Doesnt have to be. Every decent IT person knows that Linux is best suited for to be used on server machines.
Thats also not 100% correct 
Rocky (AFAIK) is one of derrativates of RHEL. Derrativate != clone
Correct me if Im wrongā¦
@exaCORE Id recommend AlmaLinux. It satisfies 3 out of 4 your requirements.
Many sources, for example:
The first line of OpenSUSEās own description of MicroOS:
For single purpose server applications. Designed to host container workloads
(I feel that is very much inline with what I originally stated: āMicroOS is designed to be a server OS, specifically a container server.ā)
If that isnāt sufficient, Richard Brown, the person you quoted earlier (Aeonās developer and longtime OpenSUSE contributor, and previous Chair of the OpenSUSE board) often refers to MicroOS as server distro. (for example in this informative video, which is about Aeon but the intro discusses MicroOS and its design goals)
It seems like you cherry picking this line without weighting the source.
The source is a direct quote of OpenSUSEās own description of MicroOS on their website.
Further supported by statements from one of the developers most actively involved in MicroOS development (who is also the ex lead of the OpenSUSE project).
What could deserve more weight than that?
Sorry, butā¦ openSUSE in general has always been (or at least, trying to be) a multi-tool
There is no OpenSUSE āin generalā each OpenSUSE project has its own aims and goals and is largely independent in this respect. The fact that there are about a dozen different OpenSUSE variants should be proof enough that there is no one size fits all solution. Some (Tumbleweed, Leap) are general purpose, others (MicroOS, Aeon, etc) are built with a specific use-case or limited set of use-case in mind.
If that doesnāt convince you refer back to the first line of the description of MicroOS quoted earlier:
For single purpose server applications. Designed to host container workloads
We are derailing this topic, and this is my last comment on this tangent. I strongly suggest you watch some of the good videos from OpenSUSE conferences etc, if you want to understand the design model and design goals of MicroOS and related variants.
In the same way, you canāt say that itās only for the desktop use just because it has a GUI either. Just because something has a GUI, it doesnāt mean itās designed for desktop usage, e.g. selfhosting apps.
100% agreed with this. You wouldnāt see any system admin in any serious production environment that would run their servers on a rolling release distro, period. Only home lab nerds would do that, and itās probably rare too.
Negative I see more & more admins deciding to go with rolling release distrosā¦ as long as you know ins-and-outs of chosen distro, I see nothing bad in this
Good luck with them, then 
I feel like you didnāt get the point of this discussion, so I will leave you at that.
First, your link is broken.
Second, this doesnāt tell anything, as Tumbleweed is also on the server page, also with Leap that describes itself like:
For Sysadmins, Enterprise Developers, and āRegularā server Users
Now what, I got myself a source to refer that Leap is a server OS. But wait a minute, both Tumbleweed and Leap are on the desktop page too, especially Leap now that it describes as:
For Sysadmins, Enterprise Developers, and āRegularā Desktop Users
Oh wait
The fact that MicroOS is not on the desktop page yet is because their desktop features are not ready. Itās not that itās not designed to be working on the desktop. Who know what openSUSE will describe the MicroOS on its desktop page when itās ready to be listed there.
Nevertheless, this source is pretty weak.
Yes, he is the man working on Aeon, the desktop part of the OS. But as the man said himself, it has never been designed with either desktop or server in mind, itās pretty much neutral, or trying to do both. The reason that Aeon name exist is to avoid confusion, not because itās technically designed to be that way. For example, you canāt say the same for Ubuntu Core that doesnāt try to be everything like all of openSUSE products.
And I would argue that I disagree with the use of MicroOS on the server due to many issues I had explained many times already in my previous posts.
Say that again when they put the same product on different usage categories
Thereās nothing wrong with that if they can fit both categories.
Except that those variants are all over the place, at many places at the same time
Itās, in fact, the weakest one of your arguments. It seems like you cherry picking this line without weighting the source.
I would also strongly suggest you to actually find yourself a reason of why this thing, x, y, z is better or worse for the task. Give me your opinion. I donāt actually care too much about how the OS is designed for whatever purpose/intend. There are too many of failures. So, the most important thing is whether it is good for the job, and why. I hope this helps.
Rocky Linux is a bug for bug clone of RHEL. Itās how you get RHEL if you donāt want to pay for a RHEL OS license. RHEL has no derivatives in the sense you mean (sort of a fork of the project).
Bonus fact: RHEL is actually a derivative of CentOS Stream or so they purport. So that is the new RHEL upstream from where RHEL-like derivatives can be made. Alma Linux being one of the projects that use Stream for their product.
Any opinions on using FreeBSD instead of Linux for self-hosting?
The point is though you probably donāt need Rocky unless you need to run against a very specific version of RHEL for vendor support/binary compatibility.
These distributions tend to get dated pretty fast, and unless, deployment of your server means it canāt be updated until a certain period when changes are allowed (like for example with a large enterprise might plan this after procuring new servers), itās probably not going to be much benefit.
Servers in the enterprise space have a common goal. Stability above all else.
You can choose to deviate from this goal as a personal choice. At your own risk of instability et cetera.
There are no right or wrong answers here. Just a matter of fulfilling personal needs.
Oracle Linux, if you want a slow moving, RHEL-like distro with a big company backing it up or Fedora, if you want a fast moving distro, would be the options I take. Not a fan of Debian or Ubuntu for many reasons.
These reasons being? If I may ask ofc
I wouldnāt use Oracle Linux unless am using renting their infrastructure or using specific hardware where this is recommended.
And I wouldnāt slap Fedora on any server as that would be ridiculous for a server (not stable at all).
My recommendation to OP would be if they want a stable OS for their server, you canāt do better than RHEL/clones/derivatives that are faithful to RHEL bugs > Ubuntu/Debian > Opensuse Leap. Anything else wouldnāt have good support. If you want something more bleeding edge which will definitely increase your cost of maintenance, feel free to gamble with microOS etc.
I meant it as in Rocky Linux is based off RHEL, which is based off CentOS Stream which is based off Fedora. Although I should probably have worded it better, my bad.
Probably something like Tumbleweed? Please donāt tell me itās Archā¦I am an Arch user but even I wonāt run a server on Arch (unless its a homelab server like @archerallstars said)
My life become much easier after I moved my home server and Hetzner VMs to NixOS. I have a single flake where I can share common config between all of them when needed. It is also much easier to setup common tasks like backups or cron, and everything is in one place. Thanks to things like nixos-anywhere and deploy-rs I can also deploy all the changes at once from my (non-NixOS) machine.
The learning curve is quite high though.
Even though Red Hat say this on their website. Thereās nothing that leads me to believe that Fedora is upstream of CentOS Stream or RHEL. Fedora at its core is a different beast from all the above operating systems here. Looks to me more like Red Hat wanting to take credit for FOSS more than anything.
Fedora not stable? The truth with Linuxes is that its as stable as root wants it to be/knows how to make it stableā¦ every Linux flavor can be stable ( = rock solid ) or it can be unstable (as beta versions).
Thats exactly what I love about being root in Linux: you are on your own; you have true power over every aspect of running OS. Whereas on Windows, even as Administrator, you get as much power as MS wishes.
WTF. What has root to do with a distro or packages being stable?
