Slackware, be bold.
this post was submitted on 07 May 2026
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Github has zero 9's so at this point just use Arch for everything fuck it
(I would personally recommend Debian)
Debian is a great pick. It's stable and has a great support community.
Denian Stable. It just works.
Both Debian and RHEL-like distros are solid choices. Both are super stable. Debian tends to not always have the newest packages, so if you want that I'd steer away from Debian. Personally I use Rocky Linux for my servers. It's based on RHEL, meaning each new major version benefits from Red Hat's 10 years of software support. Debian (and derivates) have better community support I think, but RHEL has very solid documentation (which for the most part applies directly to Rocky, Alma etc.)
Here's a great article outlining the differences between Alma and Rocky.
But for something simple like running a Go application, both should work just fine, so choose what you're most comfortable with.
Rocky is available at Scaleway too.
DEBIAN
Debian or Fedora
I personally go with Fedora Server with automatic security updates.
Rhel if you are using professionally. Their enterprise support staff are wizards when it comes to finding the cause of random issues.
Not an option on Scaleway unfortunately
Do yourself a favor and go with Nixos. Dive head first into to the rabbit hole and set up a repeatable and immutable system. You'll thank yourself later when so many maintenance tasks become a GitOps workflow: update config, commit, push, build, deploy, rollback if it fails
Thank you!
Depends on what you mean by professional and your needs.
Debian (stable) is rock solid but (because) slow changing, if your application is slow (or not) changing it's probably the better choice, but if you need new things before it's ready for a new version it'll be pain. It's the professional sysad's choice because they'll likely not have to do anything.
Fedora is faster moving (think cutting edge, not bleeding edge (e.g. Arch) as opposed to Debian's blunt safety) so if you're in active development it's likely a better choice. It is also sort of the testing arm for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is the quintessential professional Distro, so you'll learn some of that along the way.
Just mean stable. Atleast it should not be the distros fault something suddenly isn't working
Debian it is then, it comes in stable, testing and sid (who breaks his toys) also called unstable variants. Unsurprisingly, you'll be wanting stable.
if you need new things before it’s ready for a new version it’ll be pain
Like what?
Also if you need something before Debian is ready for it... you're weird. I don't mean this in a derogatory fashion, solely that you are doing something our of the ordinary. Consequently you should first question WHY you do that in the first place.
Finally if you do need something very specific, containers are there to ... contain that. Running Debian as the host distribution doesn't mean you're limited to it for your applications, servers included.
Valid point re containers, but OP has a wanting bare metal feel IMO. I like and use both, horses for courses, just giving some context.
wanting bare metal feel IMO
Not sure what that means. Typically I would also question people who think containers are "expensive" in the sense of wasting resources. IMHO it's a great compromise to have very weird services while the server itself is very stable.
Hannah Montana Linux
You get a thumbs up for the humour though.
I'd go with Debian but it's just a personal preference. I had some difficult to set up a samba server the other day in one of my laptops that was running fedora because of firewall configs that I don't use in Debian like adding context or something. Besides that, I kinda think dnf is better than apt in some ways but still use Debian on my home server. I just works
SME here, moving around 300 vms from Rocky to Debian.
But your question is really too vague. Our workflows are quite traditional, but the world is a big place and there is no single right answer here.
How did Ubuntu fail their newest release?
Professional? And you're just switching vendors because you "want to"?
I’ve seen mostly RHEL in professional server environments.
Best fit is always dependent on how you're planning to use it. Find out what your requirements before you set up a server.
Generally Debian is chosen very often, but I'd wager pretty much any distro will do. Your own experience goes a long way in making a distro a good choice.
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Debian would be the most obvious choice. Perhaps Alma is also a good option. If you would like a european option, OpenSUSE leap can also do the job.
Can't say anything for professional use, but debian is rock solid, always a strong choice for servers.
I personally favour Alpine Linux for its minimalism, but Devuan or Debian are fine, and more familiar choices, too. Depending on what you intend to run, especially appliance-like things, OpenBSD might be a good alternative.
Debian & Alma of course!
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