So... what are your operating systems of choice?
serverpoint
Provider
At ServerPoint, updating templates and testing them is quite a time consuming task.
We are looking to simplify our lives.
We just added AlmaLinux/RockyLinux/CentOS Stream 10... but on top of that, we also maintain:
AlmaLinux 8.x x64
AlmaLinux 9.x x64
CentOS 9 Stream x64
CentOS 7.x x64
Debian 11.3 x64
Debian 12.x x64
Rocky Linux 8.x x64
Rocky Linux 9.x x64
Rocky Linux 10.x x64
Ubuntu 20.04 x64 LTS
Ubuntu 22.04 x64 LTS
Ubuntu 24.04 x64 LTS
Windows 10 Professional x64
Windows 2008 R2 Standard x64
Windows 2012 R2 Standard x64
Windows 2016 Standard x64
Windows 2019 Standard x64
Windows 2022 Standard x64
Windows 2025 Standard x64
But we also maintain older ones; they don't appear in our portal, but they are available. We always get a client here and there that asks for one of these:
CentOS 5, 6 and 8
Debian 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10
Fedora 18 to 33
Ubuntu LTS 10.04 to 18.04
Windows XP
Windows 7
Windows 8
What would be your top choices for Linux and Windows, if you use Windows?
Comments
Debian 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10
Fedora 18 to 33
Ubuntu LTS 10.04 to 18.04
Windows XP
Windows 7
Windows 8
What good can come from giving someone an ancient, unsupported, insecure OS?
debian thanks
[ bunny.net - greencloud - hostus - limitlesshost - onidel - shockhosting - smarthost - speedypage - tierhive ] (aff)
We have a few large clients (especially government) that have some custom software that only compiles in X or Z version of some older version of an OS...
In cases like that, the OS is provided fully firewalled for the customer.
Why not just stick a ISO installer and call it a day? Let the customer bring their own OS.
hmm yeah, not a bad idea. I guess in that case, we would pass on the effort to the client if they want to use something old. We can just make the ISOs available in our system in some pull down menu...
Yep. Support the latest and most common ones, and let the client do their own obscure OS install by ISO. Maybe even let them upload their own ISO to your system temporarily (like for 48 hours or so) if they need specialized ISOs. See which ever is easiest on you.
where https://boot.netboot.xyz/ipxe/netboot.xyz.iso ?
Fuck this 24/7 internet spew of trivia and celebrity bullshit.
I had never seen that before! So many amazing projects out there... we are going to download it in the near future and play with it. Thanks!
No BSD?
I moved all my websites to Carrd, and cancelled all my idlers.
Save the earth, don't idle.
It works fine on "some" installations. When I tried it on my dedicated server last time, it detected the ethernet card but wasn't able to get a IP. Even manually assigning a IP did not work... They should update their kernel to someone less ancient or add more hardware support.
Solaris 10
youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
Automation is amazing.
For NanoKVM I have a script, that builds templates, I just download it and boot a test VM.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
Arch & nixos would be fun, but perfectly happy with debian too
Windows 3.11 - as it has network support and a modern GUI for day to day work.
Debian/Ubuntu - for the normal stuff
FreeBSD for whatever related to routing
Host-C | Storage by Design | AS211462
“If it can’t guarantee behavior under load, it doesn’t belong in production.”
Debian/Ubuntu
Debian installed manually via ISO with the xfs file system.
Debian stable for life
apt mooWhere's Windows 11 ?
We accept Karma donations for the last flan. 🍮 affbrr
My distribution of choice is Debian, but I also like to use Alpine Linux for some lightweight stuff. It's often missing from provider templates.
+1 yeah where is it??
Is it anything to do with why they don’t allow custom isos or boyl
For web hosting AlmaLinux is perfect
SlackWare4Life
The Yeti has left the building.
Debian
AlmaLinux
Rocky Linux
Roughly in that order
You know, maybe it's time we support it... we have received a few requests here and there. Maybe it would attract more BSD clients...
Ahh Solaris... that brings good memories to my old college days... also IRIX, back in the days of Silicon Graphics workstations...
Proxmox Backup Server
I actually like NIX a lot... maybe we can at least provide the ISO built into our portal...> @yoursunny said:
The obstacle was just preparing our hypervisors to provide TPM emulation... but that upgrade is almost done...
We'll have Windows 11 in the system soon.
So many memories on the computer at my dad's job. The first one I ever used.
We'd like to update that we just added Windows 11 to our platform as of today.
We hope to be able to post some great at LES soon!
LES exclusive offer please.
[ bunny.net - greencloud - hostus - limitlesshost - onidel - shockhosting - smarthost - speedypage - tierhive ] (aff)
How did you get a win 11 server license?
The Yeti has left the building.
Probably BYOL?
youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
So they will enable tpm in hypervisor? Also you can't disable telemetry completely or it may not update/broken shit and instability. How do they combat that?
The Yeti has left the building.
What's a Windows 11 server? Are they referring to desktop version of Windows 11 or Windows Server 2025? Also, if they are willing to go with windows, telemetry comes as a package. Just like using google account means your data is being sold to advertisers.
Probably WinSrv 2025
youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
By default I just use ubuntu or ubuntu mnimal if resources are scarce
This is correct. We have enabled swtpm in all of our hypervisors, which emulates a TPM for Windows 11/2025.
For Windows 11 licensing, the client would bring their own license, as we are not allowed to offer it under the Service Provider Licensing Agreement. Which, is silly... Microsoft needs to finally allow it. Not everyone wants to deal with a Server edition...
OS of choice?
MacOS is fine for what it is, but I find it annoying.
Qubes OS is WILD!
Arch has great documentation.
Debian is solid.
Void Linux is an interesting alternative.
I like hearing the AntiX dev rant. I also like lightweight desktops, so their distro is interesting to me.
Tiny Core Linux is cool.
FreeBSD seems to have the best driver support of the BSDs.
Love OpenSense!
I hope they decide not to cancel the Raspberry Pi Desktop OS (for AMD64 PC) -I thought it was nice.
I'm keeping my eye on Haiku: haiku-os.org
ReactOS would probably not be stuck in slow motion if someone could give them a few million euros.
I must say that I am really impressed with ZorinOS, which I have been using lately.
I just found out about 9front.org. Interesting.
TempleOS for prayer.
It does not matter what you do, you will never please everybody, so just support a few of the major distributions via templates and then let users upload their own isos if they want something else.
Netboot as someone mentioned is a nice solution that a lot of people appreciate, it will allow users to run less known distributions or even BSD if they want to but you do not have to maintain them.
Great list! Of those, we use TinyCore quite a bit! And I wish we could offer MacOS VMs.....
I think that is the idea we are moving to. Provide a library of all kinds of ISOs first, and then add the feature to allow the upload of their ISOs...
Sorry if it is a silly question, what do you use Tiny Core Linux for?
We PXE boot TinyCore on each server that is not in use by a client and it runs a series of custom scripts, some of them every X minutes. These scripts report hardware information back to our APIs as well as power usage and other statistics and hardware diagnostics, including disk usage, wiping out disks, etc.
Some of these scripts also provide for the automated installation of operating systems. And many more uses... we keep adding some features here and there every year...
We also use it in some low power servers that are used as honeypots in our network, some are attached to temperature sensors, etc.
@serverpoint If you're looking for a web hosting purpose, I would suggest going with AlmaLinux or RockyLinux OS both are stable, secure, and well-supported alternatives to CentOS, ideal for production environments.
However, if your goal is development, Debian would be the best choice. It offers excellent package management, long-term stability, and is widely used in development environments.
Hope this helps!
John Smith
🌍 www.hifivehost.com | ⚡ Empowering Scalable Hosting Solutions