Longtime Debian user, looking to branch out.
Longtime Debian user, looking to branch out.
I use Debian flavors for my daily drivers. I have no complaints, no real desire to switch it up on that front.
However, I am starting to get into self-hosting and homelab projects. I'd like to start test driving some light-weight distros of a different flavor.
I'd prefer a GUI be available, but the environment and WM is pretty inconsequential-- except it shouldn't be bloated. I'll install any additional apps I want, I don't need a curated mid-to-heavy-weight distro.
The plan is to make heavy use of Docker images, to try to maintain a clean and modular setup of services. If that makes any difference.
Suggestions? Any slim distros you're just gaga for?
Alpine Linux is often recommended in similar circumstances. I've never tried it so can't say how it is. Of course you could use Debian with a light WM.
Alpine is fucking bae. I love that little distro so goddamned much.
I have some experience with Alpine, usually in the form of images for CI pipelines and other remote usecases. It never occurred to me to check it out as a locally installed option.
I don't see the point of it as a locally installed option. Why save disk space?
Use vanilla Debian. It is well suited for that purposes and it is great in terms of long time support: stable distro updates almost never break anything and upgrading to new release is possible and relatively simple. Don't listen to those recommending Arch or Fedora, upgrading them is a pain especially when you have to support many servers.
If you want something more lightweight, you may try Alpine. It is also a distro of choice for docker containers. However I'd prefer Debian for the host.
Honestly, the more I've thought about it, the more this feels like a sound solution. And then I can just run VMs for distros I want to sandbox in.
If you're going for a container/VM-first approach, you might be interested in Bluefin DX - it's an immutable distro based on Fedora Atomic, and follows a workflow revolving around containers and VMs. Basically tuned exactly for homelab users and developers, who're looking for a stable yet up-to-date base (unlike Debian, which tends to use outdated packages, unless you're on Sid). The biggest advantages of using an immutable distro is that you never have to worry about a broken update again - so you can just focus on your work.
Upgrading them should be done frequently since it's a rolling release distro. If you wait a long time and then do a large update, you may run into issues because they are not really designed for that. You should always be on the latest version of packages.
Just use Proxmox.
Still Debian, well documented, lots of tutorials, and it has a web GUI you can access remotely. But for Docker you will need to install it on a VM.
Or, you could use Fedora Server, it also has a web GUI called cockpit, it can control podman containers and VMs.
I have a arch and debian server. I am afraid of the arch server. Debian I haven't touched since install other than updatingbit once in a while.
You have experience of Debian use it, or maybe go down fedora, rocky for homelab. You would want to experiment on the homelab not with it.
Nothing is as good as an Arch server... I love the adrenalin running in my veins every update!
I even set an autoupdate script to make things even more scarier!
Despite the adrenalin rush, my Arch never broke
I don't know about slim but I love OpenSUSE. It is super stable, I've run it for about a billion years. You can use the installer to just choose the server light install.
II use Debian for some build machines.
I just recently moved my home server from truenas to RHEL. I already use Fedora on my laptop and the enterprise Linux space has incredible support. Something like Rocky could be perfect for you if you value stability and long term support
I use proxmox and Ubuntu 23.10 on the VM images. I like to have a recent kernel.
Otherwise my favorite is arch linux but proxmox didn't have recent arch images in their repo.
If you're willing to forgo the GUI installer requirement, take a look at Void Linux. Pretty slim base installation, very stable and conservative package updates for a rolling release. Excelllent package manager. Downside might be smaller package selection than Debian or Arch.
Micro OSes are designed for this. IFedora has one atomic OS, SUSE have two immutable OSes.
May i recommend Fedora?
You can use fedora minimum and customize from there
Or you can try fedora spin, for bungie/plasma etc
Arch is the best Debian alternative out there. They have archinstall now. It will speed up installation and will allow use of encrypted drive.
Since you want Docker, it works better on btrfs. Arch can do that on encrypted drive.
It is lightweight as far as you want to take it.
NixOS is a great light alternative, but i gave ip on it twice.
Manjaro if arch is too intimidating.
cant ever go through a Linux recommendation without seeing Arch, even if it's a newbie trying tl switch from Windows
OP is clearly not that if their use case involves a homelab and docker containers. Arch is a perfectly valid suggestion here.
Since you want Docker, it works better on btrfs.
Can you elaborate?
Docker images are immutable and if you run lots of images there will be overlap of commonly used layers.
Docker has BTRFS driver, which will efficiently reuse layers on BTRFS.
Basically, there’s good chance to waste less drive space with Docker on BTRFS.