I've never been a fan of ubuntu, esp desktop, because of the choices canonical made, but I still find it as my default go-to for home servers since it simplifies so much of the setup process.
@@Exotic69420 debian is good too, i've set up an email server a month or two ago and haven't had to touch it since i set it up. definitely recommendable for a home server.
At home I still have a Pentium 4 server with 2 IDE and 2 SATA HDDs in total 1.21TB, so I use 32-bits FreeBSD 13 on OpenZFS. Since it is ancient (2003), it is only powered on during the backup for ~1 hour/week. In this way I can use it till the end of my time, since all HDDs have around 2 power-on years on the clock. If I need more space, I could replace the 2 x 320GB SATA HDDs with larger ones. My desktop and laptop run Ubuntu also with OpenZFS. It is fun to find work for a ~20 year old PC in a Compaq Evo Tower with a Win98SE activation code, all parts are leftovers except a new $16 power-supply .
I mainly use Debian Stable for my customers. As far as a few webservers that I run I use Gentoo. Gentoo is lightweight (no bloat) and can be configured exactly how you want it. It's a pain to setup but fun at the same time :)
For a real life example: I am a sysadmin, and at home, I run a Proxmox hypervisor with a mix of Debian and Ubuntu VMs, and Alpine containers, plus a kubernetes cluster consisting of four Raspberry Pis (all running Ubuntu). Fedora on my laptop, and Pop_OS on my gaming desktop. At work I administer a mix of Ubuntu and CentOS VMs, VMware and Proxmox hypervisors, and bare metal Ubuntu, CentOS and Windows servers.
You hit all the critical points with this one. Oracle Linux deserves a mention due to its compatibility with RHEL and support options just like Rocky and Alma. Alpine deserves a mention too due to its small footprint and how different it is from the larger distros.
2 роки тому+26
Oracle Linux is Oracle. So, no, we shouldn't even mention its existence.
RHEL (and derivatives) have the additional advantage of shipping with (and tightly integrated with) SELinux, which is in many enterprise situations mandated by policy. Admittedly nobody has ever had anything resembling a "pleasant" first run-in with SELinux, but it's not actually that bad after you read up on RedHat's (excellent, btw) documentation. And the security bonus it offers is VERY real. I personally know of several server admins who had their arses saved by SELinux after waking up to zero-day CVEs.
I personally use Debian for a web+php-fpm+mariadb+postfix+dovecot+smb + some image and video processing scripts (imagick/ffmpeg) server. It's 10 years now, only upgraded the hardware once (was not even needed but..hehe). Installed in 2011 and kept up-to-date. I see the love for Debian is widespread and I'm not surprised at all.
It's new to me. Ubuntu Server was my choice for a file server to my router as I was having problems with so many laptops and scattered files on them. A bit mind blown about how great it is. I made a lot of changes without problems. I use SSH in Thunar or issue commands through login in the terminal. I also got it to work from Windows.
If you are making a just a file server (not a web server) I think you should consider use a NAS OS like TrueNAS Core instead a server OS. It's more flexible for kind of work you mention.
Ubuntu Server LTS! This is my choice and I based my personal server on this distro because I got your excellent book. In other words My personal internal cloud runs on Ubuntu! This is my "disto/way to go!". On the other end of the spectrum there is RedHat. RedHat is not was used to be. RedHat is almost a separate ecosystem in the IBM hands and when a huge corporation puts the hands on something most of the times it turns into greedy and awful outcome. I do NOT trust IBM while Canonical is definitely very fair! My technical support is your book Jay! Keep it up Sir! You are fantastic!
I've been running Ubuntu servers on my home LAN and I've never had a problems with it. I use Webmin in my browser to work with it. It's after all just a basic file sharing server and nothing else. While I'm not a fan of snaps, Ubuntu server is the only Ubuntu product I use that has snaps and I guess it is ok in that respect. :-) I did try out 1 or 2 NAS software years ago while I had my NT Server but they got so complicated and hardware intense it not real. Just not a fit for a plain file server. With that said Ubuntu Server has worked Awesomely for me for years after my 8 year old NT server bit the dust. Ubuntu server is running on a old 2 core 4 gig computer that just sit there and hums away and works. Lol Thanks Jay for the video and I think the list was a good one. LLAP
openSUSE Leap has been working great for me 🥰. It has a very nice installer. It has great documentation. And if needed your Leap installation can be upgraded to a supported instance. Very clear and accessible pricing with a very understandable description of what you get. Alma Linux has been working out great too…
I have used Ubuntu for years for just about everything but as well know that for a more uptime and stable way to keep something up I learned it depends on what your doing so CentOS actually found ways to run any server correctly and less security issues
Considering the hardware support, I'll also go with the Ubuntu Server OS. Rocky Linux is promising, but it's kind of still new. Maybe few years down the road.
I have ran all sort of Linux servers. Pick the best tool for the job. If you are a professional you have to be able to determine the downside of each distribution and the upside and pick accordingly. Here lately though I have been moving to OpenSuSe servers more and more.
My first attempt with Linux was SUSE, I failed. My first successful attempt with Linux was Mint. I have Mint installed in most of my Computers except a Raspberry Pi, which has Ubuntu.
as someone who has to manage SLES server in my job. Without wanting to write a big all of text here, it falls kind of apart when you try (or better said have to) customize it for the usage case of your customers. And the YAST aspects can also really also conflict with the internal management tools your customer has. While SLES isn't bad or something and I don't want to "hate" on it, I struggle to find a few things that it does straight up better than RHEL, ubuntu server or debian.
I think you have to go a different direction with SLES, and without understanding more about the situation you ran into, it sounds like a perfect example of why universal apps are such a good idea. Red Hat goes a different direction with app streams, but it basically solves the same problem in a different way. If you rely on the internal packages only, you'll eventually run into problems (with any distribution). This is why I'm such a big fan of universal apps.
I too started with RedHat when it was still free. Afterwards I switched to Fedora and never felt the need to switch to another distribution. Also my cloud server is Fedora, first AWS now on your recommendation Linode. Personally, I think you should have paid more attention to Fedora Server, but this is just my opinion.
Well, currently the choice of a server distribution I think is influenced by application. Nowdays, a lot of people install on VMs and use containers, the importance of the hardware support is zero in those contexts. My main choice is Debian (at least in the last 20 years or so) because of the support of a lot of programs in my application domain (not available on RH based distros) and the opportunity of supporting personally and directly packages of my interest in Debian main archive.
I also started with Red Hat before they split it into Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Well I played around with a few distros before settling on RedHat. I switched to using Ubuntu for servers after that.
I actually learned a bit from this. Mostly that CentOS isn’t dead at 8 like everyone said before. Also I’ve always been curious about OpenSuse and even tried to run it before, but had many issues trying to get it installed
CentOS is dead unless you want to run an untrustworthy rolling release on your production server (newsflash: no one wants to do that). Red Hat are garbage, they killed off CentOS to force you to pay for RHEL. Thankfully most of the Linux community have their heads on right so everyone ditched Red Hat garbage distros and moved on to based and superior Debian.
Just for sake of mentions there's Fedora Server as well. Yeah I know it's not really recommended for production work hey like you mentioned Debian Testing, Fedora Server can also go toe to toe. In fact we're running FreeIPA on a Fedora Server in our company and so far it hasn't really given any trouble.
fedora is garbage. imagine using an rpm distro in 2022 *and* beta testing red hat's commerical, insecure software for free (you can thank red hat for flops like systemd and polkit which have had many vulnerabilities lol).
for which tasks ? dhcp, storage, dns, ad block, home automation, routing, internet firewall ... on rpi3 or rpi4, or compute module ... did you try dietpi ?
Red Hat is also a great choice for your homelab. You can get 16 free licenses with a developer account and it can you get some lucrative jobs. You also want to learn on RHEL in order to be better prepared for different Red Hat certifications. Getting an RHCSA or RHCE will definitely help you get that linux admin job you've always wanted.
After the recent CentOS kerfuffle, I've moved to Debian (stable) exclusively.
2 роки тому+5
Soy fan de Debian, y usarla en un servidor también es genial. Pero el hecho de que las actualizaciones tarden tanto no es lo mas conveniente, si hablamos de equipos modernos. Creo que Rocky Linux o Alma Linux es la solución ya que te ofrecen lo mismo que Red Hat pero sin el alto costo.
We are still waiting on more content about OpenSuse / Suse Linux! Taking into account that Open Suse is now nearly exactly same as Suse Enterprise it's a no brainer due to all of the issues Ubuntu presents nawadays. We have been running Suse since Novell times, my first server was on Pentium 4 originally installed with SUSE 9.3 in 2005 but first desktop in 2002 running Suse 7.3. This was before Ubuntu even existed!
Just recently I booted up a computer at home which I hadn't powered up for some time. It was running old release Debian 9 stretch. I made backups of the content of the system, just in case I ran into issues, and I began running a dist-upgrade. The dist-upgrade went well and now it's running Debian 10 (buster). I decided to do it again, and dist-upgrade to the latest stable Debian 11 (bullseye). During the upgrade, I managed to kick a power-plug or some such mistake and the computer was powered down while upgrading. Ick, nasty! Turning it back on, I started up the dist-upgrade again and it recovered, and completed, and now the computer is running latest stable version Debian 11. This is something else that Debian does well (compared to some other distros) - It is very good at handling the upgrade from an older distribution to next one in the chain.
My VPS runs Ubuntu with the Xfce DE, but since it's the desktop version it comes with a bunch of programs that are not needed on a server. I am going to reinstall the OS but put Ubuntu Server on it instead then install the Xfce desktop and LAMP with tasksel. I also need a good email server on it too.
I wanted to install CentOS on my home PC to refresh my knowledge until I found out that CentOS isn't what it used to be. So I had to choose between Alma and Rocky and Rocky won because the founder of CentOS brought it to life. Alma also seems to have more of a commercial background.
In the 15 years in I.T. Most companies ran either run Redhat or Centos. Ubuntu has never been a huge runner in the server world. One company that I worked for ran over 17,500 Centos Servers. But that is surly different since Dec 2021 has come and gone. IBM bought Redhat (I believe) for the fact that Redhat is a far better OS than AIX will ever be. And IBM was losing clientele left and right on AIX Servers and OS sales combined. IBM will be the death of Redhat (Centos). Like everything else those Bas***ds have touched and destroyed !! R.I.P. Centos.
Personally there are just two distro's I use on servers. Debian stable for environments with little change under the hood. Arch for development / when having regular kernel upgrades are not a big deal Arch. Arch being well documented and not being very opinionated really does have it's place on servers. As for why Debian, actually being able to upgrade to new Debian stable versions really does help. Ubuntu in that regard is just unreliable.
Long time Linux nerd here, I was mostly curious what the noobs were learning these days. I think this video was pretty well made. It's nicely organized and accurate, provides good contextual anecdotes and feels very based on a pragmatic thinking instead of being based on opinion or preference. Keep up the good work!
When I had to decide which Linux distro I was going to use for my homeserver, I settled on the newest Ubuntu LTSR pretty quickly. One could even say thoughtlessly. Thanks for the breakdown of the alternatives, it was educative. edit: I remember now - the main reason for going Ubuntu was that the majority of howtos are written for Ubuntu
Awesome analysis, Jay! Thank you very much! What is your personal server- choice between Alama and Rocky? Looking forward to see you tutorial for Suse. Best, Asen
I use ubuntu non LTS on my 4 local servers. I do release upgrades every few months, and hope for the best. So far, no installation crashed. But i won`t recomend that for production.
Hi, Jay - you might have mentioned Oracle Linux as well. I don't know much about it, but the UEK looks interesting. I'm also glad to hear that you are planning to give SUSE some love. I was a SuSE (check capitalization) bigot for many years and had only good things to say about it, until I slipped to the dark side while it was with Novell and Attach-mate. I've looked at it every now and again since then, but my tastes have changed - I still wish it well, though.
Ubuntu - Macintosh Guys Arch Linux - Mackintosh Guys, for their PlayStation (Valve) Redhat = IBM / Oracle SUSE = Microsoft / BEA SYSTEMS. (Also Slackware) Debian = Sun Microsystems Guys.
How do you migrate over a server from one distro to another. Let's say I have ubuntu and have new hardware and want to install rocky or something and migrate all the configurations or whatever
Not commonly considered a server distribution but... Arch (yes yes I know not commonly used as a server let alone in the enterprise world) ... and also Oracle? Maybe include those two as honorable mentions?
From an SAN point of view, there seems to be more software available for RPM. I have servers running both Alma & Rock ( don't put all your eggs in one basket), I'm not sure if why but Alma seems to run better on older on hardware.
You couldn't possibly be referring to netplan's half-assed, half-finished support for the features in what it's supposed replace, could you? 🤬 I'm ok with the yaml, but when you have to add override.conf to all of your /etc/.../interfaces, wtf?
Oh, no no no... NOPE. They say it has a purpose but I'm yet to know which one exactly, I mean, other than get in the middle and piss you off while trying to configure NIs in traditional manners, at least. Canonical has reinvented the wheel in such bothersome ways (considering the alternatives to their solutions) that it's amazing at this point.
I've yet to see a valid purpose for doing this other than pissing everyone off. Now, instead of a simple config file change to modify an IP, you have to EXACTLY modify the .yaml file or you F the whole thing up. It's a total s@$t show.
99% is just marketing, it's basically a company saying "we'll support this for 10 years". (and then CentOS Linux, which stands for Community ENTERPRISE OS got discontinued way before its projected end of life thanks to IBM buying Red hat and wanting everyone to pay for RHEL lol)
I would recommend Alpine Linux for servers. Particularly for VM's and containers, but I have it on the metal of a couple servers as well. It's a server focused distro, it has some gui packages, but that's fairly limited. It has some extra security patches for the kernel, it's package manager is fast and easy, and it can be quite small. I have a few handfuls of wireguard servers out there, which are VM's that just run wireguard, they are 100MB each. Otherwise, RHEL, Rocky. Alpine supports ZFS, however RHEL does not unfortunately. Ubuntu is too much of a bloated mess now to consider using as a server imo. I've tried to use debian stable from time to time but it's always so out of date that I pretty much gave up on it.
@@ps5hasnogames55 In what way would you consider alpine "not suitable for production?". I'm not sure what your definition of "a lof of apps" is, I'm sure there are some, in the context of a server though not many.
@@entelin avant garde indie weirdo distros like alpine (and others like void etc) have zero support and tiny communities that can't be relied on. i would never trust a production server on something that can't be guaranteed to be bulletproof like debian is.
@@ps5hasnogames55 Alpine is pretty popular as a base for docker images actually. As for support, you don't have that with debian either. And if you are talking about "community support" then it also doesn't matter because when you are talking about servers linux is linux anyway, almost all knowledge is transferable between distros. I don't think Alpine is as obscure as you seem to think it is. It's just non existent on the desktop, so it gets less visibility.
I've had nothing but trouble with ubuntu server. Wifi doesn't work, finally fix that and then realize my internet speed is running at maybe 1/10th of what it should be. it was just one thing after another.
Can you do something about alpine Linux? I was curious to learn about it, specially on a server context and how it compares. As far as I understand, it for example switched out the classic Gnu tools for others and tries to do some things differently. Would be curious to hear you talk about it.
I'm migrating my simple RAID5/6 home file server from Ubuntu 20.04 to Debian 11, mostly because Ubuntu went 'full cloud' on 20.04. They stopped updating the great mini.iso for custom, lean installs. They force snap packages on you relentlessly. Worst of all, they munged the DE metapackages that let me UNinstall the login manager (say lightdm for xfce4) without massive breakage. I want to install a few GUI packages which, for me, are more time efficient than cmdline utils and then login via ssh -X to use them. If mdadm and openssh are fully functional and stable, no problem. Boo hiss, Canonical!
I used to run several different distroes like knoppix, clarkconnect and netmax in adition to red hat. But these are gone now ( except red hat that is gone for the common man )
fedora is red hat for the common man. not that you should use it since you're really just being red hat's guinea pigs and doing their work for them for free.
Have you considered Oracle Enterprise Linux? My understanding is it's another rebrand of RH, but Oracle always stated they were quicker and more re-active to bug fixing than RH
I am administering HPC Cluster with CentOS. As CentOS policy has changed, what do you suggest, because I have started to face package installation incompatibility.
Arch runs their servers on arch. It's possible, but I imo there aren't really any benefits and it carries a lot of risk. I love arch and have been using it exclusively on my desktops and laptops for years. I like having up to date software and the convenience of the AUR and how easy it is to create PKGBUILDs when i need to. For the server deployments I manage I use Debian Stable, because it's stable. When my own computer breaks it inconveniences me for an hour while i fix it. If a server breaks it incoveniences everybody who relies on it.
Clear linux is great in many ways beyond just performance (which is what it get headlines for), and I would highlight it's stateless nature as one of it's best attributes for a server (it also enables a bunch of ancilliary bonuses like incremental binary updating etc). It's quick with Kernel updates too. Massive practical downsides: * Driver support (i'm basically being forced to abandon it as KVM host OS, as I can't get it to support the MLNX_OFED drivers needed to tune the InfiniBand NIC's, the kernel has inbox drivers that work, but the supporting Mellanox software/driver package cannot be built, because of......) * Bundles......not packages. In principle this doesn't sound too bad, as a bundle is just a heap of packages. It does your head in though, when as in my MLNX_OFED case, I was willing to adapt their install script for a different distro and resolve all the package dependencies....except you then can't get the individual packages, and trying to find which bundle (or if they are in a bundle) is a nightmare. It's alright for a few packages, but try doing it for 10's or 100's of package dependencies.... I still think it represents the best, most forward thinking Linux server distro in a long time.....but it's hard to live with, and sadly I think that will be forcing me away from it :(
thanks Had to watch this twice i switch distros like crazy I read a comment someone saying "I use ARch and CRUX for my server and that's all I need" couldn't find a lot on the topic of crux for server side other then its small footprint, btw what is that cool song at the end weird, I like it though.
freeBSD isn't linux, and the BSDs are irrelevant and archaic in 2022. no one uses them except corporations who only like BSD because the licence lets them steal free software without giving back to the community.
I am self teaching myself through videos like yours and other sources. I need a free version to set up a home lab. With recent changes it seems like Debian stable and Ubuntu server are only ones I should be looking at? Debian 12 just released but Ubuntu is the popular one. Other than release cycle and support. What’s the difference
I've never been a fan of ubuntu, esp desktop, because of the choices canonical made, but I still find it as my default go-to for home servers since it simplifies so much of the setup process.
this
I like both of them😂
@@Exotic69420 debian is good too, i've set up an email server a month or two ago and haven't had to touch it since i set it up. definitely recommendable for a home server.
At home I still have a Pentium 4 server with 2 IDE and 2 SATA HDDs in total 1.21TB, so I use 32-bits FreeBSD 13 on OpenZFS. Since it is ancient (2003), it is only powered on during the backup for ~1 hour/week. In this way I can use it till the end of my time, since all HDDs have around 2 power-on years on the clock. If I need more space, I could replace the 2 x 320GB SATA HDDs with larger ones. My desktop and laptop run Ubuntu also with OpenZFS.
It is fun to find work for a ~20 year old PC in a Compaq Evo Tower with a Win98SE activation code, all parts are leftovers except a new $16 power-supply .
I mainly use Debian Stable for my customers. As far as a few webservers that I run I use Gentoo. Gentoo is lightweight (no bloat) and can be configured exactly how you want it. It's a pain to setup but fun at the same time :)
Never used it but yeah, its basicaly LFS but on easy mode...
Gentoo is too much work for me😅
For a real life example: I am a sysadmin, and at home, I run a Proxmox hypervisor with a mix of Debian and Ubuntu VMs, and Alpine containers, plus a kubernetes cluster consisting of four Raspberry Pis (all running Ubuntu). Fedora on my laptop, and Pop_OS on my gaming desktop.
At work I administer a mix of Ubuntu and CentOS VMs, VMware and Proxmox hypervisors, and bare metal Ubuntu, CentOS and Windows servers.
You hit all the critical points with this one. Oracle Linux deserves a mention due to its compatibility with RHEL and support options just like Rocky and Alma. Alpine deserves a mention too due to its small footprint and how different it is from the larger distros.
Oracle Linux is Oracle. So, no, we shouldn't even mention its existence.
I've two Dell servers running CentOS 7 and considering switching over Rocky Linux, but Oracle Linux is another option I'm thinking about.
@ You must know nothing about Oracle
Oracle Linux is awesome
Your channel is way better than most other Linux content on UA-cam, thanks so much for this wealth of info.
13:55 with developer subscription, RHEL can be used in production for free with up to 16 systems/RHEL instances, including RHEL VMs...
RHEL (and derivatives) have the additional advantage of shipping with (and tightly integrated with) SELinux, which is in many enterprise situations mandated by policy. Admittedly nobody has ever had anything resembling a "pleasant" first run-in with SELinux, but it's not actually that bad after you read up on RedHat's (excellent, btw) documentation. And the security bonus it offers is VERY real. I personally know of several server admins who had their arses saved by SELinux after waking up to zero-day CVEs.
I personally use Debian for a web+php-fpm+mariadb+postfix+dovecot+smb + some image and video processing scripts (imagick/ffmpeg) server. It's 10 years now, only upgraded the hardware once (was not even needed but..hehe). Installed in 2011 and kept up-to-date. I see the love for Debian is widespread and I'm not surprised at all.
I always hear good things bout Debian, but then I also hear complaints about how long updates for stuff taking longer.
It's new to me. Ubuntu Server was my choice for a file server to my router as I was having problems with so many laptops and scattered files on them. A bit mind blown about how great it is. I made a lot of changes without problems. I use SSH in Thunar or issue commands through login in the terminal. I also got it to work from Windows.
If you are making a just a file server (not a web server) I think you should consider use a NAS OS like TrueNAS Core instead a server OS. It's more flexible for kind of work you mention.
wow I literally searched "which distro should I choose for a linux server?" yesterday. Amazing timing Jay :)
Ubuntu Server for my home network. I'd never run Ubuntu on my desktop or notebook but for server usage it's great.
Simple and solid.
Never because canonical or something else?
Ubuntu Server LTS! This is my choice and I based my personal server on this distro because I got your excellent book. In other words My personal internal cloud runs on Ubuntu! This is my "disto/way to go!". On the other end of the spectrum there is RedHat. RedHat is not was used to be. RedHat is almost a separate ecosystem in the IBM hands and when a huge corporation puts the hands on something most of the times it turns into greedy and awful outcome. I do NOT trust IBM while Canonical is definitely very fair! My technical support is your book Jay! Keep it up Sir! You are fantastic!
lol what? you don't trust IBM with red hat, but you trust canonical which are also a large (and very controversial) company? you make no sense.
I've been running Ubuntu servers on my home LAN and I've never had a problems with it. I use Webmin in my browser to work with it. It's after all just a basic file sharing server and nothing else. While I'm not a fan of snaps, Ubuntu server is the only Ubuntu product I use that has snaps and I guess it is ok in that respect. :-) I did try out 1 or 2 NAS software years ago while I had my NT Server but they got so complicated and hardware intense it not real. Just not a fit for a plain file server. With that said Ubuntu Server has worked Awesomely for me for years after my 8 year old NT server bit the dust. Ubuntu server is running on a old 2 core 4 gig computer that just sit there and hums away and works. Lol
Thanks Jay for the video and I think the list was a good one.
LLAP
openSUSE Leap has been working great for me 🥰. It has a very nice installer. It has great documentation. And if needed your Leap installation can be upgraded to a supported instance. Very clear and accessible pricing with a very understandable description of what you get. Alma Linux has been working out great too…
I always like Debian for server...
Same here!
Same here but on laptop and vm.
Same here. Debian is awesome both for servers and PC’s
I only use Debian for server, Centos aka RHEL is so inconvenient, it always require 3-4 steps extra for the same results as Debian..
Hail Debian!
Me too, and I'm already used to apt and other commands, I couldn't use CentOS or RHEL
I've been running Ubuntu servers on my LAN and I've never had a problem. That being said my usage isn't exactly intensive.
Have you tried debian, I used to use ubuntu and switched to debian it's a little lighter but you won't notice it that much tho
I have used Ubuntu for years for just about everything but as well know that for a more uptime and stable way to keep something up I learned it depends on what your doing so CentOS actually found ways to run any server correctly and less security issues
Ubuntu is a pretty solid server distro all around tbh but certain distros may be better suited for certain purposes eg debian for a db server
Considering the hardware support, I'll also go with the Ubuntu Server OS. Rocky Linux is promising, but it's kind of still new. Maybe few years down the road.
I have ran all sort of Linux servers. Pick the best tool for the job. If you are a professional you have to be able to determine the downside of each distribution and the upside and pick accordingly. Here lately though I have been moving to OpenSuSe servers more and more.
My personal server choice is Slackware Linux. An oldest maintain, highly stable and secure linux distribution.
The best distribution for servers is the one with the best security features and hardening. There’s just no better way to choose.
My first attempt with Linux was SUSE, I failed.
My first successful attempt with Linux was Mint. I have Mint installed in most of my Computers except a Raspberry Pi, which has Ubuntu.
Thought it was interesting you covered SUSE but skipped Open SUSE which is their free version without enterprise support. Great video either way.
7 minutes about debian, ubuntu, and rhel respectively, and 20 seconds to mention SUSE exists and also leaves out openSUSE Server *eye roll*
as someone who has to manage SLES server in my job. Without wanting to write a big all of text here, it falls kind of apart when you try (or better said have to) customize it for the usage case of your customers. And the YAST aspects can also really also conflict with the internal management tools your customer has.
While SLES isn't bad or something and I don't want to "hate" on it, I struggle to find a few things that it does straight up better than RHEL, ubuntu server or debian.
I think you have to go a different direction with SLES, and without understanding more about the situation you ran into, it sounds like a perfect example of why universal apps are such a good idea. Red Hat goes a different direction with app streams, but it basically solves the same problem in a different way. If you rely on the internal packages only, you'll eventually run into problems (with any distribution). This is why I'm such a big fan of universal apps.
I too started with RedHat when it was still free. Afterwards I switched to Fedora and never felt the need to switch to another distribution. Also my cloud server is Fedora, first AWS now on your recommendation Linode.
Personally, I think you should have paid more attention to Fedora Server, but this is just my opinion.
fedora server is a joke and so is fedora in general.
@@ps5hasnogames55 I appreciate your opinion. Even if we disagree.
Covered aspects of the age of packages in Debian and would've been nice to mention the same regarding the other distros
Well, currently the choice of a server distribution I think is influenced by application. Nowdays, a lot of people install on VMs and use containers, the importance of the hardware support is zero in those contexts. My main choice is Debian (at least in the last 20 years or so) because of the support of a lot of programs in my application domain (not available on RH based distros) and the opportunity of supporting personally and directly packages of my interest in Debian main archive.
debian is the best. simple as that. red hat is garbage
I also started with Red Hat before they split it into Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Well I played around with a few distros before settling on RedHat. I switched to using Ubuntu for servers after that.
I actually learned a bit from this. Mostly that CentOS isn’t dead at 8 like everyone said before.
Also I’ve always been curious about OpenSuse and even tried to run it before, but had many issues trying to get it installed
CentOS is dead unless you want to run an untrustworthy rolling release on your production server (newsflash: no one wants to do that). Red Hat are garbage, they killed off CentOS to force you to pay for RHEL. Thankfully most of the Linux community have their heads on right so everyone ditched Red Hat garbage distros and moved on to based and superior Debian.
Just for sake of mentions there's Fedora Server as well. Yeah I know it's not really recommended for production work hey like you mentioned Debian Testing, Fedora Server can also go toe to toe. In fact we're running FreeIPA on a Fedora Server in our company and so far it hasn't really given any trouble.
fedora is garbage. imagine using an rpm distro in 2022 *and* beta testing red hat's commerical, insecure software for free (you can thank red hat for flops like systemd and polkit which have had many vulnerabilities lol).
I use Raspberry Pi OS Lite 64-bit for my server 👍
for which tasks ? dhcp, storage, dns, ad block, home automation, routing, internet firewall ...
on rpi3 or rpi4, or compute module ...
did you try dietpi ?
I enjoy Dietpi myself
Red Hat is also a great choice for your homelab. You can get 16 free licenses with a developer account and it can you get some lucrative jobs. You also want to learn on RHEL in order to be better prepared for different Red Hat certifications. Getting an RHCSA or RHCE will definitely help you get that linux admin job you've always wanted.
After the recent CentOS kerfuffle, I've moved to Debian (stable) exclusively.
Soy fan de Debian, y usarla en un servidor también es genial. Pero el hecho de que las actualizaciones tarden tanto no es lo mas conveniente, si hablamos de equipos modernos.
Creo que Rocky Linux o Alma Linux es la solución ya que te ofrecen lo mismo que Red Hat pero sin el alto costo.
We are still waiting on more content about OpenSuse / Suse Linux! Taking into account that Open Suse is now nearly exactly same as Suse Enterprise it's a no brainer due to all of the issues Ubuntu presents nawadays. We have been running Suse since Novell times, my first server was on Pentium 4 originally installed with SUSE 9.3 in 2005 but first desktop in 2002 running Suse 7.3. This was before Ubuntu even existed!
This was a great walk through... Thanks!
It might sound like an odd choice, but I have found that POP OS work well on Treadrippers and by extension Epyc servers.
Interesting, I'll check it
I use mageia 9 on my servers and my desktops at home.. It works great!. They also release Mageia when it's ready around 2 years.
Just recently I booted up a computer at home which I hadn't powered up for some time. It was running old release Debian 9 stretch. I made backups of the content of the system, just in case I ran into issues, and I began running a dist-upgrade. The dist-upgrade went well and now it's running Debian 10 (buster). I decided to do it again, and dist-upgrade to the latest stable Debian 11 (bullseye). During the upgrade, I managed to kick a power-plug or some such mistake and the computer was powered down while upgrading. Ick, nasty! Turning it back on, I started up the dist-upgrade again and it recovered, and completed, and now the computer is running latest stable version Debian 11. This is something else that Debian does well (compared to some other distros) - It is very good at handling the upgrade from an older distribution to next one in the chain.
My old cheap laptop-I turned it into a server and installed OMV, a debian distro, on it.
Unbutu Server is my choice. Rock solid.
Plz do Videos on SUSE and if possible to cover for SAP Deployment senario in it. Great Videos 👍😊
Please provide us more info regarding SUSE. Thanks
Dude, I started with Red hat 5.1 back in 98 and learned about Ubuntu at v9
14:18
Yes, you can.
Also, "free software" doesn't mean free of charge or free as in "free beer"; it means free as in "free speech".
My VPS runs Ubuntu with the Xfce DE, but since it's the desktop version it comes with a bunch of programs that are not needed on a server. I am going to reinstall the OS but put Ubuntu Server on it instead then install the Xfce desktop and LAMP with tasksel. I also need a good email server on it too.
Very comprehensive, informative and concise! Thank you!
I wanted to install CentOS on my home PC to refresh my knowledge until I found out that CentOS isn't what it used to be. So I had to choose between Alma and Rocky and Rocky won because the founder of CentOS brought it to life. Alma also seems to have more of a commercial background.
In the 15 years in I.T. Most companies ran either run Redhat or Centos. Ubuntu has never been a huge runner in the server world. One company that I worked for ran over 17,500 Centos Servers. But that is surly different since Dec 2021 has come and gone.
IBM bought Redhat (I believe) for the fact that Redhat is a far better OS than AIX will ever be. And IBM was losing clientele left and right on AIX Servers and OS sales combined.
IBM will be the death of Redhat (Centos). Like everything else those Bas***ds have touched and destroyed !!
R.I.P. Centos.
debian has always been superior to centos and other rpm crap distros.
@@ps5hasnogames55 Keep smoking whatever it is that your smoking. And stay in that fog.
You could be right. They're seemingly wanting to paywall their source code now. We'll see how this develops.
Personally there are just two distro's I use on servers.
Debian stable for environments with little change under the hood.
Arch for development / when having regular kernel upgrades are not a big deal Arch. Arch being well documented and not being very opinionated really does have it's place on servers.
As for why Debian, actually being able to upgrade to new Debian stable versions really does help. Ubuntu in that regard is just unreliable.
Arch is owned by systemd and SJWs. Wtf you on about "not opinionated" lmaooo
Nice list; the information about Alma & Rocky was useful to me. I didn't know they were out there.
Long time Linux nerd here, I was mostly curious what the noobs were learning these days.
I think this video was pretty well made. It's nicely organized and accurate, provides good contextual anecdotes and feels very based on a pragmatic thinking instead of being based on opinion or preference. Keep up the good work!
I bought a book called Master Ubuntu Server, so I feel I have no options. It's gotta be ubuntu server.
When I had to decide which Linux distro I was going to use for my homeserver, I settled on the newest Ubuntu LTSR pretty quickly. One could even say thoughtlessly. Thanks for the breakdown of the alternatives, it was educative.
edit: I remember now - the main reason for going Ubuntu was that the majority of howtos are written for Ubuntu
I think that's a pretty smart way to choose a distro for a home server ;)
How about Slackware as a server?
Awesome analysis, Jay! Thank you very much! What is your personal server- choice between Alama and Rocky? Looking forward to see you tutorial for Suse. Best, Asen
You’re the best. I have learned so much from you.
I use ubuntu non LTS on my 4 local servers. I do release upgrades every few months, and hope for the best. So far, no installation crashed.
But i won`t recomend that for production.
Hi, Jay - you might have mentioned Oracle Linux as well. I don't know much about it, but the UEK looks interesting.
I'm also glad to hear that you are planning to give SUSE some love. I was a SuSE (check capitalization) bigot for many years and had only good things to say about it, until I slipped to the dark side while it was with Novell and Attach-mate. I've looked at it every now and again since then, but my tastes have changed - I still wish it well, though.
What about Fedora Server
What about Slackware?
Ubuntu - Macintosh Guys
Arch Linux - Mackintosh Guys, for their PlayStation (Valve)
Redhat = IBM / Oracle
SUSE = Microsoft / BEA SYSTEMS. (Also Slackware)
Debian = Sun Microsystems Guys.
You can also buy support for Debian
How do you migrate over a server from one distro to another. Let's say I have ubuntu and have new hardware and want to install rocky or something and migrate all the configurations or whatever
Hey Jay have a great week !!
regarding old packages in Debian stable ... there is backports - e.g. bullseye-backports - lots of very much up to date packages
Really cool list. I´ll use Alma Linux after seeing this video.
Not commonly considered a server distribution but... Arch (yes yes I know not commonly used as a server let alone in the enterprise world) ... and also Oracle? Maybe include those two as honorable mentions?
jesus, I love You and Your movies!! Great Job!! Im waiting for more vids, i watched many Your videos and learn from You :) THANKS FOR EVERYTHING
From an SAN point of view, there seems to be more software available for RPM. I have servers running both Alma & Rock ( don't put all your eggs in one basket), I'm not sure if why but Alma seems to run better on older on hardware.
Debian. Any other questions ? OTOH If you're cluess bust out Mr Visa and go Redhat Enterprise and bug them all day long
as far as Ubuntu...am I the only one that hates the NetPlan .yaml files and misses /etc/network/interfaces?
You couldn't possibly be referring to netplan's half-assed, half-finished support for the features in what it's supposed replace, could you? 🤬 I'm ok with the yaml, but when you have to add override.conf to all of your /etc/.../interfaces, wtf?
Oh, no no no... NOPE. They say it has a purpose but I'm yet to know which one exactly, I mean, other than get in the middle and piss you off while trying to configure NIs in traditional manners, at least. Canonical has reinvented the wheel in such bothersome ways (considering the alternatives to their solutions) that it's amazing at this point.
@@d00dEEE glad I'm not the only one.
I've yet to see a valid purpose for doing this other than pissing everyone off. Now, instead of a simple config file change to modify an IP, you have to EXACTLY modify the .yaml file or you F the whole thing up. It's a total s@$t show.
@@dan1el942 canonical has severe "not invented here" syndrome.
Question : what does "entreprise" os mean? What kind of extra features does it offer? Or is it just marketing?
99% is just marketing, it's basically a company saying "we'll support this for 10 years". (and then CentOS Linux, which stands for Community ENTERPRISE OS got discontinued way before its projected end of life thanks to IBM buying Red hat and wanting everyone to pay for RHEL lol)
Mine came with a free gram of cocaine
Looks like I am up to something since no one seems to be able to respond
Talk mire about fedora. And also some of the default security per distro regarding selinux/AppArmor etc.
Maybe this is a bit out there but, why did you not mentioned AWS Linux ( for cloud servers )?
I would recommend Alpine Linux for servers. Particularly for VM's and containers, but I have it on the metal of a couple servers as well. It's a server focused distro, it has some gui packages, but that's fairly limited. It has some extra security patches for the kernel, it's package manager is fast and easy, and it can be quite small. I have a few handfuls of wireguard servers out there, which are VM's that just run wireguard, they are 100MB each. Otherwise, RHEL, Rocky. Alpine supports ZFS, however RHEL does not unfortunately. Ubuntu is too much of a bloated mess now to consider using as a server imo. I've tried to use debian stable from time to time but it's always so out of date that I pretty much gave up on it.
alpine is not suitable for production and is deliberately incompatible with a lot of apps thanks to using that stupid musl c library no one else uses
@@ps5hasnogames55 In what way would you consider alpine "not suitable for production?". I'm not sure what your definition of "a lof of apps" is, I'm sure there are some, in the context of a server though not many.
@@entelin avant garde indie weirdo distros like alpine (and others like void etc) have zero support and tiny communities that can't be relied on. i would never trust a production server on something that can't be guaranteed to be bulletproof like debian is.
@@ps5hasnogames55 Alpine is pretty popular as a base for docker images actually. As for support, you don't have that with debian either. And if you are talking about "community support" then it also doesn't matter because when you are talking about servers linux is linux anyway, almost all knowledge is transferable between distros. I don't think Alpine is as obscure as you seem to think it is. It's just non existent on the desktop, so it gets less visibility.
@@entelin running alpine is a container is not the same as running it on your server i.e. being the main OS.
I've had nothing but trouble with ubuntu server. Wifi doesn't work, finally fix that and then realize my internet speed is running at maybe 1/10th of what it should be. it was just one thing after another.
Can you do something about alpine Linux? I was curious to learn about it, specially on a server context and how it compares. As far as I understand, it for example switched out the classic Gnu tools for others and tries to do some things differently. Would be curious to hear you talk about it.
I'm migrating my simple RAID5/6 home file server from Ubuntu 20.04 to Debian 11, mostly because Ubuntu went 'full cloud' on 20.04. They stopped updating the great mini.iso for custom, lean installs. They force snap packages on you relentlessly.
Worst of all, they munged the DE metapackages that let me UNinstall the login manager (say lightdm for xfce4) without massive breakage. I want to install a few GUI packages which, for me, are more time efficient than cmdline utils and then login via ssh -X to use them.
If mdadm and openssh are fully functional and stable, no problem.
Boo hiss, Canonical!
I used to run several different distroes like knoppix, clarkconnect and netmax in adition to red hat. But these are gone now ( except red hat that is gone for the common man )
fedora is red hat for the common man. not that you should use it since you're really just being red hat's guinea pigs and doing their work for them for free.
I used to love Knoppix.
Have you considered Oracle Enterprise Linux? My understanding is it's another rebrand of RH, but Oracle always stated they were quicker and more re-active to bug fixing than RH
its not just a rebrand of RH if they modify it any more than simply swapping the trademarked logos.
I am administering HPC Cluster with CentOS. As CentOS policy has changed, what do you suggest, because I have started to face package installation incompatibility.
What about the command line program tasksel to show a list of programs to install? It works without a GUI.
Unpopular opinion: Arch for the server space as well
At 19:04 the caption on the chapter would be SUSE not the typo SASA right?
Unfortunately, Ubuntu still ships with an outdated kernel so you will still probably experience issues if you try to install that on new hardware
I use Ubuntu Server... I guess it's in my comfort zone.
Is it safe / stable to go with an arch based server distro? Not a fan of Ubuntu Server anymore so maybe debian is my new home.
Arch runs their servers on arch. It's possible, but I imo there aren't really any benefits and it carries a lot of risk. I love arch and have been using it exclusively on my desktops and laptops for years. I like having up to date software and the convenience of the AUR and how easy it is to create PKGBUILDs when i need to. For the server deployments I manage I use Debian Stable, because it's stable. When my own computer breaks it inconveniences me for an hour while i fix it. If a server breaks it incoveniences everybody who relies on it.
Mental note to one day check out 👍 Alma Linux and Rocky Linux.
Kindest regards.
They’re great!
Great work, Jay !
Keep it up!
How about Intel's Clear Linux ?
Clear linux is great in many ways beyond just performance (which is what it get headlines for), and I would highlight it's stateless nature as one of it's best attributes for a server (it also enables a bunch of ancilliary bonuses like incremental binary updating etc). It's quick with Kernel updates too.
Massive practical downsides:
* Driver support (i'm basically being forced to abandon it as KVM host OS, as I can't get it to support the MLNX_OFED drivers needed to tune the InfiniBand NIC's, the kernel has inbox drivers that work, but the supporting Mellanox software/driver package cannot be built, because of......)
* Bundles......not packages. In principle this doesn't sound too bad, as a bundle is just a heap of packages. It does your head in though, when as in my MLNX_OFED case, I was willing to adapt their install script for a different distro and resolve all the package dependencies....except you then can't get the individual packages, and trying to find which bundle (or if they are in a bundle) is a nightmare. It's alright for a few packages, but try doing it for 10's or 100's of package dependencies....
I still think it represents the best, most forward thinking Linux server distro in a long time.....but it's hard to live with, and sadly I think that will be forcing me away from it :(
Great vid Jay!
thanks Had to watch this twice i switch distros like crazy I read a comment someone saying "I use ARch and CRUX for my server and that's all I need" couldn't find a lot on the topic of crux for server side other then its small footprint, btw what is that cool song at the end weird, I like it though.
Can'k we pull specific packages from debian tasting as backports or something like that...
*FreeBSD is a very secure* distro to run on servers.
freeBSD isn't linux, and the BSDs are irrelevant and archaic in 2022. no one uses them except corporations who only like BSD because the licence lets them steal free software without giving back to the community.
IIRC, even Linus Torvalds cracked a joke about the Debian repositories being 100,000 years old..
What is playing on the two screens behind you?
Same thinking as "Best Linux Distro for Server, my favorite ones by Christian Lempa" 3y ago XD
Debian Stable or Ubuntu LTS. I use ubuntu LTS just because of the packages.
I am self teaching myself through videos like yours and other sources. I need a free version to set up a home lab. With recent changes it seems like Debian stable and Ubuntu server are only ones I should be looking at? Debian 12 just released but Ubuntu is the popular one. Other than release cycle and support. What’s the difference
I'm using Linux Mint as a Lab to learn all this. I still haven't decided on a permanent OS.
What is the keyboard shortcut to open terminal in RH / Alma /Rocky Linux??