I am about to set up a cloud instance with linux operating system, and the common choice here normally would be ubuntu. But since they failed their newest release, and I have the option of going fedora or debian. What would you guys recommend for server?
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
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.
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.