Suggestions for Linux OS for home server. Open to suggestions.

wh33t · 08-19-2016, 06:07 PM

I am familiar with apt-get so naturally I opt for Ubuntu server or just plain old Debian although I'm finding debian to be a pain lately as all the hardware I seem to be using has proprietary drivers and they always seem to cause some hassle to get working properly.

I'm building a home server for mumble-voip with friends, hosting some game servers, and running the LAMP stack for my work and personal projects, also Samba sharing with the windows machines for media storage. Harddrives will be in Raid 1 and most likely it will be the motherboard raid hardware (not sure if that needs a linux driver or not).

So I figure why not ask the linux community about other Linux's I'm not familiar with. Centos? Redhat? Those are often used in servers right?

I'm open to suggestions. Thanks!

Doug G · 08-19-2016, 06:21 PM

Although most will not agree, I use and like Fedora for a home server, mostly because it ships with up-to-date versions of things like php, mariadb/mysql, apache and most other lamp components. Lately it's gotten very easy, nearly trivial, to upgrade using dnf, so the short-fuse release cycle no longer is an issue for me.

$0000000000000000.02

ReinaldoGomes · 08-19-2016, 06:57 PM

RedHat is meant to be a paid server. I run CentOS on my servers and everything's just fine, except for a couple 'outdated' packages, since this distro focus on stability...

jefro · 08-19-2016, 09:50 PM

The best choice is one you can use and like.

Another option may be to use OpenSuse or the SLEL from SuseStudio.

Emerson · 08-19-2016, 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wh33t

Harddrives will be in Raid 1 and most likely it will be the motherboard raid hardware (not sure if that needs a linux driver or not).

Motherboard RAID hardware? There is no such thing, really. There is SATA controller which has software RAID configuration utility built in. If your OS can read it out from there it can set up the software RAID for you as it happens in Windows after the "RAID" driver is loaded. It is called dmraid in Linux and there is no point using it in a server, it is useful only if you dual boot with Windows and want to share the RAID. It has several limitations which are not present in mdraid - this should be your choice.

ondoho · 08-20-2016, 03:17 AM

debian stable.

snowday · 08-20-2016, 07:47 AM

It sounds like Ubuntu Server would be a good choice for you, since you are already familiar. Also it has excellent, beginner-friendly documentation.

https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/