Is there a distro of Linux without GUI? What do hosting companies install? [closed]

I believe OS GUI takes some machine resources and is not really needed for a web server.
What OS do people install to make a Linux-based web server without GUI?

We've been using CentOS for our SaaS app for a long time. Just configure the install to not include any GUI (X)

You can fully automate the install starting from a simple kickstart approach, to a full PXE setup.

BTW, the advantage of CentOS, is that it will be supported for a longer time than other distros. I think 7 years at the moment.

Personally I like Debian the most for servers. The installer gives you the option to install a desktop environment, print server, file server, base system.

For your case you would just select install base system. In that case the installer will just install the base packages to get your server up and running. From that moment you have a rock-solid and very lightweight server and it's trivial to install other packages that you may need via apt-get or aptitude

Most linux distros can be installed without a GUI. Personally I would recommend Debian for servers, but you'll probably also hear from the Gentoo, Linux from scratch, and Red Hat crowd. Pretty much any distro could handle a web server pretty easily.

Ubuntu server is fairly common I think.

The distributions I most often encounter are:

• Debian
• Ubuntu Server
• CentOS

And Fedora.

All of them come with a CLI only setup for server use AFAIK.