Migrating from 20.04 -> 22.04 -> 24.04 on headless Ubuntu server + hardware upgrade

[Liam Proven]

On Sun, 8 Dec 2024 at 00:17, Bo Berglund <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, I have seen a lot of snap stuff when I do df -h....
>
> What should I choose? Probably Debian since I am used to Ubuntu server command
> line?

Well, yes, if you want a stable slow-moving snap-free server distro,
Debian is a good choice.

If you also want to get rid of systemd, then Devuan.

https://www.devuan.org/

> After all this is a server version without using a desktop.
> Debian is what Ubuntu is based on so I guess I could install it as a server
> using the same download as with a Desktop?

Well, yes.

But I would suggest installing it on a VM on a local machine first, to
get to know it. Then on bare metal on a local machine.

> Or should I install Debian *with* Desktop as a server that I never log on to?
> Then I would have the future option to do some GUI stuff if need be.

If you want a GUI and a snap-free Ubuntu, then try Xubuntu Minimal.

It is an option in the Xubuntu installer but it is also a separate ISO file:

https://xubuntu.org/download/

It installs Ubuntu with the Xfce desktop and _nothing_ else. No
browser, no GUI text editor, nothing. It is _really_ minimal.

That means that although snapd is present, there are no snaps, and you
can just uninstall `snapd`.

You can install Firefox from the Mozilla `.deb` package.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux

Probably the easiest way is to copy the .deb file onto a USB key and
install it from there... then you can go online and look up the lines
to put into `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.list` so it will be
automatically updated in future.

For a GUI text editor, just do: `sudo apt install leafpad` or
something like that.

> But if setting it to Desktop means tons of software being installed than perhaps
> not....

On my old home server, I had Xubuntu, but I did not set the GUI to
start automatically. So, it was there on disk, but not running in
normal use.

(Now I just use TrueNAS.)



> What I have on this server is:
> - Apache server
>   Here I use LetsEncrypt certs and I do not remember how I set that up.
>
> - Subversion plugged into Apache
>   This is a backup server which receives nightly synchronization
>   data from my company's Subversion server.
>
> - OpenVPN server with multiple services for connection to my home LAN
>
> - Video utility that runs downloads at regular intervals using ffmpeg

Gosh, that is quite complicated. What distro/version is it running now?


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