I am about to set up a cloud instance with linux operating system, and the common choice here normally would be ubuntu. But since they failed their newest release, and I have the option of going fedora or debian. What would you guys recommend for server?

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 28 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Best fit is always dependent on how you're planning to use it. Find out what your requirements before you set up a server.

Generally Debian is chosen very often, but I'd wager pretty much any distro will do. Your own experience goes a long way in making a distro a good choice.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago

    Debian is a great pick. It's stable and has a great support community.

  • source
  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago

    Debian would be the most obvious choice. Perhaps Alma is also a good option. If you would like a european option, OpenSUSE leap can also do the job.

  • source
  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago

    Denian Stable. It just works.

  • source
  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago

    Can't say anything for professional use, but debian is rock solid, always a strong choice for servers.

  • source
  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago

    I personally favour Alpine Linux for its minimalism, but Devuan or Debian are fine, and more familiar choices, too. Depending on what you intend to run, especially appliance-like things, OpenBSD might be a good alternative.

  • source
  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago

    Debian & Alma of course!

  • source
  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Professional as in an organisation? You should probably start by gathering functional and non-functional requirements from stakeholders.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 9 points 4 months ago
    [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Rhel if you are using professionally. Their enterprise support staff are wizards when it comes to finding the cause of random issues.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Debian or Fedora

    I personally go with Fedora Server with automatic security updates.

  • source
  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)
    load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 6 points 4 months ago
    [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    debian, but i prefer devuan personally

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    If you are choosing between Fedora and Debian, definitely go with Debian. Fedora evolves too rapidly for professional use, and its administration requires excessive effort.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Depends on what you mean by professional and your needs.

    Debian (stable) is rock solid but (because) slow changing, if your application is slow (or not) changing it's probably the better choice, but if you need new things before it's ready for a new version it'll be pain. It's the professional sysad's choice because they'll likely not have to do anything.

    Fedora is faster moving (think cutting edge, not bleeding edge (e.g. Arch) as opposed to Debian's blunt safety) so if you're in active development it's likely a better choice. It is also sort of the testing arm for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is the quintessential professional Distro, so you'll learn some of that along the way.

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • load more comments (5 replies)
    [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    I'd go with Debian but it's just a personal preference. I had some difficult to set up a samba server the other day in one of my laptops that was running fedora because of firewall configs that I don't use in Debian like adding context or something. Besides that, I kinda think dnf is better than apt in some ways but still use Debian on my home server. I just works

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    My first choice would still be Ubuntu, however if you don't like them RHEL is available for free for homelab's by jumping through some hoops.

    Might also take a look at NixOS. Been running it for a while with no issues.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago*

    SME here, moving around 300 vms from Rocky to Debian.

    But your question is really too vague. Our workflows are quite traditional, but the world is a big place and there is no single right answer here.

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I've used rocky Linux on a couple of boxes and it's been very good to me though I've since rationalised everything to Debian for the sake of simplifying my setup.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    How did Ubuntu fail their newest release?

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Do yourself a favor and go with Nixos. Dive head first into to the rabbit hole and set up a repeatable and immutable system. You'll thank yourself later when so many maintenance tasks become a GitOps workflow: update config, commit, push, build, deploy, rollback if it fails

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    I think there are many right answers, and in the end it's dependent on your personal likings. I am self-hosting using Fedora, and I couldn't be happier.

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Github has zero 9's so at this point just use Arch for everything fuck it

    (I would personally recommend Debian)

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I would use Ubuntu LTS (free) or Redhat Enterprise Linux. If paying is not an option, some RHEL derivate would probably also work.

    Care to elaborate how Ubuntu failed newest release?

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    yea, ubuntu 'failing' is news to me, too. their infrastructure has been hammered by bad actors, and pre-release daily spins were at-times a bit rocky, but the release itself (barring a few potential issues on the desktop with all the changes) seems to be solid.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Professional? And you're just switching vendors because you "want to"?

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Rocky and Alma Linux are both Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago*

    Both Debian and RHEL-like distros are solid choices. Both are super stable. Debian tends to not always have the newest packages, so if you want that I'd steer away from Debian. Personally I use Rocky Linux for my servers. It's based on RHEL, meaning each new major version benefits from Red Hat's 10 years of software support. Debian (and derivates) have better community support I think, but RHEL has very solid documentation (which for the most part applies directly to Rocky, Alma etc.)

    Here's a great article outlining the differences between Alma and Rocky.

    But for something simple like running a Go application, both should work just fine, so choose what you're most comfortable with.

    Rocky is available at Scaleway too.

  • source
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    how common is ubuntu on servers?

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    arch linux btw

  • source
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Professional Server grade distro, would probably be either Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or OpenSUSE Enterprise Linux.

    For my personal homelab server I run Arch Linux, but I wouldn't do it in an enterprise.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›