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?

  • steel_for_humans@piefed.socialOPEnglish
    1·
    10 hours ago

    So the trick is to keep the OS minimal, install only Docker from its repo and install anything else in Docker containers.

    Why from Docker’s repo and not from Debian’s? I just did a quick apt search docker and I see docker.io and docker-cli.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      2·
      7 hours ago

      Debian’s versions lag badly behind Docker’s. You’d always be missing the latest features. Docker introduces them at a steady pace and it can get annoying to see people talking about a new useful improvement and then months passing before it gets to you.

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
          2·
          3 hours ago

          You say that but sometimes they come up with stuff that’s really useful and it can be very annoying to not have it. Like when they integrated compose into the main.

          Also, if you later decide to switch to the official version you’ll have to handle the upgrade carefully or you risk wiping out all your images, containers, networks, volumes etc. Which can be fine if you have backups of all the relevant functional definitions and the volumes and so on, but obviously a huge pain if it catches you unprepared.

          Mind you, this can also happen by tinkering with stuff in /etc/docker/daemon.json, which is how I originally learned to back up my shit.

          • steel_for_humans@piefed.socialOPEnglish
            1·
            3 hours ago

            Ok, I will keep that in mind. I’m just wary of what you said earlier:

            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.

            You’re not the first person to tell me not to add too many external repositories on Debian for the same reason.

            • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
              2·
              3 hours ago

              In Docker’s case is a non-issue because they were careful to use completely different names for all their packages. It’s only when the external repo uses the same names as the core that the dependency resolver can get confused.

              Rant:

              apt should either completely forbid external repos from using core package names (like Arch does), or look at both the package name and repo URL when deciding if a package is the same, not just package name.

              I’m guessing that letting external repos “hijack” a package name was once upon a time seen as a feature and then they never got around to fixing it.