I use Debian as my daily driver, but I’m still a newbie. I would like to selfhost a few apps, initially on a VPS, but I will probably move to a local PC once I diagnose what is broken with my old computer.
The guides at https://selfhosting.sh/ always recommend Ubuntu Server LTS for newbies, but Ubuntu seems to have bad PR and I already run Debian on my home PC. On one hand, I am a newbie and I guess Ubuntu might be easier to set up and maintain. Though, I don’t HOW exactly? On the other hand, if I have Debian on my home PC and on my server, they are the same system, so I’d be learning the same system at two places and with two usage scenarios. But it might be easier to make mistakes on Debian…?
What is your opinion/recommendation?
Didn’t downvote nor do I understand why someone would, but I’m curious. When you say ‘leaner’, is it leaner that standing up a minimal installation of Ubuntu server? This is what I’ve been doing for a long while, and then adding whatever I needed, which turns out to be minimal, down the road. My reasoning would be less exposure from apps that are unneeded in my scenario.
A standard install of Ubuntu Server uses more RAM, has longer boot times, and generally just needs more resources to get going. You can strip some of that out, but Debian is that way from the start. Plus, Ubuntu is just Debian with extra shit on top.
Debian is also much longer lived and stable than even Ubuntu LTS releases, so I generally have just found it to be better suited to deployments where I don’t want to fuck with it for a long time, besides monthly patching.
@chronicledmonocle @irmadlad The irony is that when Ubuntu was created in '04, one of the first features they worked on (after the initial 4.10 release) was fast booting. Debian at the time used sysvinit and booted pretty slowly. And in addition, long-term support.
Those things eventually made their way into Debian through various means; I haven’t messed with Ubuntu in years, but it’s very amusing to me to hear that Debian might boot faster than Ubuntu.