Selfhosting as a Linux newbie - Ubuntu Server LTS or Debian 13?

Don’t use Ubuntu as a server. Pretty much every server application will run happily on Debian, meanwhile Canonical keeps adding/changing shit that is Ubuntu-specific and has broken otherwise-functioning server installations. I may or may not have personal experience with this.

Ubuntu used to be the go-to, but Canonical is quickly becoming the poster child for Linux enshittification.

For servers, use Debian and never think about it again. Except the one or two times a year it should probably be rebooted because of kernel updates.

I use Trixie on Desktop, but Bookworm for server, I prefer the use of a root user instead of making the admin a sudoer, plus a lot of libraries that are needed for thigns were depreciated and removed from the Debian 13 repos. I’ve found it easier to add updates to Bookworm than to shove legacy stuff into Trixie.

What’s this community’s opinion of Yunohost?

I’ve been struggling with keeping everything in control, the discovered yunohost. It’s like containerised apps, but without containers. I love how simple it is and the wide range of apps.

Choosy self-hosters choose Debian.

That said, I don’t recommend hosting software at the bare metal level - use VMs or containers. Far easier to manage and isolate.

Debian and docker. When you’ll have your local server, just go with Proxmox, which is based on Debian. On that you’ll be free to run any Linux flavour as an LXC container. As you are already familiar with it, that’s a no-brainer. The day you decide to play with a raspberry pi, Raspberry-Pi OS is also Debian with very little customisation.

As someone who ran Ubuntu server for a few years before moving to Debian. I would recommend Debian over Ubuntu just because I have had to do less maintenance with it. When I was on Ubuntu updating it was a constant concern of “will something change that is bad” for example they pushed the kernel live patch and the Ubuntu subscription banner as an update instead of an upgrade, so I updated as normal, and there it was.

I dislike OS’s that install new packages as part of their update procedures (an update that installs a new package instead of replacing an existing one should be reserved for upgrades), and Debian has never done that with me, so Debian is where I stay.

Debian.

This is the future so Virtual Machines and containers are where most of the stuff will end up anyway. If you need a specific distro it’s minutes away with a VM or container.

If you think there’s a chance you might want some Redhat cert for a job at some point it might be the time to jump to Rocky, and I’ve never used Proxmox so I can’t comment except to say that if I come into two fairly large computers for self hosting, the first one will get Rocky so I can get much more familiar with it, and the second will get Proxmox.

It’s all systemd anyway.

Never Ubuntu, debian for server, fedora for desktop and arch/cachyos for tech fun.

Choose Debian. Real secret reason? Debian means you have to upgrade to new versions less. Ubuntu LTS lasts as long as Debian (5 years) but they crank out a new LTS every 2 years. If you have 3rd party sources, I’ve run into they only support the two latest LTSes - well you have one year left on your 5 year support… but do you really? And now you can put on your sad face because you get to do two LTS upgrades. All while Debian was over there on one version and everyone will target that one version and its previous version no problem.

Debian just makes better sense for a server.

(And Ubuntu is stupid with its “ooh extra patches just register your machine with our central authority” ok bud my Debian machine just says I have mail for some reason every time I boot it up, it doesn’t make it weird and gimmicky and based on a “free” deal that could change whenever they want to jerk you around)

Yeah, I would go with Debian for sure.

Although… I’m experimenting with Fedora IoT (the name might be misleading) for my server OS right now…

Jump right into proxmox and use container templates for everything and spin up and kill virtual machines for experimentation!

Debian, I use it for over 2 years by now; if it died I was able to revive it easy; and when it did it was my fault

I use Debian as my daily driver

Chances are that you would find Ubuntu not just more complicated, but unneccessary complicated.

Stay with Debian. It can do everything.

I have very little Linux self host experience. I went the ’ same distro on server/client ’ route with Fedora, for the same learning reasons and have been pretty happy. Although all my use is recreational (game server hosting), so far no complaints :). I never see anyone talking about it, does anyone know why?

Ubuntu’s “reputation” is nonsense. It’s a great distro for servers. Security updates are really fast and using snaps in a server environment is really great. I recommend running things like Docker or Tailscale off snap. They will revert to a previous image if an update fails. Extra stability for a server as you run automatic updates. If you run everything that is not in the base install off a snap, you have an extra layer of sandboxing against any supply chain attack for dependencies.

Ubuntu will have more recent packages, that doesnt really matter in a server environment. Debian is otherwise fine, I just dislike it’s installer and prefer Ubuntu’s. I found it easier to sync third party drivers on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Pro gets you livepatches for kernal issues, which may be worthwhile. Also done without rebooting.

Ubuntu also gives you better apparmour default profiles on more things, whereas on debian, its up to you to set them up.

Debian will be exactly the same, its just more conservative and has less of those extras I mentioned. May be marginally lighter on resources for that. Either are fine.