I’ve been getting more into self hosting lately, grabbed an optiplex 3050 for everything and I’m running Mint currently. Looking more into things though, I saw Debian come up as a more barebones distro and now I’m wondering if there is a lot of benefit to going more barebones. I’m not having any issues with my current setup but now I can’t stop thinking about it. I am newer to Linux but having to learn new things doesn’t wig me out much if there is a lot more involvement with Debian
Edit: I appreciate the responses. I do see where I could just end up creating problems that don’t exist by experimenting with it more. Debian does sound enticing so it’s definitely something I’ll mess about with virtually for now and see how I like it in comparison. But I definitely have to agree on the “don’t mess with a good thing” if it’s working for me. All your answers have definitely given me something to play with now as well, I want the problems to solve but doing it in a separate environment would suit me better to learn a few things. This community rocks.
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I’m not having any issues with my current setup
There’s your answer.
+1 🐧
If your current setup is satisfying your needs don’t change it. Linux Mint is quite similar to Debian when it comes to the base.
If you want to try and learn new thing maybe look into Bash scripting or Docker. Think of something useful you would like to have and try creating it.Yes. Always. Unless you prefer FreeBSD
LMDE is life
Desktop environments? On a server??
One of us… One of us…
Debian is … fine. It’s the Toyota Corolla of distros. It’s reliable, it’ll likely do what you need it to do. It’s not fun or exciting or packed with the latest tech, it just does its job with minimum fuss.
Toyota Corolla is not “fine”, it’s a marvel of engineering, reaching levels of reliability and quality control previously unfathomable, the world’s best-selling car of all time, still going strong and still constantly improving after six decades.
But yes, Debian is the Toyota Corolla of Linux.
Which is what makes it an excellent server distro. And also why I don’t tend to use it on anything with a screen.
The most messing around I’ve done with my server after setting it up is update to trixie. I think I might have had to reset it two or three times in the past 6 months for the reason of “I didn’t feel like actually troubleshooting”
My recommendation is Debian for a server (real or virtual), or Proxmox. The former is perfectly reasonable and excellent experience; the latter is more flexible and more complex.
Debian is the parent distro of numerous Linux flavours (including *buntu, which aren’t suitable as a server OS, IMHO), so administration and services are all common (apt, etc). No need to learn dnf, pacman/yay, etc.
It’s still my preferred server OS, despite other options and being experienced.
Though I do also have a NUC running Proxmox (for VMs and LXCs), and both a NAS and RasPi running Docker. 🤷♂️ My Debian server is a VM inside one of them.
Proxmox, ironically, is also based on Debian.
I’m running Mint currently
I’m wondering if there is a lot of benefit to going more barebones
Not really. On the scale at which homelabs operate, I doubt you’ll see any difference at all – except what might be the significant time sink to set everything up again.
I’m not having any issues with my current setup
I’d put this firmly in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” category. Mint is already a distro which is ultimately a Debian derivative. It operates more like Debian as opposed to, say, Fedora or Arch. While it can be enticing to explore the many options of Linux, the benefit isn’t clear here.
Now, distro hopping on a nonproduction system? Something where you don’t care what’s on it and you just want to experiment? That’s one of the best parts of being a Linux user. But at least do that first before even approaching breaking something that isn’t broken.
It sounds more like you want to have fun distro hopping, and believe me: I can tell you from experience that distro hopping isn’t fun if you have to rely on that machine.
It sounds more like you want to have fun distro hopping, and believe me: I can tell you from experience that distro hopping isn’t fun if you have to rely on that machine.
This is 95% of my use case for VMs. Want to check out opensuse? Set up a VM and try to do something in it.
You probably know this, but Mint is kind of just Debian with extra stuff (some might call it bloat, but that’s a matter of use case). So a switch to Debian from Mint should be very straightforward, if not seamless. The package manager is the same, and that’s usually the biggest part of switching distros. Debian is also ideal for hosting specifically; many, many production servers run on Debian. It’s also arguably the best-supported distro out there, so whatever question you have had probably already been answered.
TL;DR you should totally try Debian out (especially a headless version). It mostly like won’t be an issue.
You could also try Mint DE (Debian Edition) and get closer to the source (and ditch any of that Ubuntu crap).
Should I be using Debian?
That’s unanswerable but …
I’ve used Debian exclusively for many years. There are several aspects that have served me well:
- debian is one of the older, more popular distros - huge community and catalogue of solved problems.
- it just makes sense to run the same OS on my desktop and on servers, no oddities between them.
- it’s stable and boring.
On that last point, before switching to debian I (like everyone) enjoyed different DE’s and distros because they look great and the constant change gives a feeling of progress. However, at some point I realised that I didn’t want my OS to be a distraction from what I’m actually doing. Like I want to get my work done, and something not working quite right with the OS due to some bug or update is a huge distraction. Debian’s release cycle mitigates that problem.
In the before times it used to be annoying that the software in Debian’s repos lagged a long way behind the current releases, but that’s not really a problem with the advent of flatpak, nix, and (my preference) AppImages.
Recently I was tempted to switch to NixOS, but I didn’t.
I’m not having any issues with my current setup
I’m lazy. I just want things to work. So in your shoes, I wouldn’t go trying to create work if things work fine.
I run Debian on my home server and my VPS, but I chose it for familiarity and stability. I wouldn’t say Debian is inherently barebones; you can add/build whatever you want. It is a longstanding, capable distro that is the base of many other distros. It’s a solid choice that favors stability. And if things are working with Mint, why break them?
By contrast, I run CachyOS on my laptop because it’s a newer laptop and the rolling release model of CachyOS (and Arch, which it’s built on) gets the updates and hardware support I need to make my laptop work. It’s simpler, better, and less work, and significantly more functional than it’s be with Debian, because the rolling release distro moves fast. My home server is 10 year old hardware, so the more stable Debian is fine.
Like everyone else said, didn’t fix it, if not broken. Admins like distros like Debian and Arch(sorry) because you have more initial control of what’s on them. Why have a GUI, if you didn’t need it? Mix that with a little OCD and next thing you’re doing is recompiling the kernel. Fun stuff 😀
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters LXC Linux Containers NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
[Thread #61 for this comm, first seen 4th Feb 2026, 21:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
If your current setup works well for you, there’s no reason to change it.
You could try Debian in a VM (virtual machine) if you want to. If you’re running a desktop environment, GNOME Boxes makes it pretty easy to create VMs. It works even if you don’t use GNOME.
If you want to run it as a headless server (no screen plugged in to it), I’d install Proxmox on the system, and use VMs or LXC containers for everything. Proxmox gives you a web UI to manage VMs and containers.
I’m also new to this and have been using Mint for my server, since it’s what I am using for my desktop. I’m planning on testing out moving it to Debian. If I’m being honest, the real reason is because the logo is cooler.
