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I run proxmox bare metal (debian-based hypervisor) and virtualize debian which has all my docker containers.
with virtualization you can take a snapshot and backup everything that way. super simple to roll back if you mess something up. the added bonus is you could probably take a snapshot of your VPS and migrate it to a local vm.
Ubuntu is something I played with about a decade ago and I never felt like I was "missing" something for debian, especially on servers.
You are already familiar with Debian, so it will be easier. Debian is more friendly than you might think. This is enough to choose it.
Choosy self-hosters choose Debian.
That said, I don't recommend hosting software at the bare metal level - use VMs or containers. Far easier to manage and isolate.
Don't use Ubuntu as a server. Pretty much every server application will run happily on Debian, meanwhile Canonical keeps adding/changing shit that is Ubuntu-specific and has broken otherwise-functioning server installations. I may or may not have personal experience with this.
Ubuntu used to be the go-to, but Canonical is quickly becoming the poster child for Linux enshittification.
For servers, use Debian and never think about it again. Except the one or two times a year it should probably be rebooted because of kernel updates.
Never Ubuntu, debian for server, fedora for desktop and arch/cachyos for tech fun.
I used to be the same but honestly arch has been way more stable and easier to use than fedora ever was.
Are you me?
What's this community's opinion of Yunohost?
I've been struggling with keeping everything in control, the discovered yunohost. It's like containerised apps, but without containers. I love how simple it is and the wide range of apps.
YNH ease of installation for everything is unrivaled, but upgrades even of popular apps such as Synapse broke on me repeatedly, backups didn't want to restore, and my domain with it kept getting banned by Google Safe Browsing without explanation (fuck Google, but I didn't have much success getting "normal" users to share that view). Other servers with manually written docker-compose files caused much less friction.
Yeah, that's good to know! I didn't have the mental bandwidth to learn all the ngix thing and just wanted to let my family access my immich server, so I'm currently test driving with ynh.
So far I love it, but haven't yet tried restoring backups or upgrading apps.
What’s this community’s opinion of Yunohost?
I ran it back in the day, and it does come up in topics here. The dev(s) seem to have greatly improved it since my experience. I haven't done a side by side comparison, but I think Yunohost has the largest app store I've seen than that of competitors in it's class. I think it's pretty solid architecture, and for someone starting out, or even if you just don't want to get that involved in 100% DIY, then it's a great option.
I use Debian as my daily driver
Chances are that you would find Ubuntu not just more complicated, but unneccessary complicated.
Stay with Debian. It can do everything.
As someone who ran Ubuntu server for a few years before moving to Debian. I would recommend Debian over Ubuntu just because I have had to do less maintenance with it. When I was on Ubuntu updating it was a constant concern of "will something change that is bad" for example they pushed the kernel live patch and the Ubuntu subscription banner as an update instead of an upgrade, so I updated as normal, and there it was.
I dislike OS's that install new packages as part of their update procedures (an update that installs a new package instead of replacing an existing one should be reserved for upgrades), and Debian has never done that with me, so Debian is where I stay.
Debian and docker. When you'll have your local server, just go with Proxmox, which is based on Debian. On that you'll be free to run any Linux flavour as an LXC container. As you are already familiar with it, that's a no-brainer. The day you decide to play with a raspberry pi, Raspberry-Pi OS is also Debian with very little customisation.
I'm gonna second this. Proxmox bare metal and everything else hosted by it as a VM or LXC.
Also maybe Podman. Almost the same as Docker but rootless.
I would personally use Debian as my first choice then use Ubuntu if there is a reason to use it over Debian. For example Ubuntu will often integrate drivers for new devices faster than Debian. But if you are dealing with hardware released more 1 year ago, I wouldn't worry about that. Also, some applications will specifically call out Ubuntu as their supported distro.
Ubuntu's "reputation" is nonsense. It's a great distro for servers. Security updates are really fast and using snaps in a server environment is really great. I recommend running things like Docker or Tailscale off snap. They will revert to a previous image if an update fails. Extra stability for a server as you run automatic updates. If you run everything that is not in the base install off a snap, you have an extra layer of sandboxing against any supply chain attack for dependencies.
Ubuntu will have more recent packages, that doesnt really matter in a server environment. Debian is otherwise fine, I just dislike it's installer and prefer Ubuntu's. I found it easier to sync third party drivers on Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Pro gets you livepatches for kernal issues, which may be worthwhile. Also done without rebooting.
Ubuntu also gives you better apparmour default profiles on more things, whereas on debian, its up to you to set them up.
Debian will be exactly the same, its just more conservative and has less of those extras I mentioned. May be marginally lighter on resources for that. Either are fine.
Ubuntu Pro gets you livepatches for kernal issues, which may be worthwhile.
I use Ubuntu ESM. For their free, personal tier of Ubuntu Pro, you get 5 machines or 50 for active community members.
Debian.
This is the future so Virtual Machines and containers are where most of the stuff will end up anyway. If you need a specific distro it's minutes away with a VM or container.
If you think there's a chance you might want some Redhat cert for a job at some point it might be the time to jump to Rocky, and I've never used Proxmox so I can't comment except to say that if I come into two fairly large computers for self hosting, the first one will get Rocky so I can get much more familiar with it, and the second will get Proxmox.
It's all systemd anyway.
Yeah, I would go with Debian for sure.
Although... I'm experimenting with Fedora IoT (the name might be misleading) for my server OS right now...
Jump right into proxmox and use container templates for everything and spin up and kill virtual machines for experimentation!
Choose Debian. Real secret reason? Debian means you have to upgrade to new versions less. Ubuntu LTS lasts as long as Debian (5 years) but they crank out a new LTS every 2 years. If you have 3rd party sources, I’ve run into they only support the two latest LTSes - well you have one year left on your 5 year support… but do you really? And now you can put on your sad face because you get to do two LTS upgrades. All while Debian was over there on one version and everyone will target that one version and its previous version no problem.
Debian just makes better sense for a server.
(And Ubuntu is stupid with its “ooh extra patches just register your machine with our central authority” ok bud my Debian machine just says I have mail for some reason every time I boot it up, it doesn’t make it weird and gimmicky and based on a “free” deal that could change whenever they want to jerk you around)
If you're already using Debian on desktop, then Debian on a VPS makes sense from a maintenance perspective: you only have to track one set of security updates. When there's suddenly a critical update for some vulnerability, you can update both at once because it's the same upstream repos. Whereas with Ubuntu on your VPS, you'd have to be mindful to make sure to check back when the same vulnerability is patched there.
Do not underestimate the effort to upkeeping a server, and do try to unify your procedures so you're spending less time doing the necessary things, and more time building up your self hosting stack.
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.
I use Trixie on Desktop, but Bookworm for server, I prefer the use of a root user instead of making the admin a sudoer, plus a lot of libraries that are needed for thigns were depreciated and removed from the Debian 13 repos. I've found it easier to add updates to Bookworm than to shove legacy stuff into Trixie.
As someone who has both Ubuntu servers and Debian servers.....go with Debian. It does everything Ubuntu does, but leaner and better.
It does everything Ubuntu does, but leaner
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.
Canonical has had a lot of missteps in recent years. Some (like snaps) they still actively are shooting themselves in the foot with.
I just timed my Debian box from cold shut down to ready to go. It was 13 seconds.
My Ubuntu Server? It took 86 seconds to boot on the exact same hardware.
Debian, I use it for over 2 years by now; if it died I was able to revive it easy; and when it did it was my fault
I have very little Linux self host experience. I went the ' same distro on server/client ' route with Fedora, for the same learning reasons and have been pretty happy. Although all my use is recreational (game server hosting), so far no complaints :). I never see anyone talking about it, does anyone know why?
Definitely Debian. You're already used to it and personally I highly value the stability it brings for servers.
I run Debian on my homelab and manage Ubuntu Servers at work. I haven't seen any practical differences between the two. Sometimes you might get a bit newer version of something from the Ubuntu repositories than from the Debian ones but not even once has that been an issue and most of stuff I use come from 3rd party repositories anyway.
Don't mind me, I'm just here for the violence. LOL
I'm using Ubuntu Jammy LTS/ESM.
This is a safe space. We don't kinkshame here.
I’ve got one Jammy box and one Resolute… I don’t love Canonical, but not enough hate to migrate my hosts to another distribution
It's just something I got comfortable with long time back, and since I can drive that bus, and it does what I need it to do, I just stuck with it. I've never run a full blown Debian OS, so I really can't compare the two except to say that it's Linux.
I’ve never run a full blown Debian OS
Ubuntu is literally just Debian with Canonical's bullshit on top.
Oh, I get it's Debian under the hood. Like I mentioned, I just got comfortable with it and so I've seen no reason to switch. The OP's situation is different tho. He started out with Debian, so it would make sense to continue with Debian.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| IoT | Internet of Things for device controllers |
| LTS | Long Term Support software version |
| LXC | Linux Containers |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
[Thread #65 for this comm, first seen 27th Jul 2026, 18:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Debian. Fuck Ubuntu. Don't forget to install sudo.
Fun not-so-known fact: if you skip the root password chooser during the installation and just create a user, it will install and set up sudo automatically.
Good to know! Thanks!
And a ~~dns resolver~~ resolvconf :(
https://wiki.debian.org/NetworkConfiguration#resolv.conf.Configuring_resolvconf_.28or_a_workalike.29