Selfhosted

If you already know Debian that's a big point in its favor. Nothing beats a distro you're familiar with. (And I'd make the same argument if you were used to Ubuntu.)

I've used both Debian and Ubuntu Server on my home servers and I ended up returning to Debian.

• Debian embodies and follows the most essential Linux values. It's open, it's run by an open organization, it avoids proprietary stuff.
• Debian is long-lived. It's been around for 30 years, it's mature, self-sustaining, community-run project, and it will be around 30 years from now. Whereas I wouldn't bet on Canonical being around in 30 years.
• The upgrade path for Debian is better than for Ubuntu Server LTS.(1) You can upgrade it in-place between major versions a lot more reliably and painlessly than Ubuntu.
• Debian is dedicated to being stable. (Please run stable, btw.)
• Debian is a lot more resource-friendly than Ubuntu Server.

I've ended up concluding that Ubuntu Server is Debian, just with more quirks. It offers nothing essential that you can't do on Debian, and it will just complicate your life when the LTS support period eventually runs out (and even during LTS, when you have to jump through hoops like Ubuntu One to keep updates coming.)

(1) You can fuck up both Ubuntu and Debian's upgrades by adding a lot of 3rd-party repos because apt doesn't safeguard against external repos interfering with the core repos' dependency graph.

So the trick is to keep the OS minimal, install only Docker from its repo and install anything else in Docker containers. That way you benefit the most from Debian being stable and very little from Ubuntu Server.

If you also need to run system containers and virtual machines you can add Incus later to the mix alongside Docker and still keep your host OS lean and simple.

You can also consider completely migrating to Proxmox later, which is also Debian under the hood but it's a more turnkey solution. I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into Proxmox unless you're fairly sure that you'd need to run VMs. (If you're unsure stick to plain Debian for now.)

If you're planning to use old hardware for hosting, don't use Ubuntu. SNAP will kill performance.

So your choice is Debian.

P.S. VPS is already a Virtual Private Server and you can't install ProxMox or any virtualization on it. If you want experiments, look into containers.

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.

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.

Never Ubuntu, debian for server, fedora for desktop and arch/cachyos for tech fun.

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.

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.

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.

Debian is better as a server host. Ubuntu is not easier for a server for anything except initial installation but you've already done that once with Debian so you'll be fine. Only reason to use Ubuntu is if you want core software updates every 6 months and for this purpose you don't. And can still have the option for newer software in select cases using containers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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...

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.

As someone who has both Ubuntu servers and Debian servers.....go with Debian. It does everything Ubuntu does, but leaner and better.

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.

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.