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?

  • eleitl@lemmy.mlEnglish
    6·
    8 months ago

    It’s a NUC so sufficiently poweful. Proxmox isn’t fat by any means. If you run your stuff in containers then Proxmox (I aways install it on top of Debian) is your hypervisor is your base system. You typically don’t install stuff on your hypervisor, though I do some very select things.

      • eleitl@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        8 months ago

        I hear you, but Proxmox does a great many more things than just run containers. Admittedly, many selfhosters won’t need these.

        • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
          32·
          8 months ago

          I just spun up Proxmox - it’s using 1GB of ram, and trivial CPU.

          For a host, nothing else looked as easy to install and get running. The hardest thing so far was learning how to use ZFS raid0 on 3 drives. Doing so requires going commando (command line), because it’s not a safe thing to do, and really should never be done.

          Once you get the concepts in Proxmox, it’s really straightforward.

          Also, it’s backed by a commercial business, so it’s likely to see continued support and dev. With the recent shitshow with VMware, I suspect it’ll be a choice for many businesses - which hopefully translates to a growth in user base (and financial support).

            • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
              31·
              8 months ago

              LXD/Incus. It’s truly free/open

              Please stop saying this about lxd. You know it isn’t true, ever since they started requiring a CLA.

              LXD is literally less free than proxmox, looking at those terms, since Canonical isn’t required to open source any custom lxd versions they host.

              Also, I’ve literally brought this up to you before, and you acknowledged it. But you continue to spread this despite the fact that you should know better.

              Anyway, Incus currently isn’t packaged in debian bookworm, only trixie.

              The version of lxd debian packages is before the license change so that’s still free. But for people on other distros, it’s better to clarify that incus is the truly FOSS option.