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?
Use vanilla Debian. It is well suited for that purposes and it is great in terms of long time support: stable distro updates almost never break anything and upgrading to new release is possible and relatively simple. Don't listen to those recommending Arch or Fedora, upgrading them is a pain especially when you have to support many servers.
If you want something more lightweight, you may try Alpine. It is also a distro of choice for docker containers. However I'd prefer Debian for the host.
Honestly, the more I've thought about it, the more this feels like a sound solution. And then I can just run VMs for distros I want to sandbox in.
Maybe have a look at Proxmox, a Debian-based hypervisor for VMs and containers.
I've actually really wanted to try Proxmox. Both for personal use, but because the experience/knowledge would benefit my career.
If you're going for a container/VM-first approach, you might be interested in Bluefin DX - it's an immutable distro based on Fedora Atomic, and follows a workflow revolving around containers and VMs. Basically tuned exactly for homelab users and developers, who're looking for a stable yet up-to-date base (unlike Debian, which tends to use outdated packages, unless you're on Sid). The biggest advantages of using an immutable distro is that you never have to worry about a broken update again - so you can just focus on your work.
except fedora atomic you can upgrate every machine at the same time
This does not mean that you won't have troubles because of new software bugs or incompatibilities with old configs.
same thing with debian
edit: actually no, because every config from app is created from zero, so meanwhile debian the same config stay on your machine until you reinstall fedora atomic you can compare your configuration for what you changed in your /etc
Have you ever upgraded debian? If both local config and default config have changed, it suggests you review the changes and choose which config to use or merge it manually.
Upgrading them should be done frequently since it's a rolling release distro. If you wait a long time and then do a large update, you may run into issues because they are not really designed for that. You should always be on the latest version of packages.
What do you mean? What happens if you leave it too long? How long is too long?
Nothing usually happens but the distro is not tested in that way. The devs don't wait six months and then update every package in the system at once. It probably works (and it has for me, every time) but it's just not what users do normally. They keep it updated all the time.