Web Services New OS Ubuntu vs The Rest

Operating Systems & Open Source Open Source & Web-Based
1

I have used Ubuntu server as my operating system of choice. I am considering making a switch. What are better distros for web services ran via docker? More privacy friendly, more secure, has ease of use, cli only.

I am considering vanilla arch or debian. I have used rhes, debian, and mor recently arch based distros. I have used ubuntu server for 7 years now.

Services

Nextcloud
Jellyfin/Plex
Navidrome
Immich
Searx
Home Assistant
Metube
Pihole Unbound

I am considering CachyOS (Arch Based, AUR and pacman) in headless, Debian or Vanilla Arch.

2

I’ve heard of people use proxmox for home labs. You can create a vm for each service.

If you are using the machine for NAS Apps, trunas or Unraid are options

Another option is NixOS, which is docker on steroids

You can declaratively create a config

You could have proxmox be on the bare metal, and have VMs for trunas, pihole, and nixos

3

Personally, I don’t see any benefit in using a rolling release distribution on a server, at least not when the focus is on maximum stability.

I would use Debian.

4 Likes
4

I’m not currently interested in using it, but this may warrant a peek:

Our goal is to provide the best container host to run workloads securely and at scale.
– The container optimized OS | The Fedora Project

5

I was supposed to suggest RancherOS by SuSe but it is on maintenance mode.

I hear PLL uses Proxmox and have them run Alpine Linux VMs per app. Not sure how he does it though.

Me personally I have TrueNAS Scale.

Maybe HexOS would have been a good investment last Black Friday…

1 Like
6

I am way ahead of you. I run proxmox on three systems, my question is what distro is ideal for a vm that would maintain docker images.

I actually am doing an experiment of using cachyos without a gui. Seems solid. If I have issues I have backups of my old vms.

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7

I’ve got cachyos on my son’s computer, and arch on a couple of mine. Love them. But using ubuntu server as my base OS, and also base for VMs. If I set it up again, I’d probably just go Debian.

All that context to say, I’d be very hesitant to do Arch. If you need the latest and greatest software for some reason, it’s pretty easy to run distrobox for it. I’ve had some issues that were no big deal on a gaming machine, workstation, or laptop but that would have been annoying on a server. Latest thing was having to uninstall some packages, do some updates, and then reinstall (and even recompile from AUR a couple things, though I guess that’s unlikely on a server) the packages, maybe write or edit some configs and systemd services, and reboot. There are also cases where software versions or database schema don’t line up right with end points (try keeping mythtv working between an Arch server and your HTPCs sometime…)

The only reasons I ever have downtime on my ubuntu server are hardware, power/internet, or my backwards-ass way of backing things up.

Curious to hear how it goes for you.

8

I’m hoping HexOS has another sale around black Friday again if able to hold out. I would’ve jumped on it if there was income during that part of the year.

The PC that I’ve been experimenting with has a Blu-ray drive for ripping stuff loaned out from the library. Want a GUI for easily installing stuff + browsing the internet/youtube. Tired of dealing with a bunch of configs at this point to get stuff working.

Tried Truenas already, just want something that is easier overall. Was going to give Unraid a go, but it doesn’t like my USB drive.

1 Like
9

If that’s the case, I’d consider NixOS or Ansible. Check out Wolfgang’s video I linked previously for why

10

i think answer is in how docker works, which Linux kernel do you want all the containers to share. Really outside of the kernel thats all that is not effectively virtualized or sand-boxed, by containers. The rest of the os is for you effectively. Really i dont understand why docker needs to run in a vm, or container and not directly on the host. Why are you virtualizing a virtualization platform. Docker containers can migrate between hosts just like a vm, so there is no need to put them in a container to be migrated.

11

It was a pain in the ass switching from Ubuntu to Debian. One one VMs in particular, the one that maintains my media related services, was the biggest pain. I have a intel arc and I could not for the life of me get Debian 12 (bookworm) to work well with my intel arc card. I tried backport kernels and mainline kernel. It would not load the i915 drivers. I did find out debian 13 is available but not with a proper iso. So I had to do a clean install of 12 and do an in place upgrade. It immediately worked with the intel arc card and transcoding. So I now have just a single vm on debian 13 and the rest on 12 as the others do not require bleeding edge nor driver support for devices.

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I have a pretty simar set of services on Proxmox, I installed a Debian LXC for each service, and inside it I installed Docker and the relevant service. GPU transcoding in Jellyfin works perfectly, although it’s an older GPU (i7 9700).

IMO, the benefits of VMs don’t really outweigh the additional performance overhead and time to set them up.