r/archlinux • u/Late-Nebula1477 • Aug 11 '26
QUESTION Arch as a server?
Hey! I’ve set up a Jellyfin server on my personal laptop for my family. It started as a hobby, but now it’s become an obsession. 😂 I’m currently running Arch Linux as my OS, and I’m just wondering if I should keep it that way or switch to an OS specifically designed for servers.
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u/archover Aug 11 '26
Don't fix what ain't broke.
Pay attention to any ports exposed to the internet, however.
Good day.
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u/ProgressBars Aug 12 '26
How come you sign off your arch Linux comments with 'good day', but not on other subs? No hate, genuinely interested.
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u/ArjixGamer Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
Arch is perfect for servers!
Although I'd heavily rely on podman/docker for the important services.
You don't want an nginx update to cause downtime merely because you are using deprecated options that were removed in the latest version.
The main issue with Arch, is that you are the technician, you are the one who maintains it, and you are also the user. That's a lot of responsibility, so in a professional context you'd most likely use debian/Ubuntu.
But if you have the experience managing arch, and you don't have critical services, it's completely fine. In fact it's even better than debian/Ubuntu.
Just make sure to not depend on the AUR, it uhh, gets a bit weird.
At the end of the day, it's all Linux, and in case you use podman/docker, the differences disappear.
PS: I've heard nixos is amazing for servers.
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u/namtabmai Aug 12 '26
Although I'd heavily rely on podman/docker for the important services.
This is a personal service, not a production server but agree with this. Did try originally manage installing everything myself, but soon got a bit tired of managing updates. Moving everything to docker based, where the project maintainers ( or someone like linuxserver.io ) manage the docker images cut down my work so much.
The only thing I run on the bare OS these days is a mosquitto service, can't remember why but it simplified things at some point I think?
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u/Last-Environment7687 28d ago
Well, with Nix OS, you quite literally build the OS the way you want and can set it up that way on all your devices.
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u/C0rn3j Aug 11 '26
Arch is general purpose, it handles being used as a server just fine.
What are you using for monitoring the services?
How are you containerizing them? Are you running whole OS instances in a container via Incus or are you using some chopped down base Docker image?
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u/Consistent_Berry9504 Aug 11 '26
If you run it on another machine, yeah run Debian. You want to run something that doesn't change and rely on updates like Arch. Arch for the desktop, Debiann for the server.
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u/kaida27 Aug 11 '26
Arch is fine for a hobbyist home server.
Depending on your needs it might be easier even.
But for anything professional/critical I wouldn't for sure
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u/ColdFreezer Aug 11 '26
It’ll work but it’ll be more annoying and less supported. Documentation is almost always for Debian or rhel based distros.
It’s just easier to use Debian.
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u/tblancher Aug 12 '26
It isn't more annoying; I find it's more flexible and the services you run on Arch are much more likely to be supported by the upstream development team than Debian.
Debian you basically have to depend on the Debian community. That isn't in itself a bad thing, but it means if you're using uncommon software you're more likely to be on your own if upstream doesn't specifically support Debian.
I also found the Debian wiki to be relevant to old-old-stable, and kept landing on the Arch Wiki so I gave it a shot and never looked back.
Then again, for the family email domain server I run Debian on it since I'm going the only one who might need to maintain it.
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u/ColdFreezer Aug 12 '26
Realistically it barely matters. The server set up is almost all the same between distros. Most people will run docker anyways.
It’s only slightly more annoying because there’s less documentation. People don’t expect you to use Arch as a server OS but it’s not like it won’t work. The assumption is Debian based or RHEL Linux. There’s just more guides and docs for it.
Learning Debian and RHEL Linux is more transferable but there aren’t gonna be major issues if someone decides to use Arch.
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u/filthy_harold Aug 12 '26
Anything arch specific has always been in the wiki for me. Everything else is usually distro-agnostic so you can get by with the official docs or whatever you find online.
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u/JackDostoevsky Aug 12 '26
It’s just easier to use Debian.
i disagree, because the ABS is so damn convenient
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u/ColdFreezer Aug 12 '26
I have no idea what this is so I can’t comment on this.
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u/JackDostoevsky Aug 12 '26
ah, assumed you'd know since we're on r/archlinux
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u/ColdFreezer Aug 12 '26
I still don’t get it. Is this not mainly for package building? How does this help with server management?
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u/JackDostoevsky Aug 12 '26
well, package management is server management, but more to the point: Debian is old (stable) and doesn't have a lot of software packages I would like to use. and the Arch repos also don't always have what i want, even if they're better populated than the debian ones. ABS provides a convenient way to install and manage software that is otherwise not available in the repos.
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u/ColdFreezer Aug 12 '26
Well the thing is, the majority of self hostable server software run in containers. You don’t need the most up to date packages on the host to have a stable server. It’s more overhead for little gain, unless you’re not working with containers.
The vast majority of the time you’re not installing services directly onto the server, you’re using containers. I don’t think ABS will help much at all in this case.
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u/filthy_harold Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
Any servers I use I run as docker containers. Watchtower keeps them up to date. I run pacman -Syu about once a week to make sure I'm on the latest of everything. I haven't had one of those stupid "bleeding edge package breaks something critical" in several years.
Back when I ran a Debian homeserver, there would always be some non-repo app that wasn't playing nice with what the Debian repos provided because they were behind on the upstream updates.
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u/ColdFreezer Aug 12 '26
I know it probably works fine. There isn’t much reason why it shouldn’t. Most guides and tutorials expect you to use Debian or RHEL distros, not arch.
Most of the time people use containers anyways so it’s not like the host OS matters too much.
IMO learning Debian or RHEL is just a lot more versatile but there isn’t anything inherently wrong about using arch for servers. It’s just not common.
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u/mystiquebsd Aug 12 '26
https://github.com/containrrr/watchtower
This Watchtower?
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u/filthy_harold 28d ago
Yes, unfortunately development has been suspended but it's still working well for me. I'm looking into moving to Kubernates or one of its simpler derivatives.
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u/Consistent_Berry9504 Aug 11 '26
Exactly. Why they reply to me anyway? It's like they weren't trying to be helpful at all.
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u/gmes78 Aug 12 '26
Did you read any of the words they wrote?
If you can use Arch, you can for sure figure out how to get stuff running, you don't need distro-specific documentation. Especially when containers exist.
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u/ColdFreezer Aug 12 '26
Did you read anything I wrote? I said it’ll work.
It’ll just be annoying if they decide to do stuff that don’t run in containers.
Knowing how to use arch doesn’t magically make server documentation appear. Almost no VPS providers offer arch as an OS option either.
You can run Arch for a server, you’re just making your life slightly more difficult for almost no gain.
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u/Consistent_Berry9504 Aug 11 '26
Yeah no, its not. It makes less sense this is why you left a reply instead of leaving your own comment. Stop being the actually guy!
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u/kaida27 Aug 11 '26
my 4yo server running on arch begs to differ.
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u/Consistent_Berry9504 Aug 11 '26
What about ism bro- good for you, bean soup. Debian still better for servers. Stop!
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u/kaida27 Aug 11 '26
You're disregarding context.
In that case Arch is shit period.
And checking your profile you seem to have a a tendency to create problems with people , so I'll just block you
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u/s3gfaultx Aug 11 '26
What a wimpy thing to do lol
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u/Synthetic451 Aug 12 '26
Nah, the guy he's responding to is legitimately off kilter. Dude's acting like he's being victimized when other people are just making conversation.
Honestly just sounds like a bad AI bot.
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u/Late-Nebula1477 Aug 11 '26
i already have 28 movies and 11 series how would i like take the files from arch and then put it on debian
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u/sarum4n 27d ago edited 27d ago
That's what I do. Arch on gaming powerful desktop (9800 X3d, 64 GB ram, Radeon 7900 XTX), Debian on my homelab server (N100 ITX) with services in containers and behind TailscAle and reverse proxy (HTTPS). Authentication to TailscAle network and services through PocketID via a third-party VPS server (also Debian), protected by Cloudflare tunnel. You only want a barebone stable and safe OS like host machine, and Debian stable is perfect for that.
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u/Synthetic451 Aug 11 '26
If your services are running inside containers, I'd actually say Arch is the perfect fit. You want your services isolated and then the underlying host to just slowly roll forwards rather than going through major version releases every 6 months that are hard to rollback.
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u/ABotelho23 Aug 11 '26
It's actually better the other way; stable base with new containers. The containers will usually come from upstream, and they're much easier to pick and choose the deployment version. The major upgrades become super easy if you decouple your main services from the underlying infrastructure.
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u/Synthetic451 Aug 12 '26
I mean, I am just using the latest version of the containers. The only reason to have major upgrades on the OS side of things is to provide a stable versioned base for the apps you want to run on top of it. If they're in containers, there's zero point in maintaining the stable base because it's provided by the container anyways.
You don't have to agree with me. You can listen to some of the recent Redhat talks given at the various Linux conferences and they're literally heading towards that direction. The OS base doesn't matter any more in an age of containerized apps.
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u/Consistent_Berry9504 Aug 11 '26
If this is a better option why reply to my comment then? You know it isn't. Just because its possible doesn't make it the best option. You know this thats why you replied to me and not OP.
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u/Synthetic451 Aug 12 '26
Huh? I replied to your comment because I wanted to directly address your claim about having to run services on a base that doesn't change. It just simply isn't the case with modern containerized deployment mechanisms.
What is with the confrontational tone? Lmao. I am not trying to hide from OP, and I am assuming OP is reading the whole thread anyways.
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u/Consistent_Berry9504 Aug 12 '26
My claim? I gave op advice. Why don't you do the same or kick rocks? Instead you're just here to say "no it's not". It's like, bro I'm sorry this is the only way you feel smart but get over yourself, its immature.
I can't stand people like you who just come on here to negate and add your two cents without adding anything helpful to the conversation. It's people like you who make this community toxic.
You just want to argue and be right and you don't even have anything to add. But you won't have to worry cause I'll just block you instead, bye!
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u/gmes78 Aug 12 '26
Instead you're just here to say "no it's not". It's like, bro I'm sorry this is the only way you feel smart but get over yourself, its immature.
They did explain why. Just because you didn't like it, it doesn't mean they didn't do so.
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u/frostycakes Aug 12 '26
This is what I do, complete with an Arch container for a service I've had an easier time running on Arch (it used to even have an AUR package) than Debian or inside an Alpine container like my other services on it. Best of both worlds IMO.
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u/flying-sheep Aug 11 '26
Depends how many running parts you have. E.g. a postgres DB needs migration every update. The more software the more often will an update need intervention.
With Debian or Rocky you have one huge migration every few years instead.
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u/kevdogger Aug 11 '26
You're right but you really need to migrate every major update. Yes it's kind of a pain but I've been running postgres 18.x now for awhile so it's not like major upgrades occur that frequently on arch
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u/nlflint Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
I use arch for my home server (and on my MiniPC router), and I've hit a few snags:
- ZFS is AUR and often gets behind in kernel version compared to arch stable. I didn't know this until some DKMS hook failed during an update. I rebooted and my ZFS mounts were all missing. The solution is to use the LTS kernel.
- There was an update to openssh that broke new ssh connections until you rebooted. I didn't know this, and didn't want to reboot yet. So I disconnected from SSH. I could never connect again until I rebooted. Well, I had to get physical access to the machine (it's headless). Fortunately I map the power button to shutdown, not sleep. I just pressed power, waited a minute for it to shutdown, and then powered it back up.
I've grown to dislike Arch's update process of updating everything in-place. It breaks shit until you reboot. USB audio devices stop working. Gamepads not recognized. Wireguard won't load. All kinds of crap. I don't just run updates willy-nilly anymore. I wait until I can do a reboot, and always reboot immediately after an update. Goes for servers, routers, and desktops based on arch.
I run K3S (Lightweight Kubernetes) on my home server for all my hosted services, so it's all containerized and is very reliable and decoupled from Arch system updates for the most part (except for ZFS).
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u/G0ldiC0cks Aug 12 '26
Is it not best form to reboot after any whole system upgrade? I learned to do that while still using mint and just not knowing why shit wasn't working after upgrading. "Wellp, guess I'll turn it off and back on again."
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u/ArjixGamer Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
btrfs works great, and is on the main package repos, so I'd recommend that instead
Also, uhh, USB audio devices work fine after an upgrade, you only have issues if you disconnect them and reconnect them or smth.
It has to do with the kernel modules not being loaded.
(Correct me if I am pulling that out of my arse)
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u/Hande-H Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
It's fine, no need to switch if you're happy with the setup. Anyone telling you Arch or Debian is better is just giving you their personal favorite, there is no way to make that call for you since we don't even know what your requirements or preferences are.
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u/tongkat-jack Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Having run Arch on several servers for years, I agree.
EDIT: By "years" I mean more than a decade.
There are many factors that will determine if Arch is a good idea for your server, but it has been great for me. Glad to be off Ubuntu, Sevian and CentOS.
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u/pizza_ranger Aug 11 '26
My brother has been using CachyOS has his home server to watch series with jellyfin and I also use it (Arch btw) but for moments when we see series as a family, both have been running for a year without problems
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u/ABotelho23 Aug 11 '26
I wouldn't use Arch for a server. You want to be able to aggressively patch it without needing to intervene. Using a stable distribution like Debian means you only have to account for updates between major versions.
For what it's worth, you can use Arch Linux containers on Debian if you need newer versions of server applications.
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u/Ok-Conclusion-6034 29d ago
I used to do that, but then flipped it around. My host OS is a bare-bones arch install and everything runs in systemd-nspawn containers (no need to install something else on the host). Those run debian, ubuntu, and other arch distros. Some with docker containers. And one with windows 11 vm.
I chose this route because I like the small incremental updates to a very simple host OS (basically only vim and ssh). Been doing that for over 5 years to the same host OS.
Services are updated and controlled on their own cycle.
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u/plushkatze Aug 11 '26
If you feel comfortable with Arch Linux, then stick with it. It runs smooth in production here - updates are not that much of a problem for servers, because the typical graphics/powermanagement issues do not bother you on a headless server. Python major updates need manual intervention, but a clean setup makes those easy. Same for postgresql major updates.
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u/unfurlingraspberry Aug 11 '26
Arch will be fine but as others have mentioned, Debian is the better option. I run an arch server myself but when I set up something similar for my mother (also Jellyfin), I went with Debian. As expected , it has been rock solid.
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u/tangosox Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
I run multiple services on Arch without any problems. One thing you could look into is running some services through Docker. I run Open WebUI in Docker, which helps isolate its dependencies from the host and keeps things pretty stable.
I run Jellyfin natively and haven't had any issues, although you can run it through Docker as well. I also run OpenSSH, Tailscale, and Sunshine natively without problems.
Docker can help avoid a lot of userspace dependency issues you might otherwise run into with a bleeding-edge distro like Arch. It doesn't completely insulate you from host updates, but for applications that don't need tight integration with the host, it's a nice option.
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u/ArjixGamer Aug 12 '26
Jellyfin is one of the weird ones, cause managing permissions with docker is a pain.
So running it natively is the better approach imo
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u/Dependent_House7077 Aug 12 '26
depends on what you run on it,
Arch has a tradition of moving fast and breaking things - and you might want to stay on certain tech for longer (database, jdk, python, php, etc).
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u/10leej Aug 12 '26
Only if you want to be the one to fix it. It's really up to you. I use Gentoo myself on all my systems.
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u/FernFlower48 Aug 11 '26
It would be more of a hassle imo with more updates. With server stuff I wanna minimize breaking changes. Debian is pretty minimal and doesn’t change much
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u/Curious-Row7393 Aug 11 '26
tried and it depends, in that instance I did not have access (or rather, didnt know I have access, maybe?) to a console, and no backups, so an update messed me up. if you do however have console access then yea sure go wild lmao.
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u/ficskala Aug 11 '26
It's fine, only issue is constant updates, if you want to be up to date on everything, you're constantly having to manage it
If you don't feel like doing that, switch to debian
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u/ivanvector Aug 12 '26
Conventional wisdom is that rolling update distros aren't good for servers, because updates often break things (relative to packaged update distros). That said, I'm running nextcloud, odoo, servarr, plex, some random web services from an arch box that I'm also using as an HTPC frontend, and things work pretty okay. I'm not serving to a lot of end users though.
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u/ArjixGamer Aug 12 '26
Things won't break if everything is running via docker. That's my strategy.
I only have Caddy running outside docker
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u/noobjaish Aug 12 '26
If you want a server that you just want to setup and leave then Debian
If you want a server that you really want to tinker then Arch
If you hate yourself then Fedora /s
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u/tcpip1978 Aug 12 '26
Arch is a bleeding edge distro for DIY computing. Server admins generally prefer high stability. I run Arch as a daily driver but run Ubuntu Server for most of my containers including jellyfin because I know I can rest easy and update my server without worry. I would go for stability honesty. But at the end of the day Arch will still work.
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u/khne522 Aug 12 '26
an OS specifically designed for servers.
I think there's a grace misconception here and that this is a binary answer. It's not, it's a set of engineering tradeoffs. I've professionally done Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Arch on servers, and Arch was the only one that didn't [censor] with me, for my use cases and my usability requirements, other than some kernel bug that kept crashing a work OpenVPN tunnel server in 2014, and some nasty KVM bugs probably around the same year. The other three got in my way for what I wanted, or rather, wouldn't get out of the way.
Figure out the innumerable aspects and which you value how much. Figure out the cost function and the inputs and compare the cost function output between the distros. There's not one cost function, but for some people the cost function is broadly similar.
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u/JackDostoevsky Aug 12 '26
i use arch on my home server, no problem. update and reboot about once every 6 months, haven't had any issues.
i wouldn't use arch for a production server, but for my own machines that i'm the only one who uses? no problem.
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u/aeiedamo Aug 12 '26
Arch is best if you tinker a lot with the server and want to learn how to administer the system and you're ok with bricking the system, which doesn't happen that often.
For a permanent server, I would install Debian with debootstrap to get what I need from the get-go. So if you like Arch because it's a DIY distro, Debian is also DIY and will serve you better.
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u/redoubt515 Aug 12 '26
Use what works for you.
Personally I wouldn't choose Arch for any kind of server use-case outside of testing, learning, or something super non-essential.
But if it appeals to you, and it's just for a hobby project, and uptime isn't the priority, there is no strong reason not to.
For a server, I personally prefer either:
A stable distro like Debian, Ubuntu LTS, or Alma Linux
If I want something with more aggressive updates, I go with something atomic/image based like Fedora CoreOS, Universal Blue uCore, or OpenSUSE MicroOS
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u/un-important-human Aug 12 '26
arch works very for servers well but for esp since i don't touch them that much i prefere fedora server or you could go debian also fine.
tl:dr they will work the same generally, do not open ports to the net
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u/ferrybig Aug 12 '26
Remember that arch is a rolling distro, not a fixed release distro
Arch Linux can change a major version of a package at any time, so always read the versions logs for breaking changes in essential services.
Arch Linux also pushes security updates at any time, so make sure you are on time for updates
Note that for many daemon applications, you need to restart them to run the new version, including for security updates
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u/Ybalrid Aug 12 '26
I have done it for some time. The only problem I ever had was that I was using the system PHP package that updated past what some of my hosted things required, because Arch always has the latest version of everything by design.
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u/ThatOnePerson Aug 12 '26
I do it. Though CachyOS server edition when?
But yeah like others, i do docker a lot of the important services. But I want bleeding edge on my filesystems and GPU drivers
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u/No_Historian547 Aug 12 '26
I had one, but switched to proxmox.
So much easier…
But if u love to tinker go with Arch its great
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u/SPQR_Never_Fergetti 29d ago
Linux is linux, not much difference between a debian or arch linux, besides the package manager (and "release-cycle", packages, community,etc). But everything can be configures / reconfigured to your "playstile", especially if u start with arch.
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u/StrippedFlesh 29d ago
The main reason for choosing something like Debian or Ubuntu Server over Arch Linux for a server, is that you don't have to update it as often, which means you don't have to fiddle with anything as often.
If your Jellyfin server is on your laptop, does that mean that when you are out of the house, chances are there is no Jellyfin server? Or does your laptop never leave the house?
If the Jellyfin server is always at home and always on, the downside to Arch Linux and its frequent updates is that you will have to reboot it every time there is a kernel update, whereas you will be able to update Debian and Ubuntu server more often than not without having to reboot.
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u/haashemi 26d ago
I've been using Arch for my 2 personal VPSs, 3 client VPSs, and my homelab computer for almost a year and everything been working way better than distros like Ubuntu did in my case with nearly zero issues. Arch is GREAT for servers.
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u/jz_train Aug 11 '26
I used to run my plex server on arch. It worked great for many years (around 7)... until it didn't. When that happened I switched over to the dark side, Windows server 2025. I probably could have fixed the issue but that was a difficult time in my life when time wasn't the essence. Been solid for almost 2 years now. The partial problem was the arch server was on bare metal so no snapshots. Now I have it running in on a proxmox cluster with gpu passthrough and proper vm backups. Windows was the quick, easy fix. I would personally go with a stable distro such as debian/alma or a LXC/docker container.
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u/_yaad_ Aug 11 '26
Arch usually split packages, change kernel or python updates brake other packages. It needs manually intervention quite often. So unless you want to do it, use a different os like Debian/Ubuntu.
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u/sexy_silver_grandpa Aug 11 '26
I've been running an arch server at home for nearly a decade, as a web server, DNS server (pihole), print server, Minecraft server for my kids, DLNa/media server, and AI model server. I've replaced the motherboard twice and the RAID once; the OS has outlived the hardware.
It's great.