Originally it was for the Pi, but can also be installed on x64 PC systems, either UEFI or BIOS, so basically runs on anything. It does run great on a Pi, it’s biggest advantage being that it logs to RAM, which massively saves on SD card wear. It’s also the only current distro which works reliably on the original Pi 1 nowadays (if you still have those hanging around!)
And I get that everyone saying “Docker!” is a bit boring, but there is a reason for it - containerising everything does make it a lot easier to manage and migrate everything to another system or revert back a single component to a different version. And you just backup a config file and your data folder for each container and you can recreate your system so easily. If you install directly, you have to worry about databases, file paths, permissions… but as you said, there’s nothing wrong with just installing stuff. Especially if it’s only a few programs.
I run 26 docker containers. Installing all those on a system would be a mess…
To counter my own “easy to migrate” argument, DietPi includes a backup utility called ‘dietpi-backup’ (genius naming convention, I know!) which you can use to backup your whole system to another drive. And of course restore your whole setup on a clean install.
Also very useful for rollbacks if needed. I have a 2.5in 5400rpm 1TB drive attached to my DietPi server which is just for backups - it backs up every night at 2am and it’s incremental too. I have 5 days of backups and it’s one command and a couple of ‘Enters’ to get it rolling back to an earlier config - really easy and useful when a recent kernel update broke my ethernet adapter (Debian’s fault - not DietPi!).
Originally it was for the Pi, but can also be installed on x64 PC systems, either UEFI or BIOS, so basically runs on anything. It does run great on a Pi, it’s biggest advantage being that it logs to RAM, which massively saves on SD card wear. It’s also the only current distro which works reliably on the original Pi 1 nowadays (if you still have those hanging around!)
And I get that everyone saying “Docker!” is a bit boring, but there is a reason for it - containerising everything does make it a lot easier to manage and migrate everything to another system or revert back a single component to a different version. And you just backup a config file and your data folder for each container and you can recreate your system so easily. If you install directly, you have to worry about databases, file paths, permissions… but as you said, there’s nothing wrong with just installing stuff. Especially if it’s only a few programs.
I run 26 docker containers. Installing all those on a system would be a mess…
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To counter my own “easy to migrate” argument, DietPi includes a backup utility called ‘dietpi-backup’ (genius naming convention, I know!) which you can use to backup your whole system to another drive. And of course restore your whole setup on a clean install.
Also very useful for rollbacks if needed. I have a 2.5in 5400rpm 1TB drive attached to my DietPi server which is just for backups - it backs up every night at 2am and it’s incremental too. I have 5 days of backups and it’s one command and a couple of ‘Enters’ to get it rolling back to an earlier config - really easy and useful when a recent kernel update broke my ethernet adapter (Debian’s fault - not DietPi!).