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 Security needs are also the reason why I’m leaning away from using something like Debian, because how outdated the packages are would likely leave me open to vulnerabilities.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?

  • corsicanguppyEnglish
    41·
    4 months ago

    Red Hat, because it’s free for developers

    Not really.

    and used by a lot of enterprises.

    Not really. We’re moving to a surprising alternative, but the source for a paid enterprise Linux is drifting away collectively from RedHat. It started with 7 - ironically people choosing a 7 equivalent from a clone, like a paid centos almost, just because they were so pissed at the quality free-fall that began with 7. In short, paying a competitor for their clone of a bad release because they’re so pissed at RedHat for making that release. Really weird.

    Now that RH is starting to wobble and falter, these also-rans are trying to get into the lead as flagship. If RH post-Lennart can’t get its quality back up to EL6 level, the cracks will get noticeable. As they keep on pitching every product under the sun except linux, we worry their focus won’t get back to it in time and they’ll lose the flag - if not already - to someone else.

    It’s not SuSE. That combination of Slackware and (I wanna say SLS) is an experience, but not a joy. It seems like a good idea, but their culture is still weird for the west.