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 Security needs are also the reason why I’m leaning away from using something like Debian, because how outdated the packages are would likely leave me open to vulnerabilities.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?
I used to use Ubuntu, but nowadays I just go with Debian for servers (as well), but you said you wish to choose something else, so I can’t give you any meaningful inputs…
I don’t know how real the outdated packages threat, but I would assume, a server never really wants the bleeding edge software and Debian usually gets the critical security updates and patches.
But I’m no expert.
It is true that Bookworm is kinda old now, though.
Yeah I agree I don’t want bleeding edge hence why I won’t be using anything Arch-based (despite the fact that Arch-based systems are the ones I’m most familiar with, I’m typing this on an Artix system rn). But there is definitely a middle ground between bleeding edge and outdated, and I imagine a server should want to be somewhere between the middle and outdated, depending on how they balance stability and security.
I’m also not categorically opposed to using Debian. Ubuntu was my first Linux distro so I’m at least more familiar with Debian-based distros than most other popular server distros. I was just thinking probably not Debian because of how old its packages are and that I’m fairly concerned with security.
Debian runs on most cloud servers, it’s pretty secure. The outdated packages refer mostly to apps, which is the reason why Debian is so stable. No frills and boring. Documentation is plenty on the internet and for server space it’s probably the most compatible OS.
I’m running Debian 11, kernel 6.10 on Odroid. Arch on my desktop.
@communism Debian is an easy pick, but sometimes I can do alpine. Generally, it’s all in containers anyway, so doesn’t really matters.
I love Debian for servers. Super stable. No surprises. It just works. And millions of other people use it as well in case I need to look something up.
And even when I’m lazy and don’t update to the latest release oldstable will be supported for years and years.
@bjoern_tantau @communism That ‘support for years and years’ means security support. So even if the nominal versions stay stable, security fixes are backported. Security scans that only check versions usually give false positives: they think fixes in newer versions are not present when in fact they are.
Many others distros do exactly the same. I only chose Debian because the amount of software already packaged in the distro itself is bigger than any other, barring 3rd party repos.
I switched mine to NixOS a while ago. It’s got a steep learning curve, but it’s really nice having the entire server config exist in a handful of files.
Dietpi.. For no particular/proper reason other than its (extreme) focus on minimalism.
@GustavoM @communism I think Alpine is better for a lightweight distro. It’s also very minimalist, but without going too bespoke so it’s still easy to google a solution.
