I am running Ubuntu server and I am... satisfied with it. It does what it should, no problems, nothing to worry about, stable AF (as any mature distro?). But lately I am thinking about switching to fedora server (I need to reset my system one way or another, because my space on the hard drive for the system ran out of space (it was a small drive)). I am using fedora on my work machine and I really like it, so I thought I could give fedora on my server a try.

Debian Bookworm

OpenBSD for all of them.

arch + docker for the services

I went for a much simpler approach lately as I downscaled my hardware for efficiency.

I run NixOS on the bare metal. It gives the system management a declarative approach, just like kubernetes would. On top of that, I run libvirt as a hypervisor. In other scenarios I'd use tinyvmm and cloud-hypervisor, but I found qemu way better for the variety of homelab workloads and libvirt is pretty straightforward.

Some vms have pci passthrough, e.g. my routeros vm gets a bunch of NICs directly, some have various funny network topology. Libvirt used to be a pain in that regard, but it's actually fine with NixOS because you manage both sides of the networking stack in declarative configuration.

I run NixOS on the vms too (now for the sake of easy upgrades), and I have a bit of a split between running services natively (systemd is very good about “containerizing” things nowadays) and using docker (mostly because of laziness, e.g. Elastiflow was easier to deploy this way). Finally, I have a single dokerized Ubuntu that's more like a VM (as in, I never had a dockerfile for it, it's fully stateful) running the matter home automaton bits because I gave up on properly containing the matter python stack and went for an easy way out.

Now, a word about alternatives.

I used to run Ubuntu. No more. Upgrading the OS is always a huge pain even if everything is in docker. I want my OS to be managed in a config file and be able to easily roll back to the previous state. I used to run k3s, but even though it is much thinner than k8s, it is still very much ram hungry and I just don’t want to pay for that. Besides, complex networking is often non-trivial due to how its networking works, and multus is a world of pain. I used to run different hypervisors for the VMs (kubevirt, tinyvmm, a bunch others). I went way back to libvirt mostly because it’s straightforward in tuning very specific qemu bits I cared for in the homelab. I have some cpu overprovisioning, so I want to make my quotas set up extremely precisely, sacrificing the right workloads.

ArchlinuxARM, however it does not matter, given that everything I actually run, runs within Docker

TrueNAS Scale

Ubuntu server, I want to switch to debian but I don't know if it'll be worth it

I use Proxmox, running a mix of regular and NixOS based LXCs. One of those also runs Docker for simpler services.

Host is Proxmox, with Ubuntu LTS VMs.

Gentoo!

Currently Ubuntu server 22.04

Previous was ESXi

Next one will be Proxmox

Good ol' Debian 12

My 3 hosts all run Proxmox. Publicly available services run in VMs, usually running Ubuntu. Private services are usually Docker containers connected directly to my TailScale network running directly on the host.

Right now Debian, but I'll migrate to NixOS pretty soon since it's already running on all of my machines except this server.

Freebsd, but it would be openbsd if it had a better filesystem.

Proxmox VE with Alpine Linux guests

Proxmox w/Debian, TrueNAS Scale, and Home Assistant VMs w/(usually Alpine) Docker containers in some VMs

TrueNAS Core as main OS and a few jails for the services I run on the machine.

Ubuntu LTS because that's what I was most comfortable with at the time, now I'd really like to switch over to Debian but I'm not sure I can be bothered until I really have to, everything is working well at the moment. It's running in Proxmox.

Ubuntu normal release running Docker containers.

Had various issues with Debian Bookworm, not being able to install the “server” meta package on one server which left me without all the basics but “apt” and issues with lost IPv6 connections that made me switch to Ubuntu

Nixos, brothers and sisters, show yourself 🥸

slackware, freebsd, netbsd

A few actually.

Rocky Linux 9, XCP-NG, Windows server 2022 datacenter

Different usecasses.

Windows Hyper-V Server on the host with most of the VM's split between Ubuntu and Debian. I also have two Windows VM's that I keep out of necessity.

FreeBSD & 9Front. BSD for my media server and 9front for my web server.

FreeBSD as main OS with jails and one bhyve vm for docker stuff. And ubuntu server on a dell optiplex micro for jellyfin with hardware transcoding

Ubuntu LTS and k3s for all workloads (except for plex, which I've not gotten around to migrating yet...)

Ubuntu, but I'm very strongly considering switching out to Debian or Rocky. Ubuntu has a lot of really unnecessary cruft that I think I'd be better off without.

I use Fedora on my laptop now, so going the RHEL/Rocky/Alma route for my servers is really tempting. Especially as I'm also considering switching to Podman.

NetBSD

Currently Unraid, haven't tried anything else lol

Yunohost (Debian)

Debian.

Armbian with CasaOS

Proxmox on physical servers hosting a variety of vanilla Debian installations. I have a physical router running pfsense as well as two HP miniservers running OpenMediaVault.

Unraid for NAS stuff

Proxmox for Smart home crap

One with Arch that runs gameservers for my friends, and another that runs Proxmox filled with either Arch or Debian in the containers depending on what it is in them.