Which Linux distro should I put on my Raspberry Pi server?

4 points by boomerhackr 6 years ago | 14 comments

I am writing a website in python, and I want deploy my website to a raspberry pi 4. I want it to be secure and lightweight. Which GNU/linux based OS should I use?

hacktember 6 years ago |

Just about any of them would do. It's like saying "I want to drive from Chicago to Minneapolis in a car. Which brand of car should I drive?" Just about all the car brands will get you there. ;)

At the end of the day, I recommend figuring out your preferred distro if you haven't already and going from there. Most major distributions like Ubuntu, openSuSE, and Fedora have Raspberry Pi versions.

If you're asking for optimizations, you'll find them in keeping as few processes running as possible, and you may get better speeds by hardware means such as purchasing a micro SD card with faster read-write capability or getting a cooling fan for the CPU.

Hope that helps, and props to making and running your own website from home! :)

ksaj 6 years ago | |

The car metaphor still leaves a choice between driving a Rolls Royce or a VW Bug. They'll both get you there, but one is totally miserable in the winter. Although that is covered in your second paragraph.

If it is the 8G version, it might be worth implementing a ramdisk for the web server and web logging directories. That way the sdram doesn't get trashed as quickly, and response will be quicker.

ksaj 6 years ago |

What people are saying here is generally correct overall. If you are using the rpi as a server, the distro ever so barely matters. You probably wouldn't want a gui (why give away half the CPU and a sizable chunk of memory to something you aren't even going to look at?) and every distro out there has exactly the same server packages available.

I would install the minimal Raspbian and then add the server applications you want. Also, don't forget you can completely shut off the HDMI for a tiny bit of power savings. If you are going to use https, every little bit counts.

The only reason I actually name a distro when normally I'm hugely agnostic, is because Raspbian is the official distro for Raspberry Pi, and therefor can always be expected to support rpi's various idiosyncrasies.

salawat 6 years ago |

Slackware. The thinking man's distribution. Trim it down ultralight purpose built, or keep it ready to go at a moment's notice. I've got Raspbian on mine, but once I get the 8 gig version, I think I may just pull the trigger on Slacking it up.

Then again, I may be completely insane, because I'm humming and hawing around building a Single System Image out of a pair of them and actually making something roughly analogous to a laptop to go along with it.

To be frank, you probably shouldn't take my advice. I'm clearly a glutton for punishment, and it may lead you to the darker corners of computing related insanity.

boomerhackr 6 years ago | |

I am not sure if I'm ready for that. I've been working on installing gentoo onto a laptop, and I can't get it to boot, so I don't think I want something that difficult. I like using the command line, but that thing (source based distros), it scares me.

LarryMade2 6 years ago |

Tip - if you are going to run the server 24/7 best to use an external USB=>sata HDD instead of a flash card. Did the flash route and after a while (multiple resets) the card just died, flash does not go well for unexpected power cycling. Best to use a mechanical drive better resiliency and recovery.

I used Raspbian (*versions wernt important), mainly I'd choose a distro that works for the versions of server software that you want to keep updated (i.e. older=Ubuntu, newer=Linux Mint)

giantg2 6 years ago |

I would recommend Raspian Lite and install the server packages that you like. You can secure it similar to any other distro. I think there are checklists online that tell you how to configure it securely (root/sudo/user, ssh, permissions to change on specific folders or files).

bediger4000 6 years ago |

I've put Arch and Raspbian on a Pi. I know Raspbian is The Official Raspberry Pi distro, but gee whiz, Arch felt a lot more solid. I ended up using Raspbian to build a 4-node Kubernetes cluster, you just can't do it with Arch.

boomerhackr 6 years ago | |

I thought rolling release distros were bad for servers.

tuananh 6 years ago | | |

it's for homelab. most of stuff we do at homelab is the stuff we tend not to use on production :D

shams93 6 years ago |

I'm using ubuntu server 20.04 along with micro-k8s to have a 3 node cluster for kubernetes at home.

goliatone 6 years ago | |

I tried to set up k3s with Ubuntu 18.04 when it came out for support for the pi and I couldn’t make it work. I forget right now the reasons but it had to do with a missing flag during the image build that precluded some memory management options needed.

Anyhow, I think I will try again. Any advise or gotchas I should be aware of before embarking?

boomerhackr 6 years ago | |

I have heard that Ubuntu had spyware that sent information to amazon. Also I have heard that Ubuntu has a lot of unnecessary software aka bloat. Was that just desktop ubuntu or also ubuntu server?

Iolaum 6 years ago | | |

That was the desktop version. I think they changed that "feature" to be opt in after the outcry.