Raspberry Pi 3 A+ - stable server Linux?

[piokos]

Could you suggest a robust server distro for Raspberry Pi 3 A+?
I'm generally a fan of openSUSE, but I just can't make it work on 512 MB RAM. :/

System will be running data-related tasks: collecting (web scraping etc), Apache Airflow instance, some light RDBMS and Minikube.

deb or rpm - doesn't matter that much. I'm generally more used to rpm side, but for this project a stable debian/ubuntu would be fine as well.

I know the obvious choice would be Raspbian, but for some reason I haven't had much luck with it - albeit used only with X11.

 

[mxnerd]

DietPi

Lightweight justice for your SBC!

Optimised | Simplified | For everyone - Backed by community, DietPi is a minimal OS image for SBCs - Raspberry Pi, Odroid, PINE64 etc. Install software optimised for you!

dietpi.com

Learn How to Setup Dietpi for the Raspberry Pi

It's a lightweight operating system.

pimylifeup.com

How to use DietPi on the Raspberry Pi - The Pi

You have a lot of options when it comes to installing an operating system on your Raspberry Pi. To that list, add relative newcomer DietPi...

thepi.io

 

[piokos]

DietPi

Interesting.

Is this an active project? A lot of issues on GitHub and not much happening.
I'll give it a go in VirtualBox, but maybe keep as a backup plan for the project.

 

[mxnerd]

Interesting.

Is this an active project? A lot of issues on GitHub and not much happening.
I'll give it a go in VirtualBox, but maybe keep as a backup plan for the project.

Yes, it's active. An it's truly lightweight. It uses text based UI to manage package installation/uninstallation. It comes with many packages and you choose what you want/need easily.

It also has an active forum.

DietPi Community Forum

Welcome to the DietPi OS Community Forum

dietpi.com

I'm a Windows guy, but I tried x86 version DietPi in VMware last year and really like it. You can add GUI yourself if you need to and make the desktop GUI to start itself when you login. You have to Google it though.

IIRC, the only problem is that it's VMware image seems based on SDCARD 32GB fixed size. If you need more storage, you probably need to expand it using CloneZilla or something else to clone it to a larger disk.

If I get Raspberry SBC someday in the future, I'll definitely run DietPi on it.

==

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dietpi - YouTube

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==

Virtualbox version info. It says 1GB RAM, but 512MB is OK I believe.

OK, I was wrong about the VM disk. It's expandable in VM config. (Both VMware & VirtualBox)

DietPi Community Forum

Welcome to the DietPi OS Community Forum

dietpi.com

 

[mxnerd]

The packages I installed in below pict. consume about 200-300MB with my 512MB DietPi VM I just recreated in VMware.



sysinfo showed in webmin

 

[mxnerd]

One downside of DietPi is everytime you install a package, you need to restart the system.

 

[mxnerd]

Maybe Ubuntu Core is suitable for your purpose too.

Install Ubuntu Server on a Raspberry Pi 2, 3 or 4 | Ubuntu

Ubuntu is an open-source operating system for cross platform development, there’s no better place to get started than with Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi.

ubuntu.com

 

[sdifox]

Move up to rpi4?

 

[piokos]

Move up to rpi4?

An obvious solution.

However, what I have right now is the 3A+ and I'd love to make it work. As a challenge, but also because I have no other use for it.

Once I get past the OS issue, the actual tasks are really light - mostly monitoring a few pages and chewing through the occasional few MB of data.
I'm currently doing this on a f1-micro VM @ Google (which likely is even weaker - I'll run some tests for sure).

If I ever decide to upgrade this system (or replace a dead RPi), it'll most likely be a NUC anyway.

 

[sdifox]

An obvious solution.

However, what I have right now is the 3A+ and I'd love to make it work. As a challenge, but also because I have no other use for it.

Once I get past the OS issue, the actual tasks are really light - mostly monitoring a few pages and chewing through the occasional few MB of data.
I'm currently doing this on a f1-micro VM @ Google (which likely is even weaker - I'll run some tests for sure).

If I ever decide to upgrade this system (or replace a dead RPi), it'll most likely be a NUC anyway.

Linux that fits anywhere: 15 very small footprint distros

If you've got an old PC or a super-small configuration, one of these Linux distributions should work for you.

www.zdnet.com

You can always drop packages you don't need from raspbian and just vnc to it

 

[skyking]

Raspbian?

That's the officially supported distro, and I have a soft spot for Debian anyway.