Yeah an appliance distro would be a different consideration. For me Ubuntu is really flexible and a great docker host. I feel it’s safer to tinker with since you get those extra layers of containment and sandboxing.

If I was to build an appliance I might also start with Debian, but so far I have used FreeBSD. Works great on my NAS, where I use XigmaNAS. You can transfer a surprisingly lot of skills. Learning what was common to FreeBSD and Linux really helped me with cli.

I’m curious to try making stuff with Ubuntu Core. I think it has potential, but that’s a future deep dive and project. lol