this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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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?

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[–] bigredgiraffe@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Yep this right here, I have used Ubuntu LTS for servers both my own and for work for years now and it works fine. I also don’t think snaps are as big of a deal as people make them out to be, the only snap I am actually forced to use is the mass snap and that is a canonical product so whatever. I even use it on some rpi4/5 even and it works great for use with workloads suited for a pi. Now, 10 years ago this was a different story, but these days Ubuntu LTS is a great OS overall.

Debian is also great though (and if I was building some sort of appliance OS I would prob start with that since it has the fewest customizations to start with) but after you use any of the deb based distros enough they are all basically start to look the same to operate so pick one you want to learn and use that until you have a reason to change, learn the tools not the distro and you will be fine.

All of that said though, every distro has idiosyncrasies but the Linux CLI skills you learn are definitely transferable so it’s not as big of a choice as it is made out to be sometimes, especially now that containers and systemd are everywhere. That is …unless you decide to pick Solaris or one of the BSDs but those are a whole other animal 😀

[–] TeaWithDani@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Yeah an appliance distro would be a different consideration. For me Ubuntu is really flexible and a great docker host. I feel it's safer to tinker with since you get those extra layers of containment and sandboxing.

If I was to build an appliance I might also start with Debian, but so far I have used FreeBSD. Works great on my NAS, where I use XigmaNAS. You can transfer a surprisingly lot of skills. Learning what was common to FreeBSD and Linux really helped me with cli.

I'm curious to try making stuff with Ubuntu Core. I think it has potential, but that's a future deep dive and project. lol