this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Debian has less complexityand is very stable. It has a nice wiki and a Debian system can run for a few years on unattended upgrades.

Edit: this post was originally about cost savings but that is not really a useful metric

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (2 children)

from which OS? Ubuntu? Rocky/RHEL? Windows Server?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Mostly Ubuntu. Comes with a ton of extras installed which add storage and ram usage along with additional complexity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ubuntu server has a minimal server installation option.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Yeah the more I think about the sillier this post is.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Compared to Arch Linux then yeah you'll save a ton of money almost guaranteed. But something like Windows? Good luck trying to calculate that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn't even deploy Arch in production as its not designed to be stable.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I mean you'd have to be pretty insane to use Arch on an actual server.

That or a masochist.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I don't really subscribe to Arch or Debian being better or worse than each other. I encounter issues just as frequently on both. Maybe it's a little harder to do things in Debian because the repositories don't update as often but the AUR is where a lot of important stuff is and that's a pain to deal with too.

Either way it's better than using Windows.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Define what you mean by "overhead"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Computing resource usage of your OS should be indistinguishable from $0 almost everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

OK, and compared to what? "Less" is a comparison, but you didn't specify what you're comparing Debian to.
Out-of-the-box RAM usage is a pretty specious metric because you're not installing Debian (or any other OS) just to have sit there in its out-of-the-box condition. Do you think a Debian server running Apache with 1000 vhosts will use less RAM than a RHEL server running nginx with 10 vhosts?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Debian uses like 200MBs of ram for a basic fresh install. That's negligible.

Unless you're deploying 500 virtual machines on a single server, that all run a single simple basic task the base ram usage of the OS shouldn't even be a factor.

[–] fuzzzerd 1 points 9 months ago

I think this is a fairly common use case. Maybe not the most common, but I've definitely seen this at multiple shops.

Density of RAM on hosts is often a limiting factor for scaling. Not every app is CPU hungry. Some just need to be available, and running a whole is for isolation is the way it's done in a lot of shops.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

For me it uses about 50mb. This means that something like a 1gb ram VM will go much farther.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I love it. More stable than many things. Preseeds for PXE.

I don't have to fuss on my fun systems.

Work systems are different. Works great when it is a nice fit. Use mostly RHEL family there, and dislike the rolling upgrades. (Breaking changes between "minor" version changes. Rarely an issue on Debian.)