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 Security needs are also the reason why I’m leaning away from using something like Debian, because how outdated the packages are would likely leave me open to vulnerabilities.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

  • @TheBigBrother
    6•26 days ago

    I’m using cron to run daily “sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y” LMAO, what’s the way to use unattended-upgrades?

      • @TheBigBrother
        4•25 days ago

        Thx

        Edit: I will stay with cron I believe it’s easier to configure.

        sudo apt install cron sudo crontab -e @daily sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

        Easy peasy…

        • @[email protected]English
          2•25 days ago

          sudo apt install cron sudo crontab -e @daily sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

          I have 20 years of history with the RPM version of this workflow and up to EL6 it was solid like bedrock. Now it’s merely solid like a rock, but that’s nothing to do with the tools or formats but the payload. And as long as it stays acceptably good, this should do us for another 20 years.

          Controlling the supply chain is important, though, but is far more scalable where effort is concerned.