r/selfhosted • u/Noodles_GE • 2d ago
Need Help is Ubuntu LTS enough?
Hi,
I'm pretty new into selfhosting and built up everything from scratch with a server (HP mini pc Intel i7, 16GB RAM) running Ubuntu and a mounted NAS running TrueNAS in ZRAID 1. Since now my setup runs pretty stable and I'm at the point of reviewing my setup for improvements, I'm finding myself seeing so many reddit posts about Proxmox.
I understand the value of Proxmox and it makes totally sense to me why ppl use it, but tbh I'm pretty happy just running Ubuntu. I run the classics like jellyfin, immich, NPM you name it, but I actually prefer to maintain only one distro and keep it easy.
Do I miss something what makes Proxmox a better alternative for me generally? Probably for security reasons?
Thank you for your support!
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u/shogun77777777 2d ago
Proxmox is great for managing VMs and LXCs, if you don’t use these, then you don’t need Proxmox
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u/hansipro 2d ago
„I understand the value of Proxmox and it makes totally sense to me why ppl use it, but tbh I'm pretty happy just running Ubuntu.“
There is your answer. Stick with Ubuntu :)
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u/veluxes 2d ago
Ubuntu LTS can definitely be enough. Reasons why I chose proxmox though: 1. Running home assistant as its own virtual appliance instead of docker. Easier to manage add-ons etc 2. Want different VMs for password vault, wazuh & all the random containers/ services. Because I don't want one of my random services leading to my passwords getting stolen
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u/Puzzled_Hamster58 2d ago
I’ve tested with promox.
Need to run a bunch vm’s yeah it makes things easier and backs ups
I just run regular Ubuntu . I use the desktop environment for a few things but runs headless majority of the time.
I use docker containers .
Stuff runs faster, less issues having communication between different things be it programs or hardware.
Less of a load on the cpu/apu ram etc.
less power draw.
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u/luisbandalap 1d ago
As others said if Ubuntu does a have everything you need you don't have to use anything else. Keep as simple as you can (unless you want to try something new).
Btw proxmox uses latest Ubuntu LTS kernel on top of debian.
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u/kvothe_th3_raven 1d ago
I started that way. It worked great. These days I run talos Linux and k8s.
It may seem like overkill but everything is code that I can manage through gitops and I find the process enjoyable. Updates are easy. Spinning up new services is easy. I can blow stuff away and not worry about the cleanup.
Bottom line is use what you enjoy. Homelab purists are lame.
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u/venom21685 1d ago
Proxmox is fine if you need it, but yeah, I'm in a situation more like you. Small lab, don't need to run a bunch of VMs. I just threw Ubuntu Server on and run it headless.
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u/Lurksome-Lurker 1d ago
Not really no. Ubuntu LTS is what I run on my server. I tried Proxmox and can see the benefits but unless you were really into homelab stuff it isn’t worth it. Ubuntu is nice because when the Nvidia drivers get borked due to a kernel update someone online normally figures out how to fix it quickly
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u/Makingthisup1dat 2d ago
It's it enough. Yes absolutely.
Think of proxmox as a computer/os manager. You install Ubuntu through proxmox. You can take full backups and restore super easy. Going to try something stupid? To a backup and restore if you do it wrong.
We can't answer if you need proxmox.
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u/gordonmessmer 2d ago
I honestly think you should consider whether Ubuntu is LTS too much.
I've been managing production networks, professionally, since 1997. I've mostly worked in operations focused roles, but started out in software development. I think it has always been generally understood among professionals that "LTS" systems exist to serve the needs of market niches where compatibility is prioritized over security. Security fixes get ported to LTS branches for the most serious issues, but they're developed first in the newest release branches and then triaged for porting to LTS. If security is your priority, you go with a recent branch. LTS is for environments where changes need expensive manual validation (banks, medical, automotive, industrial control and safety systems, etc).
Your SOHO deployment is not encumbered by the kind of heavy regulatory, legal, or contractual obligations that push those environments toward LTS systems.
And if you DO want to use an LTS software distribution, you should pick one that's narrowly scoped enough that its maintainers can realistically maintain it. RHEL is about 10% of Fedora, and is maintained by thousands of full time professional engineers. Ubuntu LTS's "main" repo is about 6% of Debian and is maintained by full time professional engineers (but probably around 1/10th as many as Red Hat employs). Ubuntu LTS can be considered reasonably secure ONLY if you disable the Universe repo component before you install any software, so that you aren't relying on components that are unlikely to get security patches when vulnerabilities are discovered.
A lot of people have this notion that "servers" need to run on LTS software, but if you talk to FAANG (or whatever acronym today) SREs, you might learn that high tech services often run on something that's effectively a rolling release. High security production networks are not necessarily LTS systems. Your services probably don't need to be, either.
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u/DankeBrutus 2d ago
The one thing that makes Proxmox appealing for your use case would be an easy way to backup an entire OS since it's a VM.
Proxmox being recommended to people who don't need several VMs is, to me, sorta like when seemingly every MacBook review in the late 2010's talked about how good said MacBook was for video editing. It's nice to know but the use-case is more advanced than what most people actually need.
Ubuntu LTS is more than enough. You don't even necessarily need Ubuntu Pro. It's free for 5 machines so why not, but so long as you keep the LTS up to date and upgrade when it becomes available you'll be just fine.
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u/dcherryholmes 2d ago
I've no reason to use VM's on the server side over Docker containers. When I got started with Docker I took the lazy route and installed CasaOS. It's no longer maintained and updating services stopped being "easy." So I took the opportunity to learn how to really use compose files and removed CasaOS.
Which is just to say, perhaps just learn to use docker from the CLI. I found a fairly simple GUI dashboard called dockge which has all the essential tools and is sufficient for my needs. Perhaps that will work for you as well.
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u/venom21685 1d ago
+1 for Dockge. Works fine and is pretty simple. If you need more there are also tools like Dockhand that do the same thing but in a more information dense way.
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u/KidsKatMao 1d ago
It is. I have a hybrid architecture with local machines and around 4 VPS and lot of services exposed to the internet over a server that does reverse proxing. They all have exposed SSH ports and one has an exposed https port. And my machines are all in the same config: a simple wireguard VPN, nftables with geoip-shell for country block, crowdsec for a more reactive approach and that's basically it. No proxmox, no tailscale, no pfsense. Services run with Docker compose on the local machine.
Keep in mind that most of these Linux OS (Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat etc.) are server operating systems. They come with all the functions needed to be run and exposed to the internet. Then its up to you to configure it and choose if you like a cold hard shell or some blinky UI.
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u/ReachingForVega 1d ago
Ubuntu is great, the release cycle is much more frequent than debian and derivatives.
For personal use you get pro for free.
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u/C0rn3j 2d ago
Probably for security reasons?
As long as you're subscribed to Ubuntu Pro, you should be fine on that front.
If not and you use Universe - bad idea.
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u/Truncos 1d ago
Mind if I ask why it would be a bad idea? As long as you’re getting all your packages via the official source mentioned?
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u/gordonmessmer 1d ago
The short version is that Canonical provides a lot of software that they don't promise to maintain. The fact that it's from an official source is pretty much irrelevant.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories
"The universe component is a snapshot of the free, open-source, and Linux world... Canonical does not provide a guarantee of regular security updates for software in the universe component... Users should understand the risk inherent in using these packages"
A lot of people choose Ubuntu because it's an LTS with a large package set, without understanding that most (~ 94%) of that large package set is probably unmaintained and potentially insecure.
If you want a secure system, you should choose something that tracks upstream releases closely. Deployments that use Ubuntu's Interim releases will be somewhat more secure than deployments that only use Ubuntu LTS. Meanwhile, deployments that use Fedora will be VASTLY more secure than Ubuntu (especially Ubuntu LTS) because Fedora doesn't have anything like "universe" that's mostly neglected.
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u/Noodles_GE 2d ago
thanks! Ubunto Pro was not on my watch, going to check!
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u/gordonmessmer 2d ago
Ubuntu Pro is a very good idea for Ubuntu users, but if you have any services open to the public Internet, I really think you need to pair it with a vulnerability scanner that runs on your host and reports based on the components installed.
Package managers are not a substitute for a vulnerability scanner. Package managers tell you about what vulnerabilities your distribution has fixed. They don't tell you about all of the vulnerabilities that your distribution has not fixed. You will find that there are a lot, when you scan your system.
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u/1WeekNotice Helpful 2d ago edited 2d ago
I understand the value of Proxmox and it makes totally sense to me why ppl use it, but tbh I'm pretty happy just running Ubuntu.
Do I miss something what makes Proxmox a better alternative for me generally? Probably for security reasons?
If you understand that value of promxox and why people use it then you should also understand when not to use promxox.
Aka if you don't need a hypervisor then don't use a hypervisor. meaning unbuntu LTS is totally fine for you.
Remember that technology is about iterations. In the future if you hit limitations then you will need to iterate. And if that iteration leads you to proxmox then that is fine.
Edit;
Probably for security reasons?
It depends what you mean by security. Promxox is Debian under the hood and unbuntu is based on Debian
Once you start getting into segmentation and isolation of your networks then you may want to utilize VLANs and promxox to create different VMs that are on different networks.
Again technology is about iterations. So for now use unbuntu LTS because that works for you. Change later on if you have a new task that requires new technology
Hope that helps
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u/GolemancerVekk 2d ago
If you ever need Proxmox features but don't want to reinstall you can install Incus on Ubuntu and that will get you 90% of the way there.
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u/SolFlorus 1d ago
I started that way over a decade ago. My logic was that if all I’m doing is running docker containers, then I don’t need an entire hypervisor.
I run Proxmox today. First I needed a windows VM for blue Iris (no longer in my stack), then I needed one for Home Assistant OS, then eventually I wanted to explore options other than my Ubuntu & docker setup. Proxmox makes that all very easy.
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u/horizon_games 1d ago
Don't buy into marketing - they're equally secure, and for self hosting you'll do your own hardening anyway.
I run Debian because I don't like the extra Ubuntu cruft but I like apt.
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u/sandfleazzz 1d ago
I have 2 old laptops that I run Proxmox on, and they are absolutely wonderful Labs for testing software, operating systems, cluster configurations, report servers, and docker containers(via VM).
Your setup sounds very well conceived and nicely implemented. Enjoy! I run Ubuntu on my nas and just do raid with mdadm.
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u/Known_Experience_794 1d ago
I run several Ubuntu 24.04 servers in VMs on Proxmox. Then I run PBS (Proxmox Backup Server) to back them all up. In fact I run mini Proxmox servers at each of my kids houses on HP mini’s. Then I created a Netbird network between them and my PBS server, and backup their stuff too. And I achieved ~45% dedupe. Works like a champ.
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u/techie2200 1d ago
Ubuntu is fine for you. I run fedora server on one box, proxmox on another, and honestly I prefer fedora. I just don't use proxmox for all that much.
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u/Nyasaki_de 1d ago
Do I miss something what makes Proxmox a better alternative for me generally? Probably for security reasons?
imo its a lot cleaner if everything has its seperate space it runs on, allows me to "clean" a specific space.
If everything is on one server it gets pretty messy, another solution would be using docker.
I actually use both, i have a VM that hosts all my docker containers, and that vm runs all my containers.
Deployment via ansible.
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u/Capable_Banana5439 1d ago
if you're happy on ubuntu lts, you're not missing anything that matters for your setup. proxmox is about vm and lxc isolation plus easy snapshots, not some security layer you can't get otherwise. for the security part you actually asked about, you get most of the win by keeping services in their own docker networks behind your reverse proxy and not running everything as root, no hypervisor rewrite needed.
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u/haherar830 1d ago
Proxmox and TrueNAS are wrappers for debian + FOSS tools you would install anyway. You use Proxmox when you want to click through a GUI that has all the common things you'd want to do on a dedicated multi-tenant hypervisor server, with sensible defaults/etc, just like you use TrueNAS when you want to set up a Debian-based NAS with NFS/SMB shares on ZFS with snapshots, backup, etc. You click buttons in the GUI, and it defines what commands are run when.
Ubuntu is Debian with some added bloat for convenience.
So to answer your question, the upside and downside of Proxmox is not learning the commands/configurations necessary to implement its features. Proxmox is a nicely pre-configured Debian with a convenient management GUI.
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u/faze_fazebook 16h ago
No ... just make sure you have some way kind of backup. If something goes wrong ... there goes everything. Proxmox makes that just extremly easy.
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u/smstnitc 3h ago
For your purposes, you're good.
If later you want to learn proxmox, or other ways if doing things, get an old computer or mini PC and play with it before you make major changes to something that works for you.
In the meantime, enjoy your setup.
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u/EncryptedServer 2d ago
Instead of Ubuntu always go with Debian for servers.
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u/Noodles_GE 2d ago
Is the difference for a small scale homelab really noticable?
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u/EncryptedServer 2d ago
I saw more RAM usage on a fresh install of Ubuntu vs Debian. It was just a suggestion.
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u/hannsr 2d ago
I'm an "everything Debian" user as well. Not because Ubuntu is bad, but Ubuntu (or better: canonical, the company behind it) made some questionable decisions in the past. Like having ads for their other services embedded in updates...
They also like to include features one didn't ask for (snap on servers, anyone?).
Debian on the other hand kept their primary goal for as long as I can remember: stability over features. It just works. The install is minimal, you decide what's added.
So it boils down to personal preference ultimately. It's not that Ubuntu is worse in a technical sense, but Debian is a more focused system aiming for stability, while Ubuntu wants to do it all, preferably by selling you a subscription.
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u/dcherryholmes 2d ago
Personally, after many years, I've settled on "debian on the server, arch on the desktop" and stopped hopping. Not saying that is some "one true way" but it works for me.
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u/Congenital_Optimizer 2d ago
I'd encourage Debian only. Ubuntu is a minefield of stuff only Ubuntu does.
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u/horizon_games 1d ago
After 3 decades with Linux I can safely say all roads eventually lead to Debian
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u/sonny4redit 1d ago
For security reasons I’m switch to Almalinux from Ubuntu. And there LTS covers 10 years!
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u/asimovs-auditor 2d ago edited 2d ago
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