I use Debian as my daily driver, but I’m still a newbie. I would like to selfhost a few apps, initially on a VPS, but I will probably move to a local PC once I diagnose what is broken with my old computer.

The guides at https://selfhosting.sh/ always recommend Ubuntu Server LTS for newbies, but Ubuntu seems to have bad PR and I already run Debian on my home PC. On one hand, I am a newbie and I guess Ubuntu might be easier to set up and maintain. Though, I don’t HOW exactly? On the other hand, if I have Debian on my home PC and on my server, they are the same system, so I’d be learning the same system at two places and with two usage scenarios. But it might be easier to make mistakes on Debian…?

What is your opinion/recommendation?

  • habitualTartareEnglish
    4·
    19 hours ago

    I run proxmox bare metal (debian-based hypervisor) and virtualize debian which has all my docker containers.

    with virtualization you can take a snapshot and backup everything that way. super simple to roll back if you mess something up. the added bonus is you could probably take a snapshot of your VPS and migrate it to a local vm.

    Ubuntu is something I played with about a decade ago and I never felt like I was “missing” something for debian, especially on servers.

    • steel_for_humans@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      1·
      14 hours ago

      So, theoretically, I could run Proxmox on the VPS if it’s running Debian? I read that Proxmox requires a lot of RAM and VPSes are too expensive in that regard. But I might run Proxmox at home, I have a beefy PC with 64GB of RAM, except it doesn’t turn on right now (something died, either the PSU or the motherboard, I still need to have it diagnosed).

      • habitualTartareEnglish
        1·
        7 hours ago

        you could definitely run proxmox in a VPS but I was thinking more of debian in the cloud. Then exporting that computer from wherever you host it as a ova file then importing it into your local server: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE#Automatic_Import_of_Full_VM

        and on the ram issue, I’m running on over 10 year old workstation hardware ddr3. it doesn’t take much to run.

        NAS with zfs storage does typically want a lot of ram (e.g. truenas) but still for a small home environment it works fine with a lot less than 64gb.