Personally I strongly recommend Debian over Ubuntu.
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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This +1 because just an upvote didn't feel strong enough
Personally I would recommend Proxmox. It's a debian based distro for hosting containers and virtual machines
And what OS do you implement there? Debian? :p
Yes, as I said it's a debian base. But Proxmox is built for servers and using it to host and share containers or virtual machines is super simple. Especially with the community helper scripts that can set up different self-hosting projects within minutes with minimal tinkering.
Sorry I think I forgot to write the word.
What do you use as your guest OS? Debian? :p
It depends on the project/container. Some containers run Debian, some Alpine, some Ubuntu. I mostly rely on the community scripts from here and use the defaults.
https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/
I guess everything that supports containers, QEMU and KVM is compatible to use as a guest OS in Proxmox.
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+1 for ProxMox.
I have that running and it’s pretty easy to work with
Why is that, if I may ask? I've used both for years and personally I find Ubuntu has fewer footguns for a new user, and an easisr upgrade process.
I prefer Debian's community-driven governance model, the higher degree of freedom over the system and lack of preinstalled software that I neither need nor want, and the quiet stability that Debian offers.
I also have just not liked Ubuntu's decisions over the years. Little things that piled up like the Unity stuff a few years back (or I guess almost a decade at this point), the forced inclusion of snapd, that time they said they wouldn't offer 32-bit libraries, the little message advertising Ubuntu Pro in the shell.
I've always felt like Debian is happy to just get out of the way and let you use it how you want to use it. That control is what I look for in a distro. What you call "footguns" are to me just more options for control.
For me the footguns in debian have been an unintuitive upgrade process that lets you break things, and configurations/software that don't work well out of the box without user knowledge and intervention. But for my server, Debian has been very nice and lightweight.
Even though Ubuntu is not always pure good the way that Debian is (remember when they had Amazon advertisements and search integrated into the desktop), and minor annoyances like the apt advert are annoying, but they offer an amount of stability and ease of use that I think earns the nickname "preconfigured Debian"
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Debian's footguns are better documented and are generally there for good reason. Ubuntu's footguns are there because "fuck the user".
Yeah, I don't know anything about self-hosting, but I've recently been working on switching from Windows 10 to Linux and I've been really enjoying Kubuntu so far.
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Ubuntu and Docker.
Really? Netplan alone disqualifies Ubuntu as a "friendly stable starter distro", and I can guarantee you that your guide will somehow become outdated with a single new Ubuntu release, or some poor soul who accidentally selected an LTS release.
Docker doesn't matter as much, but there's a reason beyond just FOSS licensing why podman exists.
Would highly recommend Debian instead.
I started on Ubuntu similar to this many years ago and both the server and desktop experience was not fun at all.
As someone who manages a mail server, new debian releases have the same effect.
If you want to avoid this, use a rolling release distro.
I think you are conflating desktop Ubuntu with Ubuntu Server. On a server, you absolutly want a stable, long supported LTS version.
I've been hosting on Ubuntu Server for over 10 years now, and at no point were any packages required to keep it up to date and running outdated.
The problem is when you upgrade
You mean from one LTS to the next? It's been a while, but as far as I remember, it worked fine on my last server (22.04 to 24.04).
And even if something doesn't work, I can have all my stuff spun up on a new server in less than an hour. But that, of course, depends on the amount of data you host.
That makes me very odd, I started with mandrake. Got very frustrated with the hand holding and moved to Debian, I'm not touching Ubuntu with a 10 foot clown pole.
Who in their right mind uses yaml for network config?
Avoiding eye contact while glancing at traefik and authelia
Whats wrong with netplan? Has worked great in my experience.
Netplan alone disqualifies Ubuntu as a "friendly stable starter distro"
OP didnt mention anything about stability. Just ease of use.
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Awesome to read. Thank you. Also, your images aren’t loading for me.
Thanks, glad you liked it.
Yeah, I know that the images are borked. But it's pretty late here and I was too lazy to fix it. I'll fix it tomorrow.
I get that. Sometimes there are things for another day. I hope you get a good nights rest
You should check out the official 11ty images plugin if you haven't already. Itll generate multiple sizes for your output. Its the best feature imo.
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This is cool keep it up
I have wanted to self host ever since I joined the fediverse 5 years ago. Always ends up with one or another error message that I cant get through. But I might give this a chance.
One thing I wish I knew earlier is the "man" command to display the documentation of a command.
I wrestled with whether or not I should be that guy, but self-hosting by definition generally means everything down to the bare metal, i.e. not a VPS.
I can understand how the term could apply to the broader definition of running your own services on managed infrastructure, but it seems odd not to make that distinction in a beginners guide.
I see your point. But to me, self-hosting just means being responsible for the server and services and not necessarily having my own hardware server at home. And just calling it hosting is too broad a definition for me. And at the end of the day, the guide works just as well for your own hardware or a VM, as it does for a VPS.
Making the term self hosting exclusive to running stuff at home feels unnecessarily elitist. Not everyone has the space, bandwidth or family approval to run stuff at home.
You can have the term homelab if you want
Right, I self-host email and have done for ten years or more, but I don't do it out of a server at home. Does my Postfix not count as selfhosting any more?
Hmmm, definitely a grey area in my mind especially with the definition of "host". The host is where the software lives and that isn't yours. Maybe self-managed?
I'm ambivalent as to who uses the term and how, but a deviation from the general consensus of its definition might cause confusion for newcomers to the field who can't make the distinction. That said, I enjoyed OPs post and appreciate the time they put into it.
Homelab on the other hand is not synonymous with self-hosted infrastructure and services, as its intended use is not for production workloads.
Awesome, thanks OP!
Hell yeah. Looking forward to more to pass on to future self-hosters!
Nice guide, thank you!
For getting your stuff available over the internet, y I recommend a secure tunnel with wire guard between your vps and servers running the services.
Make your vps an authentication portal using stuff like Authelia and Fail2ban.
If you're really needing out, get ELK stood up for free and get agents on your containers/services to keep visibility into any potential... Anything
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This 11ty sounds like a nice off the shelf solution to getting a blog started, which I want to do, but how to allow comments? I guess I'm asking what's everyone around here solution for comments
I have been pleased with giscus on my blog (http://roguesecurity.dev/ ) Its powered via github discussions.
I think I want to do a coding / dev blog and hope that some comments help me explore other ways to write code that's why I'm thinking of allowing comments. Thoughts on this? Also, discus might work. Thank!
I would recommend giscus over discus, but yes, certainly a valid approach!
Can't really help you there, since comments were never a consideration for me. They would add an unneeded amount of moderation, and potential threat, to my blog.
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I know next to nothing about self-hosting, so I appreciate that you wrote this series. I'm probably going to use Debian and my own computer, but I think your walk through is still helpful. Thank you.
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