To address some of the issues outlined in the article, I've settled on running Alpine Linux in my homelab. Things I enjoy:

- Runs completely from ram and is incredibly small which makes it easy to grok all running processes.

- It has a reasonably complete catalog of packages due it's popularity as a container distro.

- The LBU backup utility and APKOVL artifacts make committing, aborting, or reverting config changes a breeze so I can tinker to my hearts content without fear of borking the system.