Now Running On Devuan 2019-06-16

In general I prefer to run servers on Linux and desktops on Windows XP. Servers could be run on one of the various BSD OS's but they seem to be a little behind in the packaging department. Slackware is also a little behind in the packaging department, as well as running their web site through TLS. The only advantage Windows may have when running as a server is RDP which makes management nice. However, if you are going to have the overhead of a GUI, then VNC isn't that big a deal is it? As for desktops... frankly there ain't much that I like at all. I typically use Linux with xfce, but even that has plenty of issues.

You're running what?

Having said all that, the snork.ca web site (and others) have been running on Debian Jessie for a while now. Stretch may have some newer packages but I swear it runs slower, and Buster is just a mess. I have even tried 'buntu over the years but keep gravitating back to Debian for some reason. I guess Jessie just seems to have the best combination of stabilty, packages, and "not screwing with stuff".

One of the things I have been less impressed with in more recent versions of Debian is the switch to systemd. Some folks just seem to love to bitch about whether it was a good idea to switch to systemd or not. Frankly I don't give a fuck about whether it was a "good idea", I just want the thing that works. I want to run regular web server applications like nginx and php. I also want to run stuff like prosody, postfix, spamassassin, and my own scripts. Whether systemd fanbois believe it or not, I run in to more trouble with systemd than I did with sysvinit.

So today I was evaluating what VPS's I have, when I decided to cut back on the memory for a couple of VM's I have at home and move some service back to my own server. When I say "my own server" I mean a laptop that runs VirtualBox. Yes, the snork.ca web site is running on a Devuan virtual machine within a laptop that also happens to run a couple other VM's, behind a residential DSL connection. Anyways, I had also been running in to problems with the fact that OpenVZ uses an older kernel and some newer software just barfs on it. So I decided that while migrating some services, I would try out Devuan ASCII. It is basically a distribution of Linux that was forked off Debian and without systemd. I don't see much change so far of course, but I guess I'll have to keep an eye on my scripts to make sure they don't barf. I did actually notice that prosody was a little weird to start but seems to be functioning fine. Tomorrow I will probably see if I can spin up a Devuan VM for my postfix and spamassassin box which I use as an inbound delivery and filter device in front of my hMailServer machine.