Selfhosted

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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Linux distro for selfhosting server (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 67 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (12 children)

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 good choice if you like Red Hat stuff (RHEL clone), but the difference between Ubuntu LTS and Debian would be almost not noticeable for you I think.

[–] varsock 12 points 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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