While Althea L1 full nodes can be run on any platform it is recommended you run your validator on Linux. The most up to date version of any particular distribution is recommended.
recommended specs are 8gb ram and a quad core CPU. Storage specs will change over time as the chain grows, start with at least 125gb of SSD space. Remember if you are not using a Copy on write filesystem you will need enough storage to keep a backup of the entire blockchain during upgrades.
This entire section is optional, we do not recommend this if you are new to Linux, using a cloud server, or unfamiliar with disk formatting.
Linux supports two major copy on write (COW) filesystems with transparent compression. ZFS and BTRFS. If you have the experience to do so we recommend formatting the disk that will be storing your blockchain data with one of these two.
Modern compression algorithms like ZSTD will reduce the disk space required for blockchain storage by 25% or more. Furthermore since your disk has to read and write 25% less data disk io actually improves. The tradeoff is minimal additional CPU usage and is by far worth it for a disk IO bound application like a Cosmos full node.
Furthermore both of these are Copy on Write (COW) systems. When you 'copy' a folder instead of actually duplicating all that data on disk a virtual copy is made and two folders are shown. When you edit any files in the first folder a copy is then made only of the file you edited or 'wrote' to. This means you can instantly make a backup of a 200gb blockchain data folder with only seconds of downtime and without needing enough disk space to store two entire copies of the blockchain.
For BTRFS simply format at data partiton and select 'BTRFS' as the filesystem. You may need to install the btrfs-progs package for your distribution. Edit the mount options to include -o compress=zstd and reboot.
While BTRFS is very easy to get started with and provides our two key advantages (compression and copy on write) it very quickly requires expert advice as you get into more advanced multi-disk configurations. If you want to have reundant disks we strongly recommend ZFS over BTRFS. ZFS guide