I use Debian flavors for my daily drivers. I have no complaints, no real desire to switch it up on that front.
However, I am starting to get into self-hosting and homelab projects. I'd like to start test driving some light-weight distros of a different flavor.
I'd prefer a GUI be available, but the environment and WM is pretty inconsequential-- except it shouldn't be bloated. I'll install any additional apps I want, I don't need a curated mid-to-heavy-weight distro.
The plan is to make heavy use of Docker images, to try to maintain a clean and modular setup of services. If that makes any difference.
Suggestions? Any slim distros you're just gaga for?
I have a arch and debian server. I am afraid of the arch server. Debian I haven't touched since install other than updatingbit once in a while.
You have experience of Debian use it, or maybe go down fedora, rocky for homelab. You would want to experiment on the homelab not with it.
Nothing is as good as an Arch server... I love the adrenalin running in my veins every update!
I even set an autoupdate script to make things even more scarier!
Despite the adrenalin rush, my Arch never broke
I have had two kernel regressions causing unbootable install. Though i still use Arch on my laptop. For the homelab I would go Debian.
For my daily laptop I use Arch with LTS kernel. I've using it for years and had only 1 issue with normal kernel (that made me switch to LTS)
Also I used Arch as server for long time in my homelab, however now I changed to OrangePi and Raspberry Pi, so I use Ubuntu