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What Linux operating system would best suit an entry level VPS
Hi all
Looking for the best operating system that would suit a 512mb VPS. Not happy with the overall performance of Ubuntu 20.04. Running a basic IPTV PVR, which is simply transcoding to another better VPS. Things don't work properly, FFMPeg crashes, TVHeadend doesn't even load the playlist, and these things don't happen on other VPS machines.
Having issues that never I never had before, even on a VPS of similar specs with another, the only issue I had with the provider was the low data cap, so want to exhaust all my avenues before I consider jumping to another provider.
The performance may not be the greatest, but it's one of the few VPS providers that offer unlimited data for an extremely affordable price, and it's an area where VPS hosting isn't usually offered with other providers, (New Zealand) and is more expensive than the rest of the world so it's worth trying to sort this out.
My last resort is to set the VPS up as a Wireguard VPN server, and tunnel the traffic to another VPS in Sydney and then connect to that, but struggling with routing, and high latency between the two locations even though they are only just over 2000km away with a direct link between Aus & NZ.
Any advice will be great.
Thanks
Comments
FFMPEG and 512MB consider updating f
Your VPS is working hard for you.
For me, Debian 11
.
512mb is nothing, for FFMPeg you need more RAM!
You need LFS pr Alpine Linux for such a tiny vps!
Need more ram and $$$$
Debian?
Ubuntu is based on Debian. A release of Ubuntu starts with the current Debian. It is not obvious to me that switching to Debian would help performance if the underlying operating system processing is the same or similar for what @paul92 wants to run.
Anything that reduces RAM use would help, so from that standpoint, anything you can do to make your server as "lean" as possible would help.
The best solution is more RAM, but you didn't need any of us to tell you that.
I find CentOS/RedHat/RockyLinux easier on resources, that is if you're doing it headless, command line only.
Make sure you're not wasting resources on a GUI/Desktop
Clear linux.
EasyOS
Add more swap?
Switching the distro is unlikely to help here. Consider getting more resources.
The latency between Sydney <-> NZ is usually less than 40ms so that shouldn't be a big issue for IPTV.
At the end of the day, after you uninstall everything you don't need, you're going to be limited by the size of the kernel. Back in Ye Old Linux Times, the first thing we'd do when installing on a new host was to compile a kernel with just the stuff we needed, not all those extra drivers and stuff that the distros throw in there so things will work out of the box on a wide variety of hardware. With loadable kernel modules these days, you might not even have to go that far: just check to see if any modules are being loaded that you don't need, and unload them.
I've gotten lazy in my old age and don't compile my own kernels any more, but if I were seriously trying to get good performance on a tiny server like this, that's the first thing I'd try. After all, 512 MB is 512 times the amount of RAM I had on my first Linux system. Seems like it ought to be enough.
I vote Debian11
512MB is not enough for such tasks.
Save yourself time, do something productive instead and upgrade VPS to at least 1G of ram.
But if you need answer... Clear Linux has the best optimisation out of all distros. But it will still crash/swap heavily.
Boom:
Alpine Linux, definitely