Edit: wow, this is a never ending comment section!
Debian
Debian
Debian for all things.
Ubuntu server, I want to switch to debian but I don’t know if it’ll be worth it
I’m running to servers as hosts for docker. One with Ubuntu and one with Debian. So far I haven’t noticed a meaningful difference
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System ESXi VMWare virtual machine hypervisor Git Popular version control system, primarily for code HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web LTS Long Term Support software version LXC Linux Containers NAS Network-Attached Storage NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity k8s Kubernetes container management package nginx Popular HTTP server
15 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
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Arch because why not.
Debian.
NixOS
My DIY NAS runs Arch
- LTS kernel
- BTRFS snapshots on root fs
- 4 drive NVMe array using ZFS raidz1
- podman for my docker containers
It’s been working fantastically so far.
NixOS, I find the config very easy and quick
I’ve just dipped my toes into it, but I imagine migrating to another machine to be just gorgeous…
Currently I am using Arch Linux. I am in the process of switching to NixOS.
NixOS
I just heard of NixOS for the first time because of this thread. Looked up some videos on it, and my jaw hit the fucking floor.
I really liked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGVXJ-TIv3Y - step by step, with examples and great explanations. Warning: it’s long, but I watched it in one session.
how is nix better than debian for servers?
Declarative configuration of services and the rest of the entire system, and everything that brings with it.
- Want to test some new service, or make changes to an existing one, but don’t know if you want to keep it? Sure, just temporarily switch to the new configuration, you can always switch back to the old one and everything will be back as it was.
- Have multiple servers and want to share configuration between them? Absolutely, just import the same file from both. I have a git repo storing configurations for 10 machines and a huge part of it is shared configuration.
- Want to use one service’s endpoint (such as a socket path) in another? Sure, just use the socket path configuration option for the first service in the configuration for the second, such as here. This works since everything is a single tree of options which all the service configuration files are then generated from, so interpolate stuff as you wish.
- Checks for configuration correctness during build of the system (NixOS options are type checked during evaluation, and then during the actual system build there’s more checks, like nginx config has to succeed
nginx -t
, otherwise the system build fails and you can’t switch to it) - Want to spin up a VM to test changes before putting it on the actual target? There’s a builtin command (nixos-rebuild build-vm) that makes a script that starts a QEMU VM with your configuration running in it. It’s as fast as building the real system, so a couple seconds if you’re making small changes.
- Setting up services is also often as easy as putting
services.foo.enable = true;
in your configuration. And, if you remove that line, the service is gone, so you’re never left with “the random package or file you installed once to test something and has been forgotten about”. That’s the biggest thing it has over any kind of imperative solution IMO.
I feel like even if I want to distro hop again and end up putting something else on my desktop, NixOS is going to stay on my servers indefinitely. It’s pretty much a perfect fit for servers.
It isn’t, it’s just different. I use NixOS because of stupid easy rollbacks, which is great for experimenting in production, and its declarative nature, which is great in a server setting.
Ubuntu Server with docker/docker-compose on top.
So many guides for Ubuntu specifically makes reading up on something a lot easier and it works just fine.
“Ubuntu” 🤢
Ubuntu 22.04 server. It works well enough for my purposes and until it doesn’t I don’t see a reason to switch distros.
Proprietary 🤮
I didnt realize. Do you have more info on this?
It’s not proprietary. Canonical pulls some weird shit, but that’s it.
OpenMediaVault