Linux Servers: Which Distro should you use?!

So which distribution should you run on your linux server let’s have a conversation about that Viewers of learnlinuxtv ask me all the time which distribution should i go with for my laptop or desktop but we don’t see too many videos like this about servers which is what i want to go over today i mean i’ve already covered which distro you should go with because i’ve

Done entire videos about that subject but when it comes to servers there’s really not as much of a conversation so what i’m going to do in today’s video is talk about some of the popular choices for which distribution to run on your server and i’ll give you the pros and

Cons of each now this is by no means an exhaustive list i mean if you look at distrowatch.com there’s all kinds of different distributions listed on that site and i’m not going to go over all of those but i definitely want to go over the more popular choices and let you

Guys know what i think of those choices for the server first of all let’s talk about debian stable and the reason why i mentioned debian stable specifically is because there’s actually three versions of debian that you can run and there’s no reason why you can’t run any of the versions of debian that’s

Available on your server i mean nobody’s going to show up at your house and say hey you installed the wrong version of debian you’re supposed to install stable debian doesn’t mind where you install it it’s a distribution that aims to be a general purpose distribution of linux so

You could install it on whatever is compatible with linux in general and debian stable is normally the one that most server administrators go with why is that well to understand that you have to know what the other versions of debian are we have debian unstable and debian testing as well now debian stable

Doesn’t have like a release cadence that you can actually put on your calendar it’s not like ubuntu where they have a new release every six months and then you know every two years they have a new long-term support release we’ll get into ubuntu in a moment but

Debian releases when it’s ready and on average i’m guesstimating is probably like something around every two years or so give or take so they try to have regular releases as much as they can but they’re also not trying to rush them out the door because with debian stable it’s all

About being stable now debian testing is actually the new stable or what will become the next version of debian so right now as of the time i’m recording this video debian stable is up to debian 11. so technically debian testing is debian 12 which is not out yet at some

Point in the future w testing will freeze and when it freezes they’ll fix all kinds of bugs they’ll make sure that everything is as good as they can get it and then once they feel it’s ready then they’ll release it as the new debian stable debian unstable is the closest

Thing to a rolling distribution that we have when it comes to debian because testing isn’t technically rolling because it freezes and i think it freezes for like six months or so so that’s quite a long period of time debian unstable though is well unstable it’s where packages in debian go first

So if debian wants to deploy or update a piece of software then the contributors will actually put the software into the unstable repositories first they’ll test it out and then maybe it’ll graduate to testing once it gets into testing then you know more eyes will be on it because

More people will have it and then once it proves itself in testing then well actually since testing becomes the next stable release then it’s automatically going to be included in debian stable so that’s kind of the way it’s set up but when it comes to production servers in the enterprise

It’s really uncommon to find debian unstable or testing most people are actually going to deploy debian stable another benefit of debian is apt short for advanced package tool and apt is a very common package manager in the world of linux now package managers are a common element of linux distributions

Nowadays the concept of a package manager isn’t specific to debian but debian is the distribution that made this concept famous at a time when administrators had to figure out how to satisfy dependencies on their own apt came along and simplified the process and like other modern package managers

App takes care of figuring out dependencies for you and automatically installs the packages that are necessary to satisfy a request today the majority of linux distributions have their own package manager that does essentially the same thing but there’s something to be said of using a distribution that pioneered this approach

So far debian sounds great right i mean well it is there’s a reason why so many people out there love debian but as great as it is there’s pros and cons as well that we need to talk about because it’s important to understand what is great about a distribution and some

Other elements that are either not so great or quirks that i need to mention to make sure that you’re aware of now one of the downsides when it comes to debian stable is that the packages that are available for download in the repositories are often very old versions

So old in fact that on release day when a new version of debian stable is released it’s not uncommon for packages to be several versions out of date so if you’re wanting to use the latest and greatest technology when it comes to linux then debian stable is not really

For you if that’s the case you might want to consider taking a look at debian testing or unstable instead and while i wouldn’t actually recommend installing testing or unstable on a linux server that’s going to be used for production purposes those other flavors of debian actually

Do give you access to newer packages so if that’s what you need then maybe that’s something you might want to take a look at now another issue when it comes to debian is that because of the stable repositories often having older software that also means by extension that the

Drivers that are available are often older as well so that means when you download a brand new stable release of debian on release day no less it’s not uncommon to install it on a brand new piece of hardware only to find out that some pieces of hardware in that chassis

Are not actually supported and that creates a very interesting issue here because if you have a brand new server and you really want to deploy debian on that server then you might find that you just well you can’t if it doesn’t have the drivers that are needed to you know

Recognize the hardware on that server then you’re going to experience things like your network card not being detected video card not being detected and who knows what else and because of that then your only way of using debian on that particular piece of hardware will probably be to use debian testing

Which is a downside because i really don’t recommend that on production servers so the fact that debian has such out of date software is something that’s a major pain for a lot of linux administrators out there but thankfully if you are using a cloud provider you don’t have to worry about that because

They took care of all that for you they took care of all the drivers it makes sure that their images of debian actually work on their platform so if you are using a cloud provider you should be good to go but older software aside debian is super stable it’s super

Secure it receives security updates for quite a while and it is a really good distribution so if your hardware is able to run debian then i highly recommend debian stable next up let’s talk about ubuntu it’s pretty much impossible to talk about linux distributions regardless of whether the intended use case is servers

Or desktops because ubuntu is super popular i don’t think there’s a single linux user out there that’s been using linux for more than a week that hasn’t at least heard of ubuntu it’s that popular ubuntu itself is made available for a plethora of different platforms including a desktop edition you can

Install on your laptop or desktop and there’s also a version for raspberry pi as well but our talk today is solely about servers so what i need to do is focus on the ubuntu server distribution which is actually a spin of ubuntu that is targeted for well servers

In fact ubuntu is quite possibly the most popular distribution for servers out there having enjoyed a sizable presence on physical and virtual servers alike under the hood ubuntu is actually forked from debian but ubuntu is more than just a simple respin of debian the distribution contains additional

Benefits on top of debian’s base that gives you even more features than what debian itself has available and some of the added functionality includes tools such as juju that provide the ability to quickly spin up entire openstack and kubernetes deployments and services like moz short for metal as a service that

Enable you to provision physical servers by booting them directly into an installation image now before we go any further there’s actually two kinds of releases when it comes to ubuntu intermediary releases and long-term support releases the way this breaks down is that every two years or so a new lts version is

Released and for the most part lts releases of ubuntu are the recommended versions of ubuntu to run on servers intermediary releases on the other hand are what we call the in between releases ubuntu releases a new version every six months and i can only remember one single time in the history of the

Project that they actually delayed a release the versions of ubuntu that are released every six months are the intermediary releases and by intermediary we are talking about well any release that’s not lts and all intermediary releases of ubuntu are supported for just nine months and that’s actually the reason

Why no one recommends that they be used on servers because generally speaking when it comes to servers you want that operating system to be around for a while you probably won’t want to actually re-image your servers every six months so it’s probably a better idea to stick to lts releases instead

Lts releases are actually supported for five years and by support i’m talking about security updates that’s a very important thing to keep an eye on when it comes to servers because you always want to make sure your linux servers are fully patched and it’s impossible to do that

If you are running an end of life distribution so after nine months intermediary releases of ubuntu will receive no more security updates now like i mentioned every two years a new lts release of ubuntu is published and the way that breaks down is that you’ll have three intermediary releases

And then the fourth release six months after the last intermediary release that’s going to become an lts release if you were to look at a calendar the way that plays out is that april of every other year ends up being the year of a new lts release so even though each lts

Release is supported for five years they come out every two years so there’s a little bit of overlap when it comes to support so that way you don’t have to move to the next version of ubuntu right away you could wait a little bit you could wait for a few point releases for

Example before you make the switch and earlier i mentioned that debian one of the weaknesses of debian is the fact that it often includes very old software old drivers and things like that but ubuntu has what i consider to be the best hardware support of any distribution out there because what they

Do is they actually include newer drivers even when they release a new lts release they do go back and then release a newer hardware enablement stack which is what they call it and hardware enablement updates actually pertain to well hardware drivers so the fact that canonical the makers of ubuntu they keep

The hardware enablement stack updated for lts releases that means you’ll have access to newer drivers after release that you normally wouldn’t have access to and that’s how ubuntu actually stays consistent and current with new hardware that’s available on the market now when it comes to downsides the fact

That ubuntu is a distribution that’s maintained by a company canonical rather than solely being a community project like debian is that’s a fact that can sometimes divide the overall opinion of ubuntu within the community many administrators are actually okay with this while others prefer to go a different direction

Now to be fair canonical has been a great steward for ubuntu and has helped it reach the heights of popularity that other distributions could only dream of but on the other hand there have been some decisions that haven’t been met with universal acclaim however the fact that canonical backs

Ubuntu might actually be a good thing depending on how you think of it through canonical you can actually purchase support and that’s actually a game changer for a lot of enterprises out there because for some companies having a support agreement is actually a requirement in that case that edges out

Debian unless you find a company that supports debian on their behalf but with canonical you could buy support or you could use the distribution for free there’s no limitation to downloading it or anything like that but if you need support it is available alright so let’s talk about red hat

Specifically red hat enterprise linux red hat is actually the distribution that i started with but when i started with it it wasn’t quite the same as it is today back then they made it available completely for free and technically it is still free software but that’s a little bit more complicated

We’ll get to that in just a moment but i started with red hat back when they had a desktop release available a workstation release before fedora was a thing we had red hat on the desktop it was great since that time though red hat took the distribution in an entirely new

Direction with a focus on the enterprise not the desktop and they do make workstation versions available but for the most part it’s most commonly found on servers so of course it makes this list now red hat enterprise linux or rel for short is one of the longest running

Distributions that we have today there are entire certifications dedicated to just this distribution alone and it has a strong presence in the enterprise unlike the other distributions on this list it’s not available for a free download well technically you can get it for free if you actually register as a

Developer and that’ll give you an evaluation copy of red hat that you can use to test out your deployments on but for the most part it’s considered a paid distribution but it’s not actually the software that you’re paying for though i mean it is open source software so you can’t really

Put a price tag on open source software so what you’re actually paying for is a support agreement but that’s required in order for you to download red hat if you’d like you could download all the source code and compile it yourself and if you do that then you don’t owe them

Anything you can download all the source code and actually compile it right now but that’s a task that is very difficult for the average administrator to take on by themselves so thankfully other distros have taken that on and themselves provide an unbranded version of red hat that we’ll get to later

But due to the cost this is a reason why you might not want to consider using red hat on your system because it all comes down to budget having a support agreement for a distribution like red hat considering that it’s rock solid and stable would definitely be a great thing

For your company but if you already have a team of linux administrators in your company then technically you could argue that there’s not as much value with the support agreement and when it comes to the package manager red hat used to use the yum package manager but is then

Switched to the newer dnf dnf is a package manager you will also find on centos and other distributions that share lineage with red hat more on that later and it’s very similar to apt and debian in the sense that it actually takes care of dependencies for you there

Are a lot of differences of course it is a different package manager and the format for packages is different as well but red hat in general is a great choice for the enterprise as long as you don’t mind paying for a support agreement next up let’s talk about centos

I don’t even think it’s possible to talk about red hat without talking about centos in some form or fashion because for quite some time centos was that on branded red hat basically red hat without the red hat branding so you could actually use red hat for free by

Using centos because they are one to one compatible but actually things have changed quite a bit for centos like ubuntu sent to us is one of the most popular server distributions in existence it’s nearly impossible to read topics within the linux community and not find it mentioned at least a few

Times and with good reason like debian sent to us is an enterprise focused distribution with a large number of deployments many administrators enjoy its rock solid stability and its popularity means that there’s no shortage of tutorials and how to’s online things that can guide you through just about anything you might want to

Accomplish with it nowadays though deciding on whether or not to go with centos for your server isn’t quite the same conversation that it used to be very recently the project actually changed direction and it’s not necessarily a bad direction but it is a divisive direction nonetheless

In the past sent to us was a free to download recompile of red hat enterprise linux and a new release of centos was the same product as the matching version of rel and the main difference between centos and red hat for the longest time has been that well the red hat branding is

Stripped away and replaced with centos branding which is why you’re able to download it without a support agreement later on though sent to west was actually acquired by red hat and then later on red hat itself was acquired by ibm while that in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing the distribution

Is no longer a d branded version of red hat enterprise linux and that change was made very recently when it was announced that centos stream would become the successor to centos as we used to know it and centos stream isn’t quite the same thing as a rolling distribution i

Mean it is and it isn’t as complicated it’s best to think of it as an evolving distribution and it’s no longer a one-to-one drop-in replacement for red hat like it used to be new direction aside centos is still a worthy distribution to check out now it may not

Have the same focus as it used to have but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s less stable it’s a good fit for administrators that are looking for a more evolved enterprise distribution who don’t necessarily have a requirement to be compatible with red hat now also on this list is alma linux as

Well as rocky linux and i’m including both of those in the same section in this video because they’re essentially the same thing more or less when centos changed direction and was no longer a drop-in replacement for red hat enterprise linux alma linux and also rocky linux stepped up to

Become what centos used to be so all malinix and rocky linux are actually well drop-in replacements or d-branded versions of red hat so we get the same use case that we had with centos with these newer distributions so i definitely recommend checking out alma linux and or rocky linux as well because

Well if you’re a centos refugee or you just prefer the way that things used to be then alma linux and rocky linux will both serve you well like i mentioned they’re drop-in replacements for red hat so if it works on red hat it’ll work on those distros as well they keep them up

To date and they have great communities behind them so you won’t be disappointed now another distribution that i want to mention is susa sousa is available in multiple different versions we also have opensuse as well which you can download for free and then there’s susa enterprise linux that you

Can well download for a support agreement cost so already i guess that means we have a downside or a potential downside if susa enterprise is outside your budget then well it may be out of reach but if it does fit within your budget susa enterprise is actually awesome it’s

Very stable and it even has some similarities with red hat i mean when you consider the package type it’s rpm for example that’s what it uses but that’s not the best thing here one of the best things about susa is yast yast is one of those configuration utilities

That is renowned within the linux community and even people that don’t use susa might actually like the idea of yast and might even be jealous of not having it on their distribution because just about everything that you might ever want to configure on your server you could do so through yast

Now i really like susa it’s a great distribution and it’s something that i hope to cover more on this channel than i have been recently so expect to see new content about susa on this channel before too long so what did you think about this list is there a distribution

That you think i should have put on this list that i forgot about well let me know in the comments down below i look forward to reading your comments and seeing what you guys have to say and make sure you subscribe if you haven’t already done so i have some

Awesome content as always coming very soon so make sure you subscribe and click that reminder icon so that way you’ll be notified as soon as i have new content available with that said thank you so much for watching i appreciate it and i’ll see you in the next video You