This series walks through installing four distributions in server mode, intended as the foundation of a web hosting environment — the base on which you later install ISPConfig.
What to install in 2026
If you are setting up a server today, start here instead of repeating the versions in the videos:
| Family | Current version | Supported until |
|---|---|---|
| Debian | 13 (Trixie) | June 2030 |
| Ubuntu Server | 26.04 LTS | May 2031 |
| AlmaLinux / Rocky Linux | 10 | May 2035 |
| openSUSE Leap | 16.0 | October 2027 |
Two changes in direction since the recordings deserve an explanation:
The CentOS in the video no longer exists. CentOS 7 ended on June 30, 2024, and CentOS 8 died earlier, in December 2021 — Red Hat shortened its lifecycle and turned the project into CentOS Stream, which is upstream of RHEL rather than a stable copy of it. Anyone who wants what CentOS used to be — a free, binary-compatible rebuild of RHEL — now installs AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux. The commands in the video still apply to both: it is the same family, with dnf in place of yum.
The Debian installer changed its appearance, not its logic. The screens in the video show the classic debian-installer . It is still there, and the decisions are the same: partitioning, root password, task selection. In Debian 13, the new feature is the alternative graphical installer (Calamares) on the live image — netinst, which is what matters for servers, remains the same.
When installing a server
Regardless of the distribution, four decisions determine whether you will struggle later:
- Do not install a desktop environment. In task selection, check only the SSH server and system tools. A server with a desktop consumes RAM that should belong to the database and increases the attack surface.
- Plan partitioning beforehand. For hosting, separate
/var— that is where sites, databases, and logs live. A log that fills the root partition brings down the entire system; a log that fills a separate partition only brings down logging. - Static IP and FQDN hostname. Hosting and email servers need a fully qualified name (
servidor.seudominio.com.br) that resolves correctly, with a reverse DNS record. That is the subject of the post Getting to Know DNS. - SSH key before closing the door. Configure key-based access and test it in a second session before disabling passwords — the walkthrough is in SSH authentication keys.
Once installation is complete, the panel goes on top: the ISPConfig autoinstaller sets up Apache or Nginx, MariaDB, Postfix, Dovecot, and the rest of the hosting stack.
The videos in the series
Debian Server
First video in the series: a walkthrough of installing Debian 8.5 64-bit, intended as the foundation of a web hosting server capable of hosting systems in Java, PHP, Perl, Python, and Go. Debian 8 images were removed from cdimage.debian.org — to follow along today, download the netinst image for current Debian.
openSUSE Server
Second video: a walkthrough of installing openSUSE for a hosting server, with YaST guiding the process — the most distinctive installer of the four, and the one that displays the most options.
Ubuntu Server
Third video: a walkthrough of installing Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit. One caveat: from version 18.04 onward, Ubuntu Server replaced the Debian installer with Subiquity, with screens quite different from those in the video. The decisions are the same; navigation is not.
CentOS Server
Fourth and final video: a walkthrough of installing CentOS 7 64-bit with the Anaconda installer. It is the most dated video in the series — see the explanation above about the end of CentOS and migration to AlmaLinux or Rocky, which use the same Anaconda.
To keep going
- ISPConfig on Debian — the hosting panel on top of a freshly installed server
- Website hosting with ISPConfig
- SSH authentication keys
- Getting to Know DNS