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Looking for 64-bit RPi4 Server OS Distro suggestions (self.selfhosted)

submitted 1 year ago by macgregor to c/selfhosted

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So I've been running a little 2 node rpi kubernetes cluster for over a year now, bootstrapped with Ansible and Helm (source). I picked Ubuntu Server at the time because I think the official 64-bit Raspbian OS was still young or maybe not even out at the time (can't quite remember) but I've found myself fighting with Ubuntu an awful lot culminating in a major version upgrade to "jammy" last night that has wrecked one of my nodes. It even tried to delete the running kernel during the upgrade but caught itself and asked me to confirm, wtf. I've never experienced a Linux upgrade this bad. Yeah, "jammy" is right. Luckily I use a separate NAS for persistence. So I'm breaking up with Ubuntu, which I think is the cool thing to do these days anyway, and using this as an opportunity to rebuild and clean up my IaC.

I am most familiar with Red Hat distros (Fedora/CentOS daily drivers for years now, RHEL servers at work) though I'm not familiar with the ARM ecosystem there. Ive also been wanting to try NixOS for a while but looking at some of the rpi config last night had me a little concerned because it felt unfamiliar. Then of course there's the Official Raspbian OS, 64 bit support should be solid by now.

What OS are you using for your Raspberry Pi servers? Any I should definitely avoid?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've only ever used Ubuntu 64-bit on my RaspberryPis without much issue, but honestly, all I ever use them for is hosting docker containers for systems that generally work out-of-the-box. I don't have them clustered in any way (yet). I'm not doing anything fancy (yet).

If you or anyone else has a suggestion for an OS that is super slim and runs Docker, I'd love to hear about it. I don't need the desktop environment whatsoever.

[–] macgregor 1 points 1 year ago

So the only "problem" I had with Ubuntu before this terrible upgrade was having to uninstall snap (which isn't straight forward to do since it's so engrained but also not terrible) because it uses a non trivial amount of resources for the little rpi - CPU, memory, start up time - just existing. I also found myself removing other packages/config because I found it annoying, like the motd/apt notice to upgrade or subscribe to some kind of "pro" plan for some security upgrades, ESM something? That raised my eyebrow.

I have plenty of respect for Ubuntu, it's just leaving a bad taste in my mouth lately so I'll let them simmer for a while as I try out another distro. I'll probably end up with something red hat based, but I won't have time to look until the weekend.