Software: First and foremost: must be unix-like, must be able to communicate in both ways with an open-wrt router firmware distro and the devices on the local network (android, windows, linux, ipadOS systems). Must be very secure, like enterprise-grade or almost like that. Must be free and open-source. Must be somewhat fault-tolerant (so no Arch or gentoo or anything like that, i don’t feel like recompiling the server’s system daily). Must have these in base repos or easily installed in other methods: secure ssh client (like openSSH or such caliber), a software that enables me to securely control and see the gui of the server from android (Rustdesk? or such), (optionally i2p, dnscrypt, vpn clients, not needed if the router has them, just in case of emergency), ip camera management software, high-security intrusion-detection system, https server with css and js support (preferably command-line). Window manager: must support a very easy to use and lightweight tiling window manager (like i3wm) or if not, its installation and configuration needs to be possible and documented.
Hardware: affordable, x86_64 architecture, should be able to handle all of these at the same time, without freezing or overheating (i live in Hungary, so should be able to handle up to 40°C air temperature with stock fans or there should be space for more fans. liquid cooling is no-go).
I have considered these operating systems. Are any of these bad ideas? What you recommend that is not here?
AlmaLinux Alpine Linux Ubuntu Server Rhino Linux (unofficial ubuntu rolling) Debian Testing Void Linux FreeBSD
I run Slackware on all my servers
i heard it is extremely hard to use. is it true?
Preface: Not the person you responded to.
I’ve never used Slackware myself, but it’s probably the oldest distribution out there. It’s supposed to be stable AF, doesn’t “fix” what ain’t broken, and is very old school in its efficiency mindset. This means it’s indeed not likely to hold your hand through things, but it’s also very thoroughly documented at this point, and any help you find online is much more likely to still (mostly) work regardless of it’s age - unlike most other more frequently updated distros. It’s meant to be reliable, not fancy.
security, being up to date, stability, ease of use. All of these are important, but in this order
It is the oldest distribution and tries to not modify any source so as to keep things pure to the vision of the maintainer of whatever software you have installed. It doesn’t hold your hand, there is no auto find and install dependencies for example, but then again that’s one of its advantages, you know what you have installed and why. I picked up a raspberry pi a while back and gave their Rasbian a try. booted it up and ran its update and saw a Microsoft repo get added and stuff from it starting to download so I unplugged it real quick and put Slackware-arm on that microSD card and never looked back at the rasbian/debian stuff again.
i couldn’t live with no automatic depency resolving. It is like booting up without a package manager, network connection, gui, sudo command. I want a server, not a broken system to fix
It already has all that. And the reason it doesn’t do it auto is so that you can yourself, so you know whats going on. I’m running nextcloud at home for example and apache, mysql, etc were already there so it was like 30 minutes to download and install nextcloud and set it up, very simple, easy and fast to spin up new servers. There are third party package managers that do like sbopkg so you still can if you want.