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?

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 month ago

    You’re installing a headless system right? Ubuntu and Debian are going to have very similar if not downright identical day to day operating procedures, including installing and setting up new things. Ubuntu is going to have software packages coming from a different repository and they may be newer (though this rarely matters) and the initial install may be different. One is backed by a for profit corporation and one by a large open source community. Whenever you need help, guides for Debian will probably work on Ubuntu and vice versa.

    For home self hosting use, it boils down to you own philosophy. In practice, it won’t really matter… they’re both really similar.

    I proudly use Debian BTW.

    • steel_for_humans@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      One thing I read about is that Ubuntu provides unattended updates, so it can automatically update packages and restart the server (that seems a bit too far ;) ). It’s probably possible on Debian but not out of the box.

      • stuner@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Debian also supports “unattended-upgrades”: https://wiki.debian.org/PeriodicUpdates

        I actually have it set up the same way on both: Automatically install updates (and restart some services), but don’t reboot. I don’t think it was different/easier on Ubuntu.

        Overall, the two distros are very similar for a server application. If you’re already running Debian on your PC, I would also go with that for a server.