Hopefully not viewed as a standard issue "which distro" post

I currently have a Plex Media Server (dedicated) set up and running for a while now, it's always been on Mint as well as my Laptop and my Wife's. But it's now getting some more work thrown at it, I'm installing Owncloud and replacing my dropbox accts with it as well as doing all my contacts and calender syncs with it in place of google.

Here's where I'm conflicted, I'm leaning towards CentOS since it's RHEL and learning the OS that all the big boys use sounds good in my head and obviously reliability doesn't come into question. The downside is I've been on .deb based stuff for over a decade now and maybe I'm just stubborn it almost makes me a little uneasy not knowing it's ins and outs like I would the .deb based ones. I can learn, maybe I'm lazy.

My other idea was running Debian, stable as all hell, good on servers and possibly more support from the community since more people are most likely running it than CentOS.

The other idea which makes me cringe to say is Ubuntu Server. I ran Ubuntu desktop years ago as did many and over time had more and more issues with the direction they went with the OS and left. The Server doesn't seem to have that issue and the other upside is the have a completely insane user base and every time I've ever had to google up an issue there is always no shortage of support for Ubuntu, not so much for Debian (aside from here in many cases) and even less for CentOS (maybe because the pros don't need help?)

So it comes down to the availability of precompiled packages (I'm not against source but still like em') and online documentation and/or community support when needed.

CentOS
Debian
Ubuntu Server

Any suggestions or something I'm not thinking of?

I may be prejudiced, as a long-term Red Hat user, but I think it's easier than Debian.

To take an example, a couple of years ago someone posted here asking how to set up a server for MUD games, with a port open in the firewall for telnet. With Debian, where he'd started, he had to write his own iptable rule and he couldn't make sense of the Debian wiki. I got him to switch to CentOS, where there's a graphical firewall configuration tool: all he had to do was tick a box! Actually he didn't need to modify the firewall, as Debian disables it by default! Also, from the security point of view, CentOS has SEL by default: Linux for paranoids.

As for usage, the annual survey of web-servers shows CentOS and Debian Stable alternate between first and second place. For support, as well as this site there's also
http://www.centos.org/forums
http://wiki.centos.org/

PS You also get 10 years' support instead of 3.

1 members found this post helpful.

It really is a personal preference. I started with RH-5.0, about a year later I was ready to abandon Linux, luckily enough I tried Debian and never looked back.

You can also try OpenSUSE, but I'm not sure why you would switch unless you're missing features/functionality/reliability, etc. Sounds like you know your Deb. Stick with it.
On the other hand CentOS and SUSE both have awesome communities so if you decide to experiment you will easily be able to find help.

1 members found this post helpful.

I would not fix what's not broken, unless you can like with it potentially being broken for the first few weeks it takes you to get up to speed on your new choice. I personally do not enjoy interacting with Debian, so the fact that my home server (a Pi) runs Debian sometimes annoys me. Once, I decided to try something different, and in the end discovered that actually Debian had all the things that I needed. I wasted two weeks learning this, going from one "look! we have a Pi distro too!!!1!" .img to another, time after time finding that a proof of concept does not a port make.

On the other hand, if you have the time and luxury to learn something new and it won't bother you (or, maybe more importantly, your wife) if your server is out of commission for a week or two, then I heartily recommend Red Hat. I think it's a joy to use on servers; it tends to forego the perplexing defaults (services don't launch themselves just because you happen to install them) or interference by the packager between you and upstream (a Postfix install is a Postfix install, with no added menu from the packager defining which config you're going to get). I learned Red Hat in the interest of getting entry level sys admin jobs and I haven't regretted it for a moment.

Thanks. I do think that learning RH/Cent would be a good idea for the same reason as you, possibly a job down the road maybe, but for now I went with Debian. I'm going to get a CentOS installation running as a VM on my laptop so I can play without worrying about killing it.

Hashicorp Vagrant