So I’m dabbling around in selfhosting, and now am just running on a shitty old laptop. There for I’m looking for the most resource friendly Linux when it comes to idle’ing and doing nothing. As most my vm’s are on idle and are only used periodically. But it needs to also be perfomant. So just like debian… Yet…

I know Ubuntu, debian, they are pretty easy to use. Debian is lightweight, yet it’s still heavy. As I tend do make a vm for every new application to manage it easy. Home assistant, adguardhome, nextcloud, etc… Their Ubuntu’s and debian’s on idle are resource intensive against what I recently found… Turnkey Linux.

Turnkeylinux is pretty much debian but stripped down. It uses less then half of what debian needs in resources, and on idle uses litterly a few mb’s of ram. Yet there is one important thing that simply does not want to work on it, and it’s Unbound. So as I want to get all my vm’s on the same distro, that option goes out the window.

So my question is, if not debian, what are other maybe more lightweight Linux’s that are recommended? Or should I just stick with debian as comments are full of it. Or do you know any other gems like turnkey? (centOS and other old, non alive Linux are not a option either.)

You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments View context
0 points

Alpine Linux is not a great suggestion for someone who doesn’t know Linux well, since the lack of libc can and does lead to occasional compatibility problems.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

That’s why I setup a new vm for each program, if it works, perfect onto the next, if it doesn’t, delete vm, start over if I have to… No issue. 😅 I will Atleast look into Alpine

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

That’s why I setup a new vm for each program, if it works, perfect onto the next, if it doesn’t, delete vm, start over if I have to… No issue. 😅 I will Atleast look into Alpine

If you want to save on resources you should use containers instead of vm’s.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Doesn’t help if OP wants to try out different host OS for containers.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Pretty much every distro has a minimal version, including ubuntu. I think the better criteria for choosing a distro are release management, community support, and general architecture of package management etc.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Minimal

https://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Netboot

Etc

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

That’s the spirit. You know Debian already, Alpine will show you other ways to do Linux. You can also look at CentOS/RHEL or Arch and so on. They all have benefits. Alpine is just pretty awesome because it contains no garbage and is 100% POSIX compatible via musl, something the other poster /u/lilolalu doesn’t know of. She just tries to scare you off for the sake of sounding superior but has no knowledge of either glibc or musl. Don’t listen to people like her.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Self-Hosted Main

!main@selfhosted.forum

Create post

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.

For Example

  • Service: Dropbox - Alternative: Nextcloud
  • Service: Google Reader - Alternative: Tiny Tiny RSS
  • Service: Blogger - Alternative: WordPress

We welcome posts that include suggestions for good self-hosted alternatives to popular online services, how they are better, or how they give back control of your data. Also include hints and tips for less technical readers.

Useful Lists

Community stats

  • 1

    Monthly active users

  • 1.8K

    Posts

  • 11K

    Comments

Community moderators