Linux distro for selfhosting server

Submitted ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨faethon@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

So I have been running a fair amount of selfhosted services over the last decade or so. I have always been running this on a Ubuntu LTS distribution running on a intel NUC machine. Most, if not all of my services run in a docker container, and using a docker compose file that brings everything up. The server is headless. I connect over ssh into a tmux config so I am always ready to go.

Ubuntu has been my stable server choice over the years. I’ve made the upgrade from 16, 18, 20 and 22 LTS release and everything has kept working. I even upgraded the hardware (old NUC to a new NUC) and just imaged the disk from the old one onto the new machine, and the server kept chugging along quite nicely, after I configured the hardware (specifically the Intel QuickSync for hardware transcoding in the Plex container).

Since Ubuntu has been transitioning from a really open community driven effort into a commercial enterprise, I feel it may be time to look at other distributions. On the other hand, it will require a fair amount of work to make the switch. But if it needs to be done, than so be it. I guess I am looking for opinions on what Linux distribution would fit my particular use case, and am wondering what most of us here are running.

TLDR; What stable, long term supported Linux distributions do you recommend for a headless server running a stack of docker containers?

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Comments

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Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Debian. I don’t see much benefit of Ubuntu LTS compared to plain old Debian. It’s exactly what you wanted.

Alternatively, AlmaLinux is a solid choice if you like Red Hat stuff (RHEL clone).

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- varsock@programming.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Debian has the advantage of not using snapd like Ubuntu does. You have to not only remove snaps but also instruct the package manager not you pull in snaps as dependencies and not to favor snap packages.
  
  I have fond memories of Ubuntu being my first distro many years ago but pushing snaps onto users to compete with flatpak is a nuisance.
  
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- umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  what even is the difference?
  
  im using ubuntu rn, but need to redeploy and have been thinking of just switching away to debian.
  
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  - Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Debian is community run, which often means all changes and features get implemented because the community wants that, not some corporation. One notable example of that is Snap.
    
    Also, I found (minimal install) Debian a bit more minimalist than Ubuntu server, which is great imo. I just want the bare minimum for my services to work, and pretty much the only thing I expect from my server to have is SSH and Docker.
    
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- Lemongrab@lemmy.one ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Is there a difference between alma and rocky?
  
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summerof69@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Debian

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PoliticallyIncorrect@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Debian

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- Corgana@startrek.website ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  +1 for Debian, also CasaOS is like a single-command setup for docker and other features with a nice GUI.
  
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peo@feddit.it ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Debian, set and forget. Being a server you don’t need the latest version of any software and Debian is timely in security patches. use unattended-upgrades and forget about what is running your stuff.

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- faethon@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes, I am running unattended-upgrades, and basically my current server is running 24/7 just fine! It is indeed like set and forget already. More reason to move to Debian!
  
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doeknius_gloek@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Since you’re already familiar with a debian based distro, switching to the OG debian would be an option.

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matcha_addict@lemy.lol ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
For your use case, debian. Ubuntu is based on it, it’s stable, it’ll feel like home.

I personally use Gentoo (since you asked what we all use), but based on your reqs, you wouldn’t wanna use it. And I’m probably in the minority anyways.

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derbolle@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
debian. stable, reliable, easy to learn

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Atemu@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you’re using containers for everything anyways, the distro you use doesn’t much matter.

If Ubuntu works for you and switching away would mean significant effort, I see no reason to switch outside of curiosity.

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eleitl@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Proxmox with Debian containers.

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- TCB13@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Dude the guy is running on system with restricted resources and you’re suggesting the most bloated and prone to fail thing ever.
  
  The OP would be way better with Debian + Cockpit (also provider a webUI and virtual machine manager) or Debian + LXD/LXC (containers + VMs, optional webUI). Both of those solutions are way lighter and won’t mess your base system.
  
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  - Dirk@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Any small Linux distro would do. Just install Docker and maybe Portainer (as container itself of course) if you want a web UI.
    
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Codilingus@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Unraid is the GOAT when it comes to being headless for docker. They know how to walk the fine line of “this is too much. It’s bloat,” and “this is minimal and bare bones.” I seriously can’t hype them enough, and can’t do justice to describing their ease of use.

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GunnarGrop@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
OpenSUSE MicroOS or Fedora CoreOS. If you’ll be using containers you’ll have a great time. If you don’t want to deal with transactional systems, then there is literally nothing I’d rather use than Debian.

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rtxn@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Debian, all the way. I’ve got both ubuntu (made by my predecessor) and debian servers at work, and as far as maintenance and administration, they’re more or less identical. The one thing that sometimes catches me off-guard is that sudo is not installed by default, and you have to su - into a root session.

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- zarenki@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That’s actually a choice you’re offered during Debian’s interactive install. When you’re offered the option to set a root password, if you leave it empty the system will disable direct root login and instead give your first normal user sudo access.
  
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erev@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I prefer Fedora Server. It comes with a lot of nice integrations into more enterprise/centralized Linux administration and management tools. A lot of these are FOSS so if you like infrastructure, this is a really good way to take an easy step up.

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- space@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If you don’t want to be on the bleeding edge and want a distro with longer support, CentOS Stream isn’t bad. Sure, there was some controversy surrounding it, when Red Hat killed the old CentOS. But it has been serving me pretty well.
  
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msoulforged@fstab.sh ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I have Debian for some time and am quite happy. İt is slow with updates but very stable.

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kylian0087@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Personally I prefer Rocky linux. Default to using SElinux which I also like. not a big fan of debian though as things are quite old and sometimes outdated for my needs.

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- simpleslipeagle@lemmynsfw.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m in the Rocky camp too. Before the IBM buyout I would have said CentOS.
  
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misskoula@leminal.space ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You won’t need anything else :) yunohost.org/#/

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Mora@pawb.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Does someone use nixOS? How does that hold up for this usecase?

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- farcaller@fstab.sh ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I wouldn’t specifically say nixOS is stable in the same sense debian is but yes, it can totally handle this use case. I mainly run k8s on it, but a few home machines run docker (or, rather, podman) containers.
  
  A thing about nixOS is that quite often you won’t need containers at all and would be better off without them, managing your apps as part of the system state as a whole. I only do that because I can’t be bothered to properly switch to nixOS services for ELK (which is supported by nixOS).
  
  It’s a very stable solution in general and usually ends with a configuration that either doesn’t apply at all or applies with no issues. Gitops included for pretty much free. It requires understanding nix, and it can be tricky, but not overly tricky.
  
  All and all I haven’t had an Ubuntu in homelab for two years now and can’t be happier about that.
  
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- mlaga97@lemmy.mlaga97.space ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Still a few Ubuntu Server stragglers here and there, but it works quite well as long as you keep your base config fairly lean and push the complexity into the containers.
  
  Documentation tends to be either good or nonexistent depending on what you’re doing, so for anything beyond standard configuration but it can usually be pieced together from ArchWiki and the systemd docs.
  
  All in all, powerful and repeatable (and a lot less tedious than Ansible, etc), but perhaps not super beginner-friendly once you start getting into the weeds. Ubuntu Server is just better documented and supported if you need something super quick and easy.
  
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- owen@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Works well for me. Quick to set up as well if you are already familiar for nixos
  
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skilltheamps@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Since you run everything in docker, I guess you have experienced the benefits of containerization. So why not leverage that for your host too?

Fedora IoT is a container-based host that runs on your hardware, with a focus on edge device deployment.

fedoraproject.org/iot/ I have it running on two servers as well, and it works great. The only thing I changed is that I layered docker on it instead of using podman, because at the time I had trouble getting my reverse proxy working properly over ipv6

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redcalcium@lemmy.institute ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I also moved to Debian after years of using Ubuntu Server LTS. No problem so far on those servers for container workloads, the small ones run docker compose, the medium ones run k3s, and a small cluster runs rke2.

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Im_old@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
As everyone said, debian. I use it for my mail server, the docker server, podman server, matrix, headscale. On docker I also have nvidia drivers for hardware video decoding in jellyfin.

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zarenki@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Debian. I was in a similar boat to OP and just a couple weeks ago migrated my almost 8-year-old home server setup from Ubuntu LTS to Debian Stable. Decided to finally move away from Ubuntu because I never cared for snap (had to keep removing it with every upgrade) and gradually gained a few smaller issues with Ubuntu. Seems good to me so far.

I considered RHEL/Rocky but decided against them largely because I wanted btrfs for my rootfs, which their stock kernel doesn’t have, though I use a few Red Hat developed tools like podman and cockpit. Fedora Server and the like have too fast a release lifecycle for my liking, though I use Fedora for my desktop. That left Debian as the one remaining obvious choice.

I also briefly considered throwing a Debian VM into TrueNAS Scale, since I also use this system as a ZFS NAS, but setting that up felt like I was fighting against the “appliance” nature of what TrueNAS tries to be.

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Shimitar@feddit.it ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Gentoo. While a bit unusual, it’s perfect for the job.

Check my wiki at wiki.gardiol.org where I document my Gentoo selfhost experience.

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Potajito@feddit.ch ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Omv, that is debian with a Web interface basically

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- Lemongrab@lemmy.one ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Cockpit is a good web ui
  
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boeman@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My 4 host machines run debian (proxmox). I have a lot of different guest flavors running though, debian, fedora, rocky, one old guest still running Ubuntu and even a mint sandbox machine.

I probably have a bit more complicated self host than others because I am using it both for my useful internal services (jellyfin, git, pihole, etc.) I also run a whole lot of services for learning, such as kubernetes and dns. Plus a whole lot of other mostly useless stuff that I only use to test different architectures or automations that come in handy as an SRE.

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turkishdelight@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I use ubuntu because my provider has that by default. It’s not my favourite distro these days, but gets the job done.

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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨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

IoT Internet of Things for device controllers

LTS Long Term Support software version

VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

[Thread #601 for this sub, first seen 14th Mar 2024, 10:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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homegrowntechie@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
debian\ubuntu vm on proxmox. Then you can snapshot the whole deal and take easy backups of everything using proxmox backup server.

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ninekeysdown@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fedora Server, Rocky Linux, and/or Free RHEL dev license. That’s what I use for all of my stuff.

For containers I use podman kube. For storage I use ZFS and VDO.

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HumanPerson@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I do Debian on my server. I use openSUSE tumbleweed on the desktop but I could see leap being good for a server. YAST is pretty great .

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Fewer Letters	More Letters
IoT	Internet of Things for device controllers
LTS	Long Term Support software version
VPS	Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)