Hi everyone. I’ve been managing servers for a few years now, mostly using Ubuntu because that’s what everyone around me seemed to recommend. It worked fine, but lately I’ve started questioning whether it’s the best choice for long-term production workloads.
I run a couple of backend services, a database, and some scheduled jobs that are supposed to run quietly in the background without constant babysitting. I don’t care much about having the newest software versions as soon as they’re released — stability and predictability are far more important to me.
I keep hearing that Debian is still the go-to choice for many experienced admins, especially for production servers. Is Debian VPS really that different in practice, or is this just tradition and habit? I’d love to hear real experiences, especially from people who’ve been running Debian servers for a long time.

Debian is one of those systems that doesn’t try to impress you on day one, but slowly earns your trust over time. The main reason experienced admins stick with Debian VPS is its philosophy: stability first, changes only when absolutely necessary. For production environments, this mindset is incredibly valuable.
In my case, I migrated several long-running services from Ubuntu to Debian because I got tired of unexpected changes after updates. With Debian, updates are conservative, thoroughly tested, and rarely introduce surprises. Once your stack is configured, it tends to stay that way, which is exactly what you want for backend services and databases.
I’ve been running my production workloads on https://hostman.com/products/vps-debian/ for quite a while now. The Debian environment is clean, minimal, and efficient — no unnecessary services, no bloat. Resource usage is predictable, and the system feels calm, if that makes sense.
Debian VPS may not be flashy, but if your goal is to sleep well at night knowing your server will behave tomorrow exactly like it did today, it’s still extremely relevant.

Thanks for the detailed explanation — this sounds like exactly the kind of reliability I’m looking for.