Light weight Distro for VMs
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@JaredBusch said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Assuming it installs, just use the current Proxmox VE, the minimal overhead it adds will at least let you still learn a modern toolset for managing KVM.
Proxmox has 2GB as minimum recommended RAM for the hypervisor and then whatever you need for the guests.
I guess if you have 4GB RAM you would have 2GB to run a couple of tiny VMs.
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@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Ubuntu server minimal might work as well, but not as easy to use imo.
What do you find difficult about a minimal Ubuntu install versus Fedora minimal?
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@Obsolesce said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Ubuntu server minimal might work as well, but not as easy to use imo.
What do you find difficult about a minimal Ubuntu install versus Fedora minimal?
Nothing in the installer. It's managing things after install. Having the enabled-sites and available-sites for Apache configs is one example.
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Alpine Linux would probably be best lightweight distro. It's the most popular base for docker images, it supports KVM, so it should work in your scenario.
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@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@Obsolesce said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Ubuntu server minimal might work as well, but not as easy to use imo.
What do you find difficult about a minimal Ubuntu install versus Fedora minimal?
Nothing in the installer. It's managing things after install. Having the enabled-sites and available-sites for Apache configs is one example.
I'm not sure I understand what you are thinking about with that one. Debian/ubuntu have tools to enable and disable sites and modules and have had for many years. Do you mean it's harder to use commands than editing configuration files manually?
Also it's actually not obvious at all but the different directories for the apache config files are just include files to make it easier to manage. If you don't like it you can just use one httpd.conf for everything.
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You might be able to getaway with using a minimal install of Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora and use containers.
Pihole and AdGuard works great as containers.
You could also us Proxmox and instead of full VM, just use lxc.
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@Pete-S said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@Obsolesce said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Ubuntu server minimal might work as well, but not as easy to use imo.
What do you find difficult about a minimal Ubuntu install versus Fedora minimal?
Nothing in the installer. It's managing things after install. Having the enabled-sites and available-sites for Apache configs is one example.
I'm not sure I understand what you are thinking about with that one. Debian/ubuntu have tools to enable and disable sites and modules and have had for many years. Do you mean it's harder to use commands than editing configuration files manually?
Also it's actually not obvious at all but the different directories for the apache config files are just include files to make it easier to manage. If you don't like it you can just use one httpd.conf for everything.
I know this, but it's still more complex than Fedora/CentOS where you just have different .conf files. Why add the additional steps? It's not like it would prevent someone from messing up a config file!
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@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@Pete-S said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@Obsolesce said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Ubuntu server minimal might work as well, but not as easy to use imo.
What do you find difficult about a minimal Ubuntu install versus Fedora minimal?
Nothing in the installer. It's managing things after install. Having the enabled-sites and available-sites for Apache configs is one example.
I'm not sure I understand what you are thinking about with that one. Debian/ubuntu have tools to enable and disable sites and modules and have had for many years. Do you mean it's harder to use commands than editing configuration files manually?
Also it's actually not obvious at all but the different directories for the apache config files are just include files to make it easier to manage. If you don't like it you can just use one httpd.conf for everything.
I know this, but it's still more complex than Fedora/CentOS where you just have different .conf files. Why add the additional steps? It's not like it would prevent someone from messing up a config file!
Yes, it's more complex but it's because it's more modular. And requires less commands and is faster if you know how it works. It's only more complicated when you have to look where things are. So when you're distro hopping it's sometimes confusing.
Both approaches has it's pros and cons.
Back in the day debian had an apache config file that was just one file, httpd.conf and that was it. Very simple because you had everything in the same place. But I think they changed it simply because it became unwieldy when trying to administer many hosts on the same machine. It's not uncommon to see hundreds of domains and even thousands on the same server at a hosting company for instance.
It's actually pretty easy to put everything back in one config file or a couple, if you wanted to. The more modular layout of the config files isn't something that is compiled in, it's just include files and symlinks. So you could delete the whole shebang without any problems and make it identical to rhel.
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@gjacobse said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
This would likely replace the rPi that is the printer server and UBNT controller.
there are server tasks. The concept of a "light" distro is a reference to desktop releases, not servers. Servers, by definition, are already lightweight.
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@gjacobse said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Lightweight; puppy Linux, lxle, lubuntu, Linux mint.
GUI not needed.
All of those things are things defined by their GUIs. If you don't need a GUI, all of those would be insanely heavy, not light. They are light GUIs, but all heavier than a standard server install without a GUI.
Debian is the lightest enterprise distro, Ubuntu nearly so. Both worlds lighter than anything called "lightweight."
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@Pete-S said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Some of the really light weight stuff uses busybox and boots from compressed images and what not.
Yeah, and you definitely don't want to get that lightweight unless you are trying to build some kind of embedded system. That stuff gets crazy to save like 1MB of RAM.
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@Pete-S said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@JaredBusch said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Assuming it installs, just use the current Proxmox VE, the minimal overhead it adds will at least let you still learn a modern toolset for managing KVM.
Proxmox has 2GB as minimum recommended RAM for the hypervisor and then whatever you need for the guests.
I guess if you have 4GB RAM you would have 2GB to run a couple of tiny VMs.
Yeah, you could easily run two VMs, maybe four, depending on the workload. PiHole, you could run four for sure.
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@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@Obsolesce said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Ubuntu server minimal might work as well, but not as easy to use imo.
What do you find difficult about a minimal Ubuntu install versus Fedora minimal?
Nothing in the installer. It's managing things after install. Having the enabled-sites and available-sites for Apache configs is one example.
You can just ignore that, you know? I like it, but I agree it's unnecessarily complicated if you aren't used to it. But the simpler config files are still there, allowing you to use Fedora's default methods just the same.
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@black3dynamite said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
You might be able to getaway with using a minimal install of Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora and use containers.
I was thinking this, too. Containers are light, VMs are heavy.
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@Pete-S said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@Pete-S said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@Obsolesce said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@travisdh1 said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Ubuntu server minimal might work as well, but not as easy to use imo.
What do you find difficult about a minimal Ubuntu install versus Fedora minimal?
Nothing in the installer. It's managing things after install. Having the enabled-sites and available-sites for Apache configs is one example.
I'm not sure I understand what you are thinking about with that one. Debian/ubuntu have tools to enable and disable sites and modules and have had for many years. Do you mean it's harder to use commands than editing configuration files manually?
Also it's actually not obvious at all but the different directories for the apache config files are just include files to make it easier to manage. If you don't like it you can just use one httpd.conf for everything.
I know this, but it's still more complex than Fedora/CentOS where you just have different .conf files. Why add the additional steps? It's not like it would prevent someone from messing up a config file!
Yes, it's more complex but it's because it's more modular. And requires less commands and is faster if you know how it works. It's only more complicated when you have to look where things are. So when you're distro hopping it's sometimes confusing.
Both approaches has it's pros and cons.
Back in the day debian had an apache config file that was just one file, httpd.conf and that was it. Very simple because you had everything in the same place. But I think they changed it simply because it became unwieldy when trying to administer many hosts on the same machine. It's not uncommon to see hundreds of domains and even thousands on the same server at a hosting company for instance.
It's actually pretty easy to put everything back in one config file or a couple, if you wanted to. The more modular layout of the config files isn't something that is compiled in, it's just include files and symlinks. So you could delete the whole shebang without any problems and make it identical to rhel.
Honestly, I think it's simpler EXTRA for the linking to enable. If you skip the unused directory and make the config files directly in the enabled directory, you get something in the middle where it is module, but you don't have the linkages for enabling/disabling files which I feel is unnecessary 90% of the time. It's a nice middle ground. I like that the Ubuntu default layout there gives you three or more approaches all at once that you can use however you like without needing to change anything.
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@gjacobse said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
I have an old PC that I would like to run a VM on, but under Windows, it’s going to be heavily dogged.
I'm confused, is Windows still going to be on there? If not, I only see one reasonable approach...
Choose a proper server distro, I'd go with Ubuntu 20.10 personally but pick whatever one you like that's current. Enable LXC (Ubuntu makes this crazy easy with LXD, hence one of the reasons I'd choose it, plus it's super light) and voila, you have a system orders of magnitude lighter than anything else and not even as heavy as a container based ProxMox. Base system needs like 450MB to run, each additional VM uses very little more. You might be able to run 8-10 small workloads on that system quite handily.
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@scottalanmiller said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@gjacobse said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
I have an old PC that I would like to run a VM on, but under Windows, it’s going to be heavily dogged.
I'm confused, is Windows still going to be on there? If not, I only see one reasonable approach...
Choose a proper server distro, I'd go with Ubuntu 20.10 personally but pick whatever one you like that's current. Enable LXC (Ubuntu makes this crazy easy with LXD, hence one of the reasons I'd choose it, plus it's super light) and voila, you have a system orders of magnitude lighter than anything else and not even as heavy as a container based ProxMox. Base system needs like 450MB to run, each additional VM uses very little more. You might be able to run 8-10 small workloads on that system quite handily.
That is assuming that the workloads he wants to setup have container based instalations posted.
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@JaredBusch said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@scottalanmiller said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
@gjacobse said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
I have an old PC that I would like to run a VM on, but under Windows, it’s going to be heavily dogged.
I'm confused, is Windows still going to be on there? If not, I only see one reasonable approach...
Choose a proper server distro, I'd go with Ubuntu 20.10 personally but pick whatever one you like that's current. Enable LXC (Ubuntu makes this crazy easy with LXD, hence one of the reasons I'd choose it, plus it's super light) and voila, you have a system orders of magnitude lighter than anything else and not even as heavy as a container based ProxMox. Base system needs like 450MB to run, each additional VM uses very little more. You might be able to run 8-10 small workloads on that system quite handily.
That is assuming that the workloads he wants to setup have container based instalations posted.
No need. Only need for it to not be limited to a pre-built ISO or pre-built VM image. Any standard install method whether source compilation, package manager, install scripts, binary copies, etc. work identically. No reason to even know that you are on a container rather than a VM. Any system that can be installed by the system admin rather than the platform admin and you are good to go. Certainly, there are things that don't work that way, but they are rare and generally not production ready (those methods are generally for demo systems.) Everything he's mentioned will install, for example.
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@scottalanmiller said in Light weight Distro for VMs:
Everything he's mentioned will install, for example.
Yes, but will he understand how to do so?
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Honestly the best thing in my opinion is put k3os on it and run the stuff in a single node Kubernetes cluster. You'll get experience with k8s and the applications use very little resources when deployed this way.
