I’ve been using Red Hat, CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu servers for the past 20 years and only once I painted myself in a corner with an EPEL RH repo and, even then, I admit it was totally my fault.
I have configured manually dozens of servers, and automatically many thousands, with no significant issues. Only when you fight the distro, you’ll end up caught in an edge case. These things are tested automatically 24x7.
I used Linux for a slightly shorter time and I always fight the distro because it should do what I want not the other way around. I need to get things done, with or without the distros cooperation and in this case with or without MS.
If you want to get things your way, I suggest using a distro that’s not as opinionated. Arch and Gentoo seem like good options. Never tried Clear or bare-metal Alpine, but I assume they are similar.
I did, not that different. To clarify, I accept things on Linux I just don't want that on windows because it is a mostly solved problem that does not need the complication. It only introduces a false sense of stability. The endless sea of windows software makers will not suddenly stop their development/deployment practices.
I mean on Linux you have the source and everything is debuggable but imagine 10 apps needing 10 versions of the same software. If it comes to this, it will be a fork moment except you can't fork freaking windows!! Stop trying to make windows Linux and Linux windows. They are both great for their uses, this childish war where one or the other needs to be the only way is silly. This silliness is how we have one browser to dictate everyones needs now.
I use Debian and have three non-Debian repos in my sources.list. No problems thus far.
Been using Linux for over a decade and haven't run into any problems from apt/repo's. So I am using what I believe to be a qualified opinion when I say edge case here.
Even on ubuntu, I run headless servers and this is almost always the case for me. But hey, thanks be to survivorship bias and people jumping on the walled garden bandwagon.
I have configured manually dozens of servers, and automatically many thousands, with no significant issues. Only when you fight the distro, you’ll end up caught in an edge case. These things are tested automatically 24x7.