I want to reset my server soon and I’m toying with the idea of using a different operating system. I am currently using Ubuntu Server LTS. However, I have been toying with the idea of using Fedora Server (I use Fedora on my laptop and made good experiences with it) or even Fedora CoreOS. I also recently installed NixOS on my desktop computer and find the declarativeness pretty cool (but I’m still a complete beginner) and could imagine that it would fit well into a server setup.
I have quite a few services running on my server, such as Nextcloud, Conduit (Matrix), Jellyfin, etc. and all in containers. I would also rather not install programs without containers, because 1. compose is super easy to maintain and set up, 2. it remains very clear with containers (and compose) and 3. I believe that containers are more secure. But since I also want to make the services inside the containers available, I currently have Nginx installed as a reverse proxy (not in the container, but on the system) and always create certificates with certbot so that I can use HTTPS encryption.
In the paragraph above I actually described exactly the use-case of Fedora CoreOS, but I have no experience with the system and how it works. That’s why I’m still a bit hesitant at considering the OS at the moment. I can imagine that NixOS with its declarative nature seems well suited, since, as I have heard, you can configure containers as well as Nginx and with Nginx also https certificates declaratively. But I could also use a base system like before (Fedora Server or Ubuntu Server) and simply install podman, nginx and certbot and manage everything that way.
Have you had any experience with Fedora Server, Fedora CoreOS, NixOS or a completely different operating system for servers and what are/were your impressions with this setup? Or do you just want to share your knowledge here? I would be delighted.
See you back on Debian in a few months
Or Proxmox
Proxmox is just Debian 12 with additional software preinstalled
Kind of, yeah. That’s why I replied with it.
Or, better yet, LXD/Incus.
Can’t be hit by new backdoors when your packages haven’t had updates for years 😉
In all seriousness Debian makes solid choices that makes everything as low maintenance as it can get for self hosting.
For someone who recently lost a bunch of their free time, that is amazing to not have to mess with stuff.
You next OS will be… Debian. Because you care about your time and you want stuff to be stable.
always . freaking . debian
Debian. Server? Debian.
Debian, Debian and maybe Debian
My $0.02:
NixOS is excellent, and actually pretty easy if you’re not trying to do anything fancy (running all services under a single user, etc.). Personally this is my pick because I primarily host services for myself, so down time in exchange for learning a new thing is acceptable.
As I mentioned elsewhere, Debian + Incus is a great minimal and rock solid solution for longer standing services. Although, it’s not
composeable :(More directly to your preferences, I would also recommend considering Rocky. Being in the RHEL ecosystem has its perks (especially with rootless support for
podmanandpodman-compose). I’m also generally a fan of SELinux. Rocky is a little less bleeding edge than Fedora with many of the same conveniences and recent packages. In my mind, for my purposes, that makes it a better choice than Fedora for a server OS.Fedora Server works well, and the Podman integration is great.
I guess it is the boring option, but probably the best when coming from Ubuntu.
Not sure what works best in your case. I’m a Debian cat myself but I have been considering openbsd as a future option.
I’m a long time user of Debian myself too. No cutting edge fuzz, just a working, stable OS all of the time. What else do you need for a server? It always did the job.
But then I stumbled on FreeBSD, and man, that’s a server OS. Simple design and blazing fast. No Docker but I never liked it anyway. My Docker is called Jails and in my opinion is they’re superior. Service isolation on the next level.
On my laptop? Debian due to hardware and software support. And I’ll stick to that for now. I feel home on that distro.
I can’t say anything about OpenBSD as I never tried it but it sure is a perfect fit for a server as well depending on your needs and preferences. BSD just rocks!
I love Debian too. Could you tell me what you mean FreeBSD being a faster and better server OS? Is there such a difference in speed in operations?
TBH I’d run alpine VMs on Bhyve to get K8S running and that’s it.
My feeling is that there is. I think it all started with the speed I can login over ssh. Debian always seems to have a short delay but FreeBSD feels instant. When it comes to rating FreeBSD as a better OS for servers I may be biased as Debian has served me so well over the years. I was never a Docker fan but instantly liked Jails for isolating services. Then we have native ZFS support which simplifies my backup needs. A simple zfs send | zfs receive and you have an exact copy of your service instance on a remote node. Everything feels integrated and not stacked. Again, just a personal opinion.
OpenBSD has native limitations on hypervisors. Disabling default measures will lessen security, unfortunately.
Debian
I’m using FreeBSD now and I have been blown away at how well it just works and gets out of your way. I am using appjail templates to script containerisation of my services
Could you explain more about how you found FreeBSD to be superior to Debian for a server OS?
Anything you want me to touch on specifically?
Semantically superior OS components, performance, QoL improvements in networking and storage stacks please
Yes yes yes. It’s great to see other FreeBSD fans here with the same opinion.
I was using Debian as a server OS for more than twenty years with short escapades to other distros but then I discovered FreeBSD and there was no way back. ;)
What services do you run on FreeBSD? Does using FreeBSD limit you in the number of apps you can have, as most of them target Linux?
No, I haven’t found anything that I haven’t been able to host.
I have Jellyfin, silverbullet, nginx web server with certbot etc, java game servers, samba and nfs shares, syncthing, qbittorrent, etc.
I am also curious. FreeBSD is, in my opinion, is such an unorthodox choice.
If I remember correctly when Microsoft bought Hotmail years ago, it was run on FreeBSD and SUN Solaris (And it took Microsoft a really long time to migrate it to Windows servers, but that’s another thing).
Netflix is also hosted from freebsd
I have used all three! I started with Server then went to CoreOS running Kubernetes and settled on NixOS which I have been very happy with for about a year now. I run about 25-30 services all using built in modules.
Regarding security, if you are using well crafted modules on NixOS, there should be good systemd hardening in place. That being said there is no reason you can’t just use containers on NixOS.
I also find deploying NixOS far superior to butane/ignition used by CoreOS/Fedora. I use nixos-anywhere and can deploy my entire server in a few minutes without manual intervention.
I’m a NixOS convert too. I actually still run everything in docker but the idea of not having to remeber or document how I set everything up was too appealing…a year later and my desktop and laptop are now on nix too
I am also thinking about installing nix on my laptop, but I need a proprietary library for work, which is kinda hard to install/ not working on NixOS. But we might be able to just use docker for development. Well, that is currently preventing me from installing nix on my laptop, I am still looking for a way to fix that issue.
You might want to consider just Dockerising everything. That way, the underlying OS really doesn’t matter to the applications running.
I’ve got a few Raspberry Pi’s running Debian, and on top of that, they’re running a kubernetes cluster with K3s. I host a bunch of different services, all in their own containers (effectively their own OS) and I don’t have to care. If I want to change the underlying OS, the containers don’t know either. It’s pretty great.
I use Debian at home on my homeserver and a mix of Debian and Arch for my workstations. Most of my stuff is managed with Ansible to make rebuilding easier and most workloads in podman containers.
Personally I don’t overthink the distro thing. I recently started using Arch and quite like it. I’ve noticed packages that are available in Debian but not Arch and vice-versa. Debian Stable is nice because it’s just, well, stable.
Fedora has an annoying release cadence IMO. I have experienced desktop bugs in the early GA releases before which put me off. If I wanted instability I would sooner go with Arch (and I am yet to have many issues with Arch yet).
If I were to go with a BSD for a home server it would probably be OpenBSD or FreeBSD. OpenBSD has vmm and a bunch of tooling around it, and FreeBSD has bhyve and jails. I haven’t taken the plunge because Linux works and it’s what I know.
These days I hear about people using proxmox on their homeserver with LXC containers and/or VMs.
Fedora has an annoying release cadence IMO. I have experienced desktop bugs in the early GA releases before which put me off. If I wanted instability I would sooner go with Arch (and I am yet to have many issues with Arch yet).
Do you mean they are too frequent, or what do you mean?
Yeah, too frequent and too buggy. It got annoying having to do upgrades every six months and have to deal with all the new bugs that came with it.
Basically give me Debian-style biannual releases or Arch-style rolling releases.
I’m probably the odd one out, but my home server is running Arch Linux. And it’s been really smooth. I do weekly maintenance in the form of updates and cleanup and it’s been reliable since I set it up a couple of years ago.
I’ve been running Arch on my servers for over a decade now and never had issues. I think people have a perception that it’s not stable or it randomly breaks but that’s not been the case for me.
I’m probably the odd one out, but my home server is running Arch Linux. And it’s been really smooth. I do weekly maintenance in the form of updates and cleanup and it’s been reliable since I set it up a couple of years ago.
I am basically doing the same right now, all by hand. It’s just that I am not doing the system and container updates regularly. I also often forget which services I have running and some of the Services I am not even using anymore. I just wanted to give them a try and now they are sitting there, wasting (barely any, but it’s nagging me) resources.
My home server also runs arch, mostly because it’s a computer I was using for myself before and I’m lazy and just left what was already there.
I’ve been swapping between Arch with OpenZFS and FreeNAS/TrueNAS for probably 5-7 years now. In fact, I’m doing that right now! I think SCALE is finally stable enough to my liking…but we’ll see.
ZFS becomes a pain to manage via the CLI when you have more than a few disks, a nice web GUI takes the pain away.
I really don’t see any advantages in your post for choices other than NixOS. I’m sure you’ll improve quickly by necessity! :D
If you mainly use containers perhaps OpenSUSE Micro OS is of interest to you. Other then that pretty much any distro will do. I use rocky Linux my self for a few different things.
If you want to try out many different distros virtualization is also a option. KVM or something like XCP-NG with XO or proxmox are great options.
What is the difference/benefit to Fedora CoreOS?
