[fitkoh]

I've got a couple VPS that aren't doing anything at the moment, which is somewhat offensive to my sensibilities. I decided that I would like to use these to experiment with some different server configurations, because I like to learn by trying new things.

My goal is to set up a server environment that can be used for shared hosting that is as lightweight as possible. The VPS has only .5GB RAM, so I want to keep resource consumption at an absolute minimum. I've been reviewing distrowatch and have a few possibilities:

1. 4MLinux: a miniature Linux distribution focusing on four capabilities: maintenance (as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (for playing video DVDs and other multimedia files), miniserver (using the inetd daemon), and mystery (providing several small Linux games). My first attempt to install this gave me strange errors. I've not been able to find any relevent documentation explaining these errors, so I'll cross this one off tentatively for now.

2. A minimal version of a more common distro: such as Debian or CentOS. These are probably the easier options with plenty of documentation, articles, and tutorials

3. Slackware: a distribution that strives for stability. A full installation of slack would definitely give me more than I need, but it can run even on old pentium 2s. A modern Ryzen VPS should be smoking fast on it. Slackware looks like it isn't updated frequently: the current version in use since 2016; which makes me a little uncomfortable; but there have been regular security updates.

4. A BSD alternative, such as FreeBSD. I tried BSD in the past, and was very pleased with the performance, but there it comes with a price: setup and configuration can be more labor intensive without a dependency resolving package manager.

5. Gentoo: the ultimate in customization. I've also tried Gentoo in the past: in my opinion, the most customizable distro. The first time I managed to complete a Gentoo installation it took me a week - over 20 hours in 7 days. Could be really great for learning, but a nightmare to set up.

Now, for the discussion piece: I'm curious if anyone has any current input on using any of these as a server on a VPS, and if so, what your experience was. Also, if you have other suggestions or alternatives I have missed that may be worth examining would be highly appreciated.

[tryp4vps]

I think it depends on how lightweight a linux distribution you want.

If you like to test for the extreme and want to know how much a 512 MB RAM server can do, perhaps you may try SliTaz or Tiny Core.

If not, I suppose Debian/Ubuntu minimal version would be the best choice for most common usages.

[tbelldesignco]

I second @tryp4vps with the Minimal Debian/Ubuntu flavors, they are pretty small installation packages already when you are using a shell only installation that strips the GUI, but the minimal versions are nice because they are used for SoC tasks and many other similar processes. You also get the benefit of the package managers and stability of the platform too.