this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
59 points (92.8% liked)

Selfhosted

55934 readers
830 users here now

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.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

  7. No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz
59
Should I be using Debian? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) by Marshezezz@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
40 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I’ve been getting more into self hosting lately, grabbed an optiplex 3050 for everything and I’m running Mint currently. Looking more into things though, I saw Debian come up as a more barebones distro and now I’m wondering if there is a lot of benefit to going more barebones. I’m not having any issues with my current setup but now I can’t stop thinking about it. I am newer to Linux but having to learn new things doesn’t wig me out much if there is a lot more involvement with Debian

Edit: I appreciate the responses. I do see where I could just end up creating problems that don’t exist by experimenting with it more. Debian does sound enticing so it’s definitely something I’ll mess about with virtually for now and see how I like it in comparison. But I definitely have to agree on the “don’t mess with a good thing” if it’s working for me. All your answers have definitely given me something to play with now as well, I want the problems to solve but doing it in a separate environment would suit me better to learn a few things. This community rocks.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Brewchin@lemmy.world 16 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

My recommendation is Debian for a server (real or virtual), or Proxmox. The former is perfectly reasonable and excellent experience; the latter is more flexible and more complex.

Debian is the parent distro of numerous Linux flavours (including *buntu, which aren't suitable as a server OS, IMHO), so administration and services are all common (apt, etc). No need to learn dnf, pacman/yay, etc.

It's still my preferred server OS, despite other options and being experienced.

Though I do also have a NUC running Proxmox (for VMs and LXCs), and both a NAS and RasPi running Docker. 🤷‍♂️ My Debian server is a VM inside one of them.

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Proxmox, ironically, is also based on Debian.

[–] beirdobaggins@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

It's Debian all the way down