Josh Sherman
Why not check out the latest comparison?
As I sat down to research which distro I would have to use to be able to start including Amazon’s Lightsail service back into these reviews, I thought “ya know Josh, you never did do a distro showdown post like you’ve been talking about”
And here we are. The following table shows which distributions (and versions) are currently available on DigitalOcean, Lightsail, Linode and Vultr.
I took some liberties to combine the trivial version differences and completely omitted the available architectures as I would have had to spin up quite a few boxes to actually verify things.
| Distro | Version | DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Linux | 2018.03.0 | ✔ | |||
| Arch Linux | Rolling Release | ✔ | |||
| CentOS | 6.8 | ✔ | |||
| 6.9 | ✔ | ✔ | |||
| 6.10 | ✔ | ||||
| 7.5 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| CoreOS | Stable | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Beta | ✔ | ||||
| Alpha | ✔ | ||||
| Debian | 8.7 | ✔ | |||
| 8.10 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| 9.5 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| Fedora | 26 | ✔ | |||
| 27 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| 28 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| Fedora Atomic | 28 | ✔ | |||
| FreeBSD | 10.3 | ✔ | |||
| 10.4 | ✔ | ✔ | |||
| 11.1 | ✔ | ✔ | |||
| 11.2 | ✔ | ✔ | |||
| Gentoo | Rolling Release | ✔ | |||
| OpenBSD | 6.3 | ✔ | |||
| openSUSE Leap | 15.0 | ✔ | |||
| 42.2 | ✔ | ||||
| 43.3 | ✔ | ||||
| RancherOS | 1.4.0 | ✔ | |||
| Slackware | 14.1 | ✔ | |||
| 14.2 | ✔ | ||||
| Ubuntu | 14.04 LTS | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| 16.04 LTS | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| 17.10 | ✔ | ||||
| 18.04 LTS | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| Windows Server | 2012 R2 | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| 2016 | ✔ | ✔ |
Worth noting that Vultr actually lets you upload your own ISO so you really could run ANY distribution of your choosing. In fact, they even have an ISO library that is pretty loaded up!
Lightsail offered the least amount of options and some of the available versions were somewhat dated (hence why I had dropped them from this comparison once newer Debian and Ubuntu had been released).
Linode offered a handful of distributions that nobody else offered, but at the same time doesn’t support FreeBSD (which I know is a deal breaker for some folks).
Ubuntu was hands down one of the most widely supported distributions making it a great choice if you like to hop between hosts regularly.
Windows isn’t really my cup of tea but if it’s your jam, Lightsail and Vultr both offer a couple of Windows Server versions.
All that said, I would have to say that Vultr’s availability of both Linux, *BSD and Windows editions coupled with the fact that you can bring your own ISO makes it the clear winner for me if solely shopping for a host based on OS availability.
As always, if this post swayed your decision in any way, it would be great if you signed up with my referral links.
- DigitalOcean, new accounts receive $100 in credit (good for 60 days).
- Linode, new accounts receive $100 in credit (good for 60 days).
- UpCloud, new accounts receive $25 in credit.
- Vultr, new accounts receive $100 in credit (good for 30 days).
Or if you’re feeling really generous, show off your favorite tech stack by picking up a shirt!
