially mess things up by switching if it all still works
  • Basically every project has an example nginx config for reference, that can’t be said about other proxies
  • It is easier to find support online for edge cases that might pop up with nginx due to the ubiquity of its use and years of history
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