Looking for peoplecs experiences with Systemd-less distros for a home server

Comments

• MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I would like to know the problems you’re having with systemd, but since you wouldn’t like to explain…

  TBH with all the shit I give Poettering, systemd is a good system for the most part, it’s just ideologically not for me, and it’s also really complicated from people who have worked on it.

  With that said, I’d point you towards Alpine. I once ran a server in the cloud with it and have no issues other than if you were to use musl, but if you’re using GNU I don’t think you’ll have such issues.

  Why aren’t you trying the BSDs? FreeBSD is quite stable and if you’re going to run VMs anyway, run a couple to host your k8s infrastructure/podman nodes and off you go!

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• avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Switch to a stable Linux distribution like Debian Stable or Ubuntu LTS. The issues you’re facing are much more likely caused by new package defects instead of the init system, or new defects in the init system packages. Switching the init system but keeping rolling will change the where and how defects crop up. Switching to a stable distro will nearly stop new defects from cropping up altogether till a major version upgrade. Which is measured in years. In the case of Ubuntu LTS, 5 years by default and 10 years if you activate the free Ubuntu Pro.

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  • mlaga97@lemmy.mlaga97.space ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, rolling release on a server sounds horrifying. You couldn’t pay me enough to live that nightmare.

    There’s a reason “enterprise” server distros exist. Install LTS release once every 2, 4, or 5 years depending on taste, login to update as you remember the machine is even running an OS, and just generally forget the machine exists for several years at a time.

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    • avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s how I do. Unattended security upgrades in tow.

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• xlash123@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m just curious, what’s your reason or preference for using an alternate init system?

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  • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think op explicitly stated they don’t want to diskuss the “why not systemd?” thing.

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    • acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Which is dumb. “Please help me solve this problem I don’t want to talk about.”

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  • CatTrickery@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Most of the usual reasons really. Resolved, networkd and the journal were the culprits of the mess that happened last night though.

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• nottelling@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is an AB problem in which you’re going to eventually solve the actual problem that isn’t actually systemd after looking real hard at ways to replace systemd.

  There’s a lot I prefer about the old SysV, and I’m still not thrilled that everything is being more dependent on these large monolithic daemons. But I’ve yet to find a systemd problem that wasn’t just me not knowing how to use systemd.

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• mlaga97@lemmy.mlaga97.space ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Stop using a rolling release distro for something that you actually rely on day-to-day.

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  • CatTrickery@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I was trying to say that my desktop on Arch works fine but my server has been running various different distros being Ubuntu and OpenSuse Leap most recently.

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    • filister@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Try Debian

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  • EddyBot@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My Arch Linux Homeserver and VPS which ran since years are like: “huh?”

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• ambrosiaforest@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  debian can be used with sysvinit, runit, or openrc. another good option is gentoo. yes im seriously recommending gentoo for a server. i have a few friends that use gentoo for their server os and they all say its great. its very stable as long as you stick to the amd64 branch instead of ~amd64. if you dont want to get into the kernel stuff you can easily use a -bin kernel.

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  • CatTrickery@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ve been considering gentoo since I used it on a chromebook. I like the binary packages but I worry about stuff that isn’t because the hardware is getting pretty old. I mighy try it if I replace it though.

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• smpl@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I use Devuan and it’s just Debian without systemd.

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• possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Systemd is well supported and simplifies everything. Why would you not want it?

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  • CatTrickery@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Read the last paragraph.

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  • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    and simplifies everything

    Not at all, no.

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• chillbruh@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I use Alpine Linux for my home server. I chose it cause it runs very well on my raspberry pi 4 NAS/media server. I can leave it running for a long time, and I won’t have issues with it. Pretty easy to install applications and run docker containers. Its very lightweight and efficient. The only issues I have with it is that sometimes packages won’t be available for me due to running an ARM CPU. Usage is slightly different than something like Ubuntu, slightly different commands and such. You’ll also have to install all the applications You’ll need. I only need SSH access to it, i don’t have a GUI or desktop for it.

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• pp99@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I use artix for my work and personal servers. There are a few kvm hosts and several virtual machines with internet facing services such as dns, web, mail, wireguard. On the way to be fully gitopsed with ansible. Sometimes I borrow specific packages from arch repos but almost everything can be made with artix alone. The only notable issue I had was with cloud-init which I replaced with more complex playbooks and bash scripts. Ama

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• taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I am ideally looking for something that can just be left and updated less frequently

  You might want that but security holes happen every day and need to be patched asap. Honestly, if you want to spend the least amount of effort use a stable distro like Debian stable and just use the package manager to update, a lot less effort than replacing entire containers for everything all the time.

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• MonkderZweite@feddit.ch ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Alpine is without Systemd tho? I see no issues there. Although it’s primarily made for containering and if you want to maybe set up something container locally, you will have trouble googling. Their init uses busybox, afaik.

  Obarun comes with the excellent s6 init but uses pacman as pkgmanager, rolling. Void is semi-stable afaik, but might still fit your bill.

  Then there’s Devuan (mileage my vary, since it’s a fork) but they use a weird Runit/Sysv-hybrid if you choose Runit. Or old and clunky SysV, by default. Maybe Knoppix/MX works better?

  Gentoo can use OpenRC but you want stable.

  AntiX, Slackware, DSL, IPFire, i have no experience with.

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• equidamoid@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  gentoo with openrc works just fine for me (for docker/podman there is a separate debian machine though, as I don’t want untraceable blobs from the internet in my LAN)

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• Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

  Fewer Letters	More Letters
  LTS	Long Term Support software version
  NAS	Network-Attached Storage
  SSH	Secure Shell for remote terminal access

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  [Thread #511 for this sub, first seen 14th Feb 2024, 19:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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• wer2@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ve been using Void Linux for my home server for a few years now. It uses runit instead of OpenRC, and I haven’t had any problems with it. I would recommend the glibc version over the musl version.

  Got 1 VM using KVM (Home Assistant), about a dozen docker containers, and a couple of services running on their own.

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• femboy_bird@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m a noob to self hosting, but I have plenty of experience with various linux distros, use this to gage how big of a pinch of salt you want to take this with, however imo the best option would be to just use debian and switch out the init system manually

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