this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (11 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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for homelab users and developers, who're looking for a stable yet up-to-date base (unlike Debian, which tends to use outdated packages, unless you're on Sid).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.

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