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 Security needs are also the reason why I'm leaning away from using something like Debian, because how outdated the packages are would likely leave me open to vulnerabilities.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?
It’s not conventional wisdom, but I’m happiest with arch.
Tempted by nixos but I CBA to learn it.
I agree and use Arch as well, but of course I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. For me, having the same distribution on both server and desktop makes it easier to maintain. I run almost everything using containers on the server and install minimal packages, minimizing my upgrade risk. I haven't had an issue yet, but if I did I have btrfs snapshots and backups to resolve.
same exact setup, I'm running arch for years on both server and desktop, btrfs and containers. It's beautiful and I click perfectly with it's maintenance workflow
arch is great if you don’t really care about your server being reliable (eg home lab) but their ethos isn’t really great for a server that has to be reliable… the constant update churn causes issues a lot more than i’d personally like for a server environment
I could not disagree more. Arch is unstable in the meaning that it pushes breaking changes all the time, (as opposed to something like Ubuntu where you get hit with them all at once), but that’s a very different thing from reliability.
There are no backported patches, no major version upgrades for the whole system, and you get package updates as soon as they are released. Arch packages are minimally modified from upstream, which also generally minimizes problems.
The result has been in my experience outstandingly reliable over many years. The few problems I do encounter are almost always my own fault, and always easily recovered from by rolling back a snapshot.
disagreement is fine, but there was literally a thread about “linux disinformation” where the OP asked for examples of things people say about linux that are untrue
the top answers by FAR are that arch is stable
saying that arch is stable, or easy for newcomers is doing the linux ecosystem a disservice
you should never use arch for a server - arbitrary, rather than controlled and well-tested updates to the bleeding edge is literally everything you want to avoid in a server OS
@pupbiru @traches , I certainly second this. People don't need to become experts in Linux Distros, but they need to know what they want and need from their OS.
If it's browsing and writing word documents, maybe you don't need a constant stream up updates and a stable LTS would suffice. Maybe even a regular 6 month release like Fedora will probably suffice. Even Debian would be great, if upgrading is annoying and newest software isn't really important.
Gaming? There are distros for that.
@pupbiru @traches I have used Arch, I am definitely not new to the Linux scene. I have servers, all my workstations and laptops run it. I professionally write software. I didn't like the Arch experience at all. I qould definitely never recommend it to anyone, that's something they can one day decide for themselves.
I’m also not new to the Linux scene, I also run a variety of distros on a variety of machines including servers and I also write software professionally. Arch is fucking great.
@traches , I firmly believe that. It wouldn't be what it is if it didn't do it well. In my opinion, Arch has the best documentation and I use it for other distros. I don't use Arch and wouldn't recommend it to someone new to the scene.
Totally fair, I agree it is definitely not a good first distro. I think everyone should follow the manual setup process the first time and not use archinstall, because it’s the tutorial which teaches you what’s on your system and how it works.
I didn’t say it was stable, I specifically said it was unstable. Because it is. I said arch is reliable, which is a completely different thing.
Debian is stable because breaking changes are rare. Arch is unstable because breaking changes are common. In my personal experience, arch has been very reliable, because said breaking changes are manageable and unnecessary complexity is low.
that’s fair, and i think that in the context that we were both talking about, what we both wrote was reasonably correct
arch is a reliable OS that is sometimes unstable
but a server needs a stable OS to be reliable, which means that whilst arch can be a reliable OS, it does not make a particularly reliable server