It's 2019, what is your distribution choice for servers

cjcox

cjcox

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So, in your datacenters, or wherever you have a host that isn't a desktop, what is your preferred Linux distribution?
 
I just upgraded all of my servers from Ubuntu Server Edition 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS a couple months ago in advance of 14.04 going EOL.

I never bother with the latest versions unless I absolutely need them for hardware or dependency compatibility. I'll let others figure out the kinks and document their solutions on the forums for two years before I give a new LTS distribution a go :p

I never use non LTS distributions.

Software is definitely one area where the latest isn't always the greatest. I'll take mature stable software over bleeding edge features any day.
 
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Answering my own question, at work here we're all CentOS.

At home, I use a broad mixture, but I lean towards openSUSE.
 
cjcox said:
Answering my own question, at work here we're all CentOS.

At home, I use a broad mixture, but I lean towards openSUSE.
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Yeah, I usually just wind up using Ubuntu. Been a long time Debian user, have Ubuntu servers and Linux Mint desktops so I am intimately familiar with the Debian/Ubuntu/Mint way of doing things, and love how Apt works, so when I need to get something up and running quickly, Ubuntu just winds up being my go-to.

I have nothing against RHEL or CentOS, I just kind of stick with what I am used to, as I rarely seem to have the time to learn something new these days.

Though I have to say, I am not crazy about how they have been changing things lately. SystemD, Netplan, Snaps, etc. I honestly wish I could just have continued using Ubuntu Server Edition 12.04 LTS forever. It was perfect :p
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Though I have to say, I am not crazy about how they have been changing things lately. SystemD, Netplan, Snaps, etc. I honestly wish I could just have continued using Ubuntu Server Edition 12.04 LTS forever. It was perfect :p
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We've had systemd crap out (crash) about once or twice a year on various postgresql hosts running latest CentOS 7. When you talk to "Lennart and friends" their answer, is "oh... that's a really old version of systemd." But still, you'd think it would be Red Hat's best interest to try to make it work reliably.... sigh...

(when systemd crashes, your only recourse is to reboot the host btw.... in case you wondered... it'll sort of run, but you have no service control, including dynamic services when it crashes)
 
cjcox said:
We've had systemd crap out (crash) about once or twice a year on various postgresql hosts running latest CentOS 7. When you talk to "Lennart and friends" their answer, is "oh... that's a really old version of systemd." But still, you'd think it would be Red Hat's best interest to try to make it work reliably.... sigh...

(when systemd crashes, your only recourse is to reboot the host btw.... in case you wondered... it'll sort of run, but you have no service control, including dynamic services when it crashes)
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Yeah, that sounds about as expected.

I've never had SystemD crash on me in Ubuntu, but I also don't run a production server.

It has many production-like attributes to it, in that it runs things that if they go down, I hear about it (File Server, TV PVR backend etc. Etc.) but usually it's just my fiance or future mother in law who get annoyed. No business is down :p

I call my setup my "home production server". It's a dual socket Westmere EP Supermicro board with two hexacore L5640's and 192GB of RAM in it. I run Proxmox on it, which is a VM/LXC Container appliance OS based on Debian. I used to have a bunch of VM's on it, but these days I've shifted most of them to separate LXC containers. Most of those containers are UBuntu Server based. In order to make them easiuer to manage and isolate them a little bit, each running server process gets its own container or VM.
 
I have been using Debian and Ubuntu for so many years that other distros feel awkward at this point.
 
All of my servers at home are running Ubuntu 18.04. Mainly just due to familiarity. I've thought about giving CentOS a shot, but I've been busy in recent months, and seeing as they are all running solid on 18.04, I haven't bothered to try something else.
 
RHEL / CentOS 7 at work, Ubuntu / CentOS 7 (soon to be 8) at home. Ubuntu typically virtualized. Ubuntu or Fedora on desktops mostly too.
 
CentOS 7 for servers Fedora for workstations.

Really looking forward to CentOS 8
 
Depends, there is my personal preference, and then there are the choices allotted to me. For the most part I am stuck with RHEL.CentOS or some iterations like Amazon Linux. My personal preference though is mostly Debian. I have used some others for specific purposes, but at home and for my work dev system I use Debian.
 
We're currently all CentOS 7 aside from a few dev boxes running Ubuntu Server. I'm looking forward to the CentOS 8 release.
 
How mission critical? because I would say Gentoo with a bunch of alpineLinux LXC's
 
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