this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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I’ve been getting more into self hosting lately, grabbed an optiplex 3050 for everything and I’m running Mint currently. Looking more into things though, I saw Debian come up as a more barebones distro and now I’m wondering if there is a lot of benefit to going more barebones. I’m not having any issues with my current setup but now I can’t stop thinking about it. I am newer to Linux but having to learn new things doesn’t wig me out much if there is a lot more involvement with Debian

Edit: I appreciate the responses. I do see where I could just end up creating problems that don’t exist by experimenting with it more. Debian does sound enticing so it’s definitely something I’ll mess about with virtually for now and see how I like it in comparison. But I definitely have to agree on the “don’t mess with a good thing” if it’s working for me. All your answers have definitely given me something to play with now as well, I want the problems to solve but doing it in a separate environment would suit me better to learn a few things. This community rocks.

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[–] Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

My personal journey:

  • arch is annoying to maintain and whil it is mostly stable, you do get some breaking updates here and there. It's not a bad choice, it just doesn't makeuch sense for a headless server.
  • Ubuntu server, just why? Works fine but why?
  • a not headless fedora, worked fine but still annoyed me sometimes
  • proxmox (debian based) works great, annoyed me to manage vm resources.
  • headless debian. Just works, I rarely if ever encounter OS issues. The only downside is that not everything can be found in the debian repos, but there is almost always an option to add a repo for whatever you want.

My setup is mostly dockers so keep that in mind.

But really, if something works for you go with it. If you are looking to change, I would recommend debian.

[–] TBi@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Debian is good choice. Another option could be open media vault. Which is Debian with a built in web interface.