So I have been running a fair amount of selfhosted services over the last decade or so. I have always been running this on a Ubuntu LTS distribution running on a intel NUC machine. Most, if not all of my services run in a docker container, and using a docker compose file that brings everything up. The server is headless. I connect over ssh into a tmux config so I am always ready to go.
Ubuntu has been my stable server choice over the years. I’ve made the upgrade from 16, 18, 20 and 22 LTS release and everything has kept working. I even upgraded the hardware (old NUC to a new NUC) and just imaged the disk from the old one onto the new machine, and the server kept chugging along quite nicely, after I configured the hardware (specifically the Intel QuickSync for hardware transcoding in the Plex container).
Since Ubuntu has been transitioning from a really open community driven effort into a commercial enterprise, I feel it may be time to look at other distributions. On the other hand, it will require a fair amount of work to make the switch. But if it needs to be done, than so be it. I guess I am looking for opinions on what Linux distribution would fit my particular use case, and am wondering what most of us here are running.
TLDR; What stable, long term supported Linux distributions do you recommend for a headless server running a stack of docker containers?
Proxmox with Debian containers.
Dude the guy is running on system with restricted resources and you’re suggesting the most bloated and prone to fail thing ever.
The OP would be way better with Debian + Cockpit (also provider a webUI and virtual machine manager) or Debian + LXD/LXC (containers + VMs, optional webUI). Both of those solutions are way lighter and won’t mess your base system.
It’s a NUC so sufficiently poweful. Proxmox isn’t fat by any means. If you run your stuff in containers then Proxmox (I aways install it on top of Debian) is your hypervisor is your base system. You typically don’t install stuff on your hypervisor, though I do some very select things.
I believe you’re missing my point. Cockpit also works as an hypervisor for most people, a very light and stable one, besides…
If you’re running containers on Proxmox then you’re running LXC containers… why not just use LXD/Incus (also another hypervisor) to manage those containers that is considerably lighter, comes by default in the Debian repository, was designed to manage LXC container (not hacked around like Proxmox was) and isn’t mostly made by a for profit entity that sometimes likes to hold important patches on their subscription-only repositories? Or constantly nag you to buy a subscription?
I hear you, but Proxmox does a great many more things than just run containers. Admittedly, many selfhosters won’t need these.
I just spun up Proxmox - it’s using 1GB of ram, and trivial CPU.
For a host, nothing else looked as easy to install and get running. The hardest thing so far was learning how to use ZFS raid0 on 3 drives. Doing so requires going commando (command line), because it’s not a safe thing to do, and really should never be done.
Once you get the concepts in Proxmox, it’s really straightforward.
Also, it’s backed by a commercial business, so it’s likely to see continued support and dev. With the recent shitshow with VMware, I suspect it’ll be a choice for many businesses - which hopefully translates to a growth in user base (and financial support).
That’s kind of the problem with Proxmox, you never know when they’ll start requiring a license for everyone and what prices will look like. That’s one of the reasons why I’m telling people to look at LXD/Incus. It’s truly free/open and financed by the linux containers initiative that gets resources from multiple big vendors and providers.
Please stop saying this about lxd. You know it isn’t true, ever since they started requiring a CLA.
LXD is literally less free than proxmox, looking at those terms, since Canonical isn’t required to open source any custom lxd versions they host.
Also, I’ve literally brought this up to you before, and you acknowledged it. But you continue to spread this despite the fact that you should know better.
Anyway, Incus currently isn’t packaged in debian bookworm, only trixie.
The version of lxd debian packages is before the license change so that’s still free. But for people on other distros, it’s better to clarify that incus is the truly FOSS option.
LXD was forked into Incus (before the CLA took effect) and is now developed under the Linux Containers umbrella as Apache 2.0. From the link:
The only reason why I wrote LXD/Incus is because on Debian 12 you can get it from the repositories as LXD and the roadmap is to eventually replace it with Incus. Both the Debian maintainers and Incus team are working on this transition and have expressed their guarantee that whenever a Debian version comes out with the replacement it will upgrade automatically without incompatibilities or breaking changes - after all the current Debian version is before the CLA took place and is compatible with the Incus code.
At this point, for anyone running Debian 12, you can’t say “go get Incus” as it will just cause confusion and require an extra repository. You’ve to say “go get LXD from the repository” and they’ll eventually get updated to Incus without breaking their setup later.
Either way, still more free than Proxmox.
LXD/Incus also does clustering, storage management, has a WebUI etc.
Any small Linux distro would do. Just install Docker and maybe Portainer (as container itself of course) if you want a web UI.