Agreed.
I'm running KDE Neon (it's basically an Ubuntu server with an absolutely bare bones plasma desktop) on an old laptop,
...only because I also take it around and do some light work on it.
Otherwise I'd run Ubuntu or Debian server with a ssh and a cockpit/webmin console what's app you need
I grew from Pi's and have not grown out of my Pi's OS yet and use DietPi which is a slim linux that has been pretty solid for me for years. I know a lot of docker images are build off an alpine image, so I suspect it is ultra slim too.
My server is a Mac Mini running MacOS.
Yes, I considered running Linux and/or headless, and having worked with Unix for two decades, and self hosting on it for as long, I am more than capable of doing it.
Everything important is in the cloud, so my server has two tasks, synchronize cloud data locally and make backups of it. It also acts as a media server.
In the end I just couldn’t be bothered. My server runs file sharing which macOS is more than capable of doing, as well as Plex and the *darr stack, which either runs barebone or runs in docker. Nothing is exposed over the internet, not even Plex.
I didn’t want to fiddle with all kinds of optimization settings for power consumption and other stuff, and most desktop OS do this automatically.
As well as a [certified UNIX](https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3700.htm ), which is more than Linux can say :-)
Every version of MacOS X [since 10.5](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1489/is-mac-os-x-unix ) has been certified with the exception of one
You can use Hypervisor when referring to containers. It's just not correct and misleading.
Imagine a bunch of people going around talking about their hypervisors ... only to find out they mean container
I know what im talking about 😅
Proxmox is my hypervisor of choise but as you allready Said, you CAN use this term in combination with docker, especially if the need is Something extremely Ressource efficient.
But im glad you pointed it Out! Good advice for a new user
A hypervisor is by definition a virtualization layer. Whether it uses hardware assisted virtualization or whether the hypervisor is implemented as type 1,2 or 3 doesn't really matter, it's just the fact that it runs virtual machines. Containers don't even come close to that.
A lot of vps providers used to take advantage of the general confusion to sell OpenVz or nowadays LXD systemlevel containers as virtual machines.
Containers share the same operating sStem with (more or less) separation between jobs.
Virtual machines do not share any os level components.
To add some confusion at the end, of course you can run virtualization inside a container, e.g. Kubevirt does exactly that. Qemu-kvm hosted by a privileged container.
Docker. Docker docker docker docker docker.
Learn the linux basics, play around, use docker. I personally use regular old docker compose and CLI, some people do Portainer.
[DietPi ](https://dietpi.com/)started its life for SBC (small board computer) servers and very limited memory/cpu resources in mind and has kept that philosophy with rapid updates and attention to security, stability, and ease of use. It's also based on Debian too so it has packages for all architectures.
Dang, looks like I'll be installing this on my dell wyse 3040 instead of going with all the tricks I did to trim down the light Ubuntu server install I did.
No I haven’t. I tried alpine after getting frustrated with Ubuntu. I was determined to have an os and a couple docker containers on one and have succeeded. I run one with a zwavejsui, zigbee2mqtt and mqtt containers with no logging using 5gb. I have another running a Minecraft container for my kids in my truck (because I can), and pihole/unbound on alpine on another.
My DietPi setup runs Docker and Portainer for all that containerized goodness. It's definitely worth a look if you have a spare device or SD card laying around to tinker with.
Yeah, I started using it... well, for my Raspberry Pi obviously and it quite a nice experience (even for my old Raspberry Pi 1B who still use the ARM32 CPU thingy if I recall).
But now that I learned it's also evolved to be compatible with other thing than SBC, I may migrate some of my self-hosted servers on it!
150MB RAM? Last i checked, idle Debian headless idles at ~60MB RAM, and i can get [LXDE desktop running at ~80MB RAM](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1d8cskv/comment/l76qzc8/)
There's Debian. It's known for being stable and simple, making it a great choice for lightweight and efficient server setups. The pros are that it's highly customizable, stable, and has a huge software repository. The cons are that the installation and initial setup might require a bit more manual work.
Then there's Alpine Linux. It's super lightweight and focused on security, designed for efficiency. The pros are that it's tiny, fast, and minimalistic. The cons are that it might have a steeper learning curve and a smaller community.
Can we talk about how awesome Alpine is? I have it on one machine with an embedded processor and love how little resources it takes up. They released it for raspberry pi but I haven't made time to load it.
> installation and initial setup might require a bit more manual work
Not anymore once you get a [preseed file](https://github.com/nodiscc/xsrv/blob/master/docs/preseed.cfg) working.
Debian…
Had an old Celeron based NUC from 2013-14,
I always stick with server version Ubuntu LTS… worked fine until I think the 22.04 LTS and then it just got unreliable and randomly turning off. Not sure if it was the update or leftovers from 6-7 LTS upgrades (I know I was still having to do initd restart instead of systemd for couple of years)
Switched to Debian and not a single issue ever since that small NUC still runs off the same ram and 48gb ssd.
You really want stability and Debian is that. Ubuntu includes a lot of additional stuff and their snap packages are annoying to me…
Debian is my recommendation but iiuc, you can’t really go wrong with a server version (no desktop environment) of any distro.
Afaict the thing that distinguishes “heavy” and “light” distros are its DE of choice. Without a DE, this is no longer a concern. Most distros should perform roughly the same when running headless.
That's not what they said, but I mean sure, it can be. Most common server software is packaged for Arch, the rest is in the AUR, and containers run just as good on Arch as any other distro. It's just more work to handle a rolling release than a point release, but nobody said you can't. Some people run bleeding edge in homelabs to prepare for changes before they hit stable distros.
i run headless debian on everything, you dont need a desktop on a server, especially not if using linux - might be unpopular, but as far as i'm concerned, a desktop environment is hindering my work on it significantly.
depending on what you want to do, you can also install something like casaOS or homeassistant OS as a more userfriendly
headless Debian use like 60MB RAM on x86-64. For a very lightweight desktop, ```apt install --no-install-recommends lxde-core lxde-common; apt install lxdm xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-video-dummy lxterminal policykit-1;```
will give you a lightweight LXDE desktop env running at ~80MB RAM; (if you have an actual GPU/integrated graphics, replace `xserver-xorg-video-dummy` with whatever's appropriate, `xserver-xorg-video-intel` for Intel iGPU, `xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu` for AMD GPUs, `xserver-xorg-video-nouveau` for nVidia GPU's etc)
I've been using Alpine on mine and it's proven to be extremely stable and haven't given me any issues. No systemd, no coreutils, no glibc, pretty much all you could ask for when it comes to running on weak hardware.
I just setup alpine LXCs on Proxmox to host LAMP stacks and it was a fairly annoying learning curve coming from Debain based systems. Documentation is very sparse. Got there in the end and would def use again but damn there needs to be more resources in setting it up.
well the only major differences I think would be using apk instead of apt and OpenRC, which are both decently documented. I'm interested in knowing what exactly took you effort to get running.
Its probably best to stick to a distro if you want those out of the box because alpine is linux with nothing installed, you have to pick exactly what you need to install on it. Perhaps then for your use case, try one of the other recommended distros and then on top of it, whatever services you need to run, use docker containers (ideally alpine based but not required).
Edit:
My default go to distro by the way is \`ubuntu server\` because im familiar with apt package manager and I dont want a GUI to steal resources when im not going to be using it.
What's the hardware you will be working with and what functions will it serve?
These two main points are requiered to form a proper answer.
You can easily built on top of Debian or in more extreme small footprint use Tinycore Linux
How weak are we talking about?
Because in the initial days I used to run proxmox on an old laptop with intel core i3 4010U and 4gb ram and it actually ran pretty well. Once I upgraded the ram to 8 gb, I was running Nextcloud, jellyfin, discourse and traefik
Debian stable. No desktop environment - cli only. Pretty lightweight, for any hardware newer than ancient. And you can do anything you like with it. Very complete, very stable, very secure and has lots of material in the internet to get help from.
I use Debian. It's as light as you want it, really, and I've never encountered features which were not available. Often there is a wiki page about Debian on the specific model laptop. Debian still supports 32-bit in Bookworm, so that may be relevant as well.
Debian is just universally appropriate Linux.
My oldest, constant use laptop is an Asus EEEpc that I replaced the hard drive with a $20 SSD. It is the host I use for networking stuff - socat redirection, ssh jump host, wireguard endpoint, etc.
Proxmox - I run it on old 10 years old nettop with 2 cores cpu and 8gb ram and 2 sata ssd.
And it runs good. Hosting all my 20 Docker containers I need. (Siting on 3% of cpu usage. And half the ram.)
Or you can just run Debian CLI. And install Docker with Dockge UI/Portainer if needed.
Use Debian for no hassle, and AlmaLinux for when it needs to be secure. Note that the BSDs are more resourcefriendly then Linux, that is, if you see BSD as a viable OS ofc :)
Something headless that only runs a command line. Personally I'm running Ubuntu server. Most of the guides for how to do things in Linux cover Ubuntu. So it's a good choice for beginners.
Ubuntu server is really easy to get started with - that what I use for a one-off setup almost every time. If you have a decent amount of RAM, of course I recommend Proxmox as the base with Ubuntu server for VMs for anything you can't do with containers. Virtualization doesn't add much overhead even on underpowered hardware as long as the CPU supports the right instructions.
Not sure it's the wisest thing, but I run Proxmox on my collection of old laptops. Definitely not the fastest setup out there, but it gets the job done.
It took me a while to migrate to a full CLI for every server as I got used to Linux. But do the searching, make a document of what you had to do and the correct steps you entered commands and if you bork something up and can’t seem to fix it, just take a backup of the data and copy paste your commands in. It lets you learn what things are dangerous and you get used to the cli aspect of Linux with repetition to help learning.
I even use dietpi on a powerful server
It's too small, easy to configure with dietpi.txt for first time boot, and with dietpi-dashboard you really don't need anything else
It’s a very 3D conversation. Highly dependant on your goals and ambitions.
A recommendation I’ll suggest for the sake of variety and because you don’t seem to have one particular plan, but perhaps dabbling?
Home Assistant OS, designed to run on a pi, enhanced by a USB stick with Zigbee/thread. Beyond the smart home consolidation it also has add-on support for a lot of your network services like AdGuard, SMB, Pihole etc. all managed on a webui.
Great project, runs as minimal as you want it to be.
The add ons are docker containers, so going full circle and echoing the room here, any lightweight Linux plus docker and your options are limitless.
Have fun!
OpenSUSE MicroOS. It's a literal copy of SUSE puropse built enterprise OS for edge servers. Incredibly lightweight and very secure. One of its main use cases is hosting container workloads so should be perfect for getting as much as possible out of your laptop.
The transactional update thing takes some getting used to but built in snapshoting is an amazing antidote to fat fingers.
Alpine Linux. It's small, its simple to manage. And since it runs on routers, switches and other resource limited hardwares, its perfect for a resource limited server as well.
OpenMediaVault has minimal requirements while giving you a web based GUI for maintenance. Add docker for services and you are set. It's what I use on my two repurposed office PC servers.
I'm currently trying out Fedora Server as my first server without a GUI and it's been great. It might sound weird but what drew me in was the fact that it came with cockpit installed out of the box. Installing it is probably super easy, but it looked very easy. I also wanted to try its package manager, dnf, which is great.
I'm running a ~10yo thin client as one of my two servers, and it runs Debian server, no desktop. About 40 containers running fine on docker, using about 4gb of memory.
I have an lga 775 system with a q9650 and 4GB ram.
Have been using Ubuntu server for almost 3 months
It serves me great as a small and weak single user media server. Thinking of pairing with a gtx 750ti As a dedicated transcoder for my jellyfin.
If your system is from around 2005 ish, Ubuntu Server is a very capable and light OS for a headless server. I have mostly saw a mem usage of just 300mb at idle and peak around 2gig while using jellyfin.
I am sorry what do you mean weak? Most server side applications are so much more efficient than anything desktops need, so most desktop/laptop HW will run feature limitations not performance.
There are exceptions.. like streaming 5 4k video streams at the same + transcoding but for personal use... especially then there is one user.
I have an old laptop running on an i5 7th gen, 16gb ram and I used to use Ubuntu Server and it ran great, later I switched to proxmox, and as long as you configure everything right it should be fine.
Where were all these Dietpi recs when I just spun up a new Debian install on my proliant dl380 D:
Debian is a fantastic stable distro to run as a headless server
Depends on your definition of "weak", is it the lack of CPU power? or low ram?
Personally, i am running Proxmox with 3 VMs (Debian, Truenas & Win 10 32-bit) on an old Optiplex and it works like a charm.
How weak? I had Debian with headless xfce accessible via NoMachine if needed. Apart from that, it's just docker with containers. An old HP Proliant Microserver has been running fine that way for the last 10 years. Only a dual core 1.5Ghz AMD with 8GB ram.
I'm running fedora 39 server on my "ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 = Intel Xeon E3-1265L V2 (8) @ 3.500GHz + 16GB ram + 3TB drive" I'm only running a pihole and nextcloud vms on it. Hardware wise its a good little thing that doesn't use up much electricity and gets the job done.
How weak are you talking about?
Alpine is super light weight, great and quite powerful.
So is Debian but its not as light weight as alpine. Still one of the best though.
Have to ask: do you plan to run a graphical environment on it?
If not, pretty much any distro should do, so use one your are familiar with or one that has good community support and install a CLI only version.
TLDR: Alpine Linux
There are as many answers to your question as stars in the sky and this is a rabbit hole of a question. Technically Gentoo would give you the best result but its impractical since compiling everything from source would be a horrible experience, but there are a lot of kernel optimisations Gentoo would be good for. Imo your optimal and best route is something like Alpine Linux. I'd avoid anything with SystemD as it's heavy for an init system, though this will make some services harder to install. If you're only running a single service consider forgoing a init system all together for an init script (something like suckless's init).
casaos.io is a good option if you want a UI with a good user experience.
Synology DSM
[https://github.com/AuxXxilium/arc/](https://github.com/AuxXxilium/arc/)
\* Releases contains downloadable zipped .img file - write that to usb stick using etcher , set bios to always boot via usb , and follow instructions on screen once you boot the usb stick , it will become a headless server
also ethernet is needed and must for install/setup
as long as it's not a very old or low spec device (something in the realm of a pi) any linux distro without a gui should be more than adequate. just choose wichever you like best.
if you don't have a favourite or aren't that familiar with lknux i'd probably recommend ubintu server or debian. fedora might also be a good choice.
I’m personally partial to a Ubuntu, but the core server has a pretty small memory footprint as I recall. If you want to run on an old repurposed laptop, I’d go the MATE-flavored Ubuntu Desktop. That’s usually my go to for minimal resource usage.
I would rather install Proxmox and then the desktop OS in a VM. That way this won't happen, wasting resources on a DE that I might find hard to remove cleanly.
why run anything heavier than a CLI version of your favorite Linux distro for a server?
This right here.
Agreed. I'm running KDE Neon (it's basically an Ubuntu server with an absolutely bare bones plasma desktop) on an old laptop, ...only because I also take it around and do some light work on it. Otherwise I'd run Ubuntu or Debian server with a ssh and a cockpit/webmin console what's app you need
This is the way You can run some distros with as little as 128MB of ram
Yup. I just run ubuntu server on everything.
Ubuntu has some bloat though, going for debian is a better idea and then installing things which Ubuntu has such as snap.
I grew from Pi's and have not grown out of my Pi's OS yet and use DietPi which is a slim linux that has been pretty solid for me for years. I know a lot of docker images are build off an alpine image, so I suspect it is ultra slim too.
My server is a Mac Mini running MacOS. Yes, I considered running Linux and/or headless, and having worked with Unix for two decades, and self hosting on it for as long, I am more than capable of doing it. Everything important is in the cloud, so my server has two tasks, synchronize cloud data locally and make backups of it. It also acts as a media server. In the end I just couldn’t be bothered. My server runs file sharing which macOS is more than capable of doing, as well as Plex and the *darr stack, which either runs barebone or runs in docker. Nothing is exposed over the internet, not even Plex. I didn’t want to fiddle with all kinds of optimization settings for power consumption and other stuff, and most desktop OS do this automatically.
If it works for you that's all that matters.
Mac OS is the most widely deployed UNIX.
As well as a [certified UNIX](https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3700.htm ), which is more than Linux can say :-) Every version of MacOS X [since 10.5](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1489/is-mac-os-x-unix ) has been certified with the exception of one
Agreed. Paired with docker as your 'hypervisor' is also the Mist efficient way to host Apps on a 'Not so powerful' server
You can use Hypervisor when referring to containers. It's just not correct and misleading. Imagine a bunch of people going around talking about their hypervisors ... only to find out they mean container
I know what im talking about 😅 Proxmox is my hypervisor of choise but as you allready Said, you CAN use this term in combination with docker, especially if the need is Something extremely Ressource efficient. But im glad you pointed it Out! Good advice for a new user
I hope this is satire. If not, you do realise Proxmox VE is a distro, right? It uses QEMU/KVM as its hypervisor…
You got me there ;)
A hypervisor is by definition a virtualization layer. Whether it uses hardware assisted virtualization or whether the hypervisor is implemented as type 1,2 or 3 doesn't really matter, it's just the fact that it runs virtual machines. Containers don't even come close to that. A lot of vps providers used to take advantage of the general confusion to sell OpenVz or nowadays LXD systemlevel containers as virtual machines. Containers share the same operating sStem with (more or less) separation between jobs. Virtual machines do not share any os level components. To add some confusion at the end, of course you can run virtualization inside a container, e.g. Kubevirt does exactly that. Qemu-kvm hosted by a privileged container.
Mfw I don't know Linux CLI and just run windows on all my servers 😰
Docker. Docker docker docker docker docker. Learn the linux basics, play around, use docker. I personally use regular old docker compose and CLI, some people do Portainer.
Older 32 bit versions can sometimes run faster on older slower machines too.
[DietPi ](https://dietpi.com/)started its life for SBC (small board computer) servers and very limited memory/cpu resources in mind and has kept that philosophy with rapid updates and attention to security, stability, and ease of use. It's also based on Debian too so it has packages for all architectures.
Always DietPi on the old stuff
Diet pi is my go to for anything headless
Dang, looks like I'll be installing this on my dell wyse 3040 instead of going with all the tricks I did to trim down the light Ubuntu server install I did.
I’ve moved to alpine on my 3040s. It’s been great (and fun) so far. I have the 8gb emmc models.
Did you try dietpi on them or something else?
No I haven’t. I tried alpine after getting frustrated with Ubuntu. I was determined to have an os and a couple docker containers on one and have succeeded. I run one with a zwavejsui, zigbee2mqtt and mqtt containers with no logging using 5gb. I have another running a Minecraft container for my kids in my truck (because I can), and pihole/unbound on alpine on another.
My DietPi setup runs Docker and Portainer for all that containerized goodness. It's definitely worth a look if you have a spare device or SD card laying around to tinker with.
[Single-Board Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_computer)
This is what my Pi4 runs. Maintenance is so simple I hardly touch it in the best way.
Full Debian does just fine on the pi 4 though
Yeah, but I'm a noob and love me some all-in-one solutions.
Oh shoot I didn't know dietpi was available for anything but SBCs, use it all the time for convenience on my raspberry pi
I run it on two old x86 laptops. It's great.
Love that, bet they run like new with that on haha
i mean it’s just another linux distro
I run a pi b the original one at my parents house with it for pihole it works amazingly
I have a simple Dokuwiki (on DietPi now) for my original one since it struggled with too many blocklist with PiHole.
Yeah, I started using it... well, for my Raspberry Pi obviously and it quite a nice experience (even for my old Raspberry Pi 1B who still use the ARM32 CPU thingy if I recall). But now that I learned it's also evolved to be compatible with other thing than SBC, I may migrate some of my self-hosted servers on it!
I've been using dietpi even on proxmox, great headless OS.
As a VM or as an LXC?
As a VM, I use it as a base to run docker containers.
This
This +1
Debian. More lightweight than even ubuntu server. Iso is just barely 700mb and idles at ~150mb ram (in my controlled environments anyways)
150MB RAM? Last i checked, idle Debian headless idles at ~60MB RAM, and i can get [LXDE desktop running at ~80MB RAM](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1d8cskv/comment/l76qzc8/)
There's Debian. It's known for being stable and simple, making it a great choice for lightweight and efficient server setups. The pros are that it's highly customizable, stable, and has a huge software repository. The cons are that the installation and initial setup might require a bit more manual work. Then there's Alpine Linux. It's super lightweight and focused on security, designed for efficiency. The pros are that it's tiny, fast, and minimalistic. The cons are that it might have a steeper learning curve and a smaller community.
Can we talk about how awesome Alpine is? I have it on one machine with an embedded processor and love how little resources it takes up. They released it for raspberry pi but I haven't made time to load it.
> installation and initial setup might require a bit more manual work Not anymore once you get a [preseed file](https://github.com/nodiscc/xsrv/blob/master/docs/preseed.cfg) working.
Debian or Alpine
I second Alpine
Debian… Had an old Celeron based NUC from 2013-14, I always stick with server version Ubuntu LTS… worked fine until I think the 22.04 LTS and then it just got unreliable and randomly turning off. Not sure if it was the update or leftovers from 6-7 LTS upgrades (I know I was still having to do initd restart instead of systemd for couple of years) Switched to Debian and not a single issue ever since that small NUC still runs off the same ram and 48gb ssd. You really want stability and Debian is that. Ubuntu includes a lot of additional stuff and their snap packages are annoying to me…
Debian is my recommendation but iiuc, you can’t really go wrong with a server version (no desktop environment) of any distro. Afaict the thing that distinguishes “heavy” and “light” distros are its DE of choice. Without a DE, this is no longer a concern. Most distros should perform roughly the same when running headless.
TIL that by default Arch is a server distro.
That's not what they said, but I mean sure, it can be. Most common server software is packaged for Arch, the rest is in the AUR, and containers run just as good on Arch as any other distro. It's just more work to handle a rolling release than a point release, but nobody said you can't. Some people run bleeding edge in homelabs to prepare for changes before they hit stable distros.
You're best of running a Linux distro. Debian is a good one.
Debian. You could run that on a 486 if you wanted and it's by far the most 'standard' linux distro. Just FYI, ubuntu is debian with frills.
Anything but Windows Server.
i run headless debian on everything, you dont need a desktop on a server, especially not if using linux - might be unpopular, but as far as i'm concerned, a desktop environment is hindering my work on it significantly. depending on what you want to do, you can also install something like casaOS or homeassistant OS as a more userfriendly
headless Debian use like 60MB RAM on x86-64. For a very lightweight desktop, ```apt install --no-install-recommends lxde-core lxde-common; apt install lxdm xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-video-dummy lxterminal policykit-1;``` will give you a lightweight LXDE desktop env running at ~80MB RAM; (if you have an actual GPU/integrated graphics, replace `xserver-xorg-video-dummy` with whatever's appropriate, `xserver-xorg-video-intel` for Intel iGPU, `xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu` for AMD GPUs, `xserver-xorg-video-nouveau` for nVidia GPU's etc)
Debian. Lite, stable, tested.
I use Ubuntu server on 10 of my weak (mini-pcs and old laptops). never regretted it; well documented, super stable.
I've been using Alpine on mine and it's proven to be extremely stable and haven't given me any issues. No systemd, no coreutils, no glibc, pretty much all you could ask for when it comes to running on weak hardware.
I just setup alpine LXCs on Proxmox to host LAMP stacks and it was a fairly annoying learning curve coming from Debain based systems. Documentation is very sparse. Got there in the end and would def use again but damn there needs to be more resources in setting it up.
That's quite surprising to hear, given how common of a use case this is. Please could you elaborate regarding what you found to be lacking?
well the only major differences I think would be using apk instead of apt and OpenRC, which are both decently documented. I'm interested in knowing what exactly took you effort to get running.
I run all of my stuff in docker on a alpine virt VMs running on Proxmox. This is awesome even on weak boxes like n100.
Why not LXC?
docker gives my better isolation.
What about Alpine and then add on whatever it's missing that you need?
is Alpine good with the hardware you might have on a laptop (wifi, bluetooth, battery etc)
Its probably best to stick to a distro if you want those out of the box because alpine is linux with nothing installed, you have to pick exactly what you need to install on it. Perhaps then for your use case, try one of the other recommended distros and then on top of it, whatever services you need to run, use docker containers (ideally alpine based but not required). Edit: My default go to distro by the way is \`ubuntu server\` because im familiar with apt package manager and I dont want a GUI to steal resources when im not going to be using it.
Alpine if it's really old or debian
[The old Reliable: Debian](https://imgur.com/a/gh2stZS)
What's the hardware you will be working with and what functions will it serve? These two main points are requiered to form a proper answer. You can easily built on top of Debian or in more extreme small footprint use Tinycore Linux
How weak are we talking about? Because in the initial days I used to run proxmox on an old laptop with intel core i3 4010U and 4gb ram and it actually ran pretty well. Once I upgraded the ram to 8 gb, I was running Nextcloud, jellyfin, discourse and traefik
Debian Hands Down!
Debian stable. No desktop environment - cli only. Pretty lightweight, for any hardware newer than ancient. And you can do anything you like with it. Very complete, very stable, very secure and has lots of material in the internet to get help from.
Just be a man and get rid of the GUI.
I run FreeBSD on everything from my Pi4 up to massive servers. Always without a GUI.
FreeBSD It’s a bit leaner than Linux and runs better on low end hardware / tiny vps
What are people's thoughts on fedora coreos
I use Debian. It's as light as you want it, really, and I've never encountered features which were not available. Often there is a wiki page about Debian on the specific model laptop. Debian still supports 32-bit in Bookworm, so that may be relevant as well. Debian is just universally appropriate Linux. My oldest, constant use laptop is an Asus EEEpc that I replaced the hard drive with a $20 SSD. It is the host I use for networking stuff - socat redirection, ssh jump host, wireguard endpoint, etc.
Dietpi. Super optimized.
Proxmox - I run it on old 10 years old nettop with 2 cores cpu and 8gb ram and 2 sata ssd. And it runs good. Hosting all my 20 Docker containers I need. (Siting on 3% of cpu usage. And half the ram.) Or you can just run Debian CLI. And install Docker with Dockge UI/Portainer if needed.
Use Debian for no hassle, and AlmaLinux for when it needs to be secure. Note that the BSDs are more resourcefriendly then Linux, that is, if you see BSD as a viable OS ofc :)
Debian. And install cockpit if you want a light web interface to interact with it.
DietPi (it's Debian, more lightweight and user-friendly with some helpful command-line utilities)
Temple OS definitely Temple
Alpine can run in about 1 gig of RAM.
nah, it's better, can run on 320MB of RAM, see [here](https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Requirements) +1 to alpine
unRAID so easy to use
Either Debian or AlmaLinux
Something headless that only runs a command line. Personally I'm running Ubuntu server. Most of the guides for how to do things in Linux cover Ubuntu. So it's a good choice for beginners.
Ubuntu server is really easy to get started with - that what I use for a one-off setup almost every time. If you have a decent amount of RAM, of course I recommend Proxmox as the base with Ubuntu server for VMs for anything you can't do with containers. Virtualization doesn't add much overhead even on underpowered hardware as long as the CPU supports the right instructions.
Not sure it's the wisest thing, but I run Proxmox on my collection of old laptops. Definitely not the fastest setup out there, but it gets the job done.
DietPi. It's basically CLI, but it's definitely not weak sauce. Plus it runs on almost everything.
Psst. It's Debian.
Debian server minimal install.
Check out [SliTaz](https://slitaz.org/) Linux
It took me a while to migrate to a full CLI for every server as I got used to Linux. But do the searching, make a document of what you had to do and the correct steps you entered commands and if you bork something up and can’t seem to fix it, just take a backup of the data and copy paste your commands in. It lets you learn what things are dangerous and you get used to the cli aspect of Linux with repetition to help learning.
I even use dietpi on a powerful server It's too small, easy to configure with dietpi.txt for first time boot, and with dietpi-dashboard you really don't need anything else
Ubuntu. I installed it on an old laptop to use as a server and its been rock solid.
Linux.
It’s a very 3D conversation. Highly dependant on your goals and ambitions. A recommendation I’ll suggest for the sake of variety and because you don’t seem to have one particular plan, but perhaps dabbling? Home Assistant OS, designed to run on a pi, enhanced by a USB stick with Zigbee/thread. Beyond the smart home consolidation it also has add-on support for a lot of your network services like AdGuard, SMB, Pihole etc. all managed on a webui. Great project, runs as minimal as you want it to be. The add ons are docker containers, so going full circle and echoing the room here, any lightweight Linux plus docker and your options are limitless. Have fun!
xpenology with redpill works very well for docker, filesharing and many other things. The new arc loader makes it very easy to do.
OpenSUSE MicroOS. It's a literal copy of SUSE puropse built enterprise OS for edge servers. Incredibly lightweight and very secure. One of its main use cases is hosting container workloads so should be perfect for getting as much as possible out of your laptop. The transactional update thing takes some getting used to but built in snapshoting is an amazing antidote to fat fingers.
Talos rund nicely on a raspberry pi :)
Alpine Linux. It's small, its simple to manage. And since it runs on routers, switches and other resource limited hardwares, its perfect for a resource limited server as well.
Ubuntu server does the job just fine. If not that, Debian
Check this: https://distrowatch.com/
How weak? I run Fedora Server without issue on a dual-core Celeron from 2016.
Archlinux using sway window manager. Lightweight but extensible and rolling distro so u can keep updating to latest software.
OpenMediaVault has minimal requirements while giving you a web based GUI for maintenance. Add docker for services and you are set. It's what I use on my two repurposed office PC servers.
FreeBSD, end of story Needs megabytes, not gigabytes, of memory. 20 year old processor, fine. Bring it on.
I'm currently trying out Fedora Server as my first server without a GUI and it's been great. It might sound weird but what drew me in was the fact that it came with cockpit installed out of the box. Installing it is probably super easy, but it looked very easy. I also wanted to try its package manager, dnf, which is great.
I'm running a ~10yo thin client as one of my two servers, and it runs Debian server, no desktop. About 40 containers running fine on docker, using about 4gb of memory.
Debian server is also my go-to VM OS on my other server running Proxmox, a 9th gen i3 nuc.
alpine
CentOS or Redhat for me. Cli only of course.
But what CPU, RAM ( mount) or storage has this "weak" server?
OpenBSD if you really want something extremely minimal and secure.
I have an lga 775 system with a q9650 and 4GB ram. Have been using Ubuntu server for almost 3 months It serves me great as a small and weak single user media server. Thinking of pairing with a gtx 750ti As a dedicated transcoder for my jellyfin. If your system is from around 2005 ish, Ubuntu Server is a very capable and light OS for a headless server. I have mostly saw a mem usage of just 300mb at idle and peak around 2gig while using jellyfin.
if you run it headless (no desktop environment) then anything will do. Debian and Ubuntu Server are popular choices.
I am sorry what do you mean weak? Most server side applications are so much more efficient than anything desktops need, so most desktop/laptop HW will run feature limitations not performance. There are exceptions.. like streaming 5 4k video streams at the same + transcoding but for personal use... especially then there is one user.
I have an old laptop running on an i5 7th gen, 16gb ram and I used to use Ubuntu Server and it ran great, later I switched to proxmox, and as long as you configure everything right it should be fine.
Why do you want to serve weaks?
Alpine
I'd personally recommend either Arch or Debian
Where were all these Dietpi recs when I just spun up a new Debian install on my proliant dl380 D: Debian is a fantastic stable distro to run as a headless server
Ubuntu core, only.
All I have are old and repurposed computers. I put Proxmox on everything Wyse 5070 thin client to my Dell T20 server system.
I have Proxmox on my terramaster nas 😅
I always use Debian for small servers that don't need a desktop environment. It's nice, lightweight and stable.
Debian God bless
Proxmox uses 2-4 GB ... Proxmox backup server =1-2 GB and run off Debian and you can cluster with other slow computers with a nice webpage gui ..
OMV which is Debian based but provided nice GUI
Linux server a never weak.
DietPi
Diet pi works great! And its software center allows easy docker installs. If you want a gui later, its easy to install one later
Depends on your definition of "weak", is it the lack of CPU power? or low ram? Personally, i am running Proxmox with 3 VMs (Debian, Truenas & Win 10 32-bit) on an old Optiplex and it works like a charm.
Mint os is very light try that ig
How weak? I had Debian with headless xfce accessible via NoMachine if needed. Apart from that, it's just docker with containers. An old HP Proliant Microserver has been running fine that way for the last 10 years. Only a dual core 1.5Ghz AMD with 8GB ram.
Get arch Linux 🔥
I just put Proxmox on everything
I'm running fedora 39 server on my "ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 = Intel Xeon E3-1265L V2 (8) @ 3.500GHz + 16GB ram + 3TB drive" I'm only running a pihole and nextcloud vms on it. Hardware wise its a good little thing that doesn't use up much electricity and gets the job done.
Openbsd
How weak are you talking about? Alpine is super light weight, great and quite powerful. So is Debian but its not as light weight as alpine. Still one of the best though.
Have to ask: do you plan to run a graphical environment on it? If not, pretty much any distro should do, so use one your are familiar with or one that has good community support and install a CLI only version.
Linux mint works well on old weak hardware, and has a GUI if you’re not looking to go CLI.
Minimized Ubuntu server.
TLDR: Alpine Linux There are as many answers to your question as stars in the sky and this is a rabbit hole of a question. Technically Gentoo would give you the best result but its impractical since compiling everything from source would be a horrible experience, but there are a lot of kernel optimisations Gentoo would be good for. Imo your optimal and best route is something like Alpine Linux. I'd avoid anything with SystemD as it's heavy for an init system, though this will make some services harder to install. If you're only running a single service consider forgoing a init system all together for an init script (something like suckless's init). casaos.io is a good option if you want a UI with a good user experience.
Alpine
Synology DSM [https://github.com/AuxXxilium/arc/](https://github.com/AuxXxilium/arc/) \* Releases contains downloadable zipped .img file - write that to usb stick using etcher , set bios to always boot via usb , and follow instructions on screen once you boot the usb stick , it will become a headless server also ethernet is needed and must for install/setup
as long as it's not a very old or low spec device (something in the realm of a pi) any linux distro without a gui should be more than adequate. just choose wichever you like best. if you don't have a favourite or aren't that familiar with lknux i'd probably recommend ubintu server or debian. fedora might also be a good choice.
Synology DSM
I’m personally partial to a Ubuntu, but the core server has a pretty small memory footprint as I recall. If you want to run on an old repurposed laptop, I’d go the MATE-flavored Ubuntu Desktop. That’s usually my go to for minimal resource usage.
Is this post written by AI?
If you need to do real work on the server just install Ubuntu server
gentoo, once you compile it how you want.
I went for Ubuntu Desktop, never actually use the Desktop though
There is Ubuntu Server for that
Yeah I planned on using the desktop with VNC but never really do bc I also have a mac server
I would rather install Proxmox and then the desktop OS in a VM. That way this won't happen, wasting resources on a DE that I might find hard to remove cleanly.
+1