Which Linux for Professional Admins?

LazloToth asks: "Short and sweet: with so many distributions of Linux to choose from, and so many of them good to excellent, which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration? If an admin wants to standardize on one Linux distribution and have the best of all worlds on everything from file-and-print servers to database boxes, what, in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes - - the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?"

Gentoo

[by Anonymous Coward]

This answer was specifically optimized for your question.

Re:Gentoo

[Talrias (705583)]

Yes, I personally like Gentoo, but I really think this is something you have to test for yourself, like buying a new house or car. You can be recommended, surely, but the best way to choose a new product you want is to test it yourself. Wikipedia's overview/comparison of Linux distros [wikipedia.org] will give you a guide and allow you to make your own choice.

Now onto my advice. :) The most important aspect of a Linux distro, in my opinion, is the package management system. Ideally you want a system which makes it easy to upgrade, doesn't screw up configuration files, is easy to use, and has a great number of packages available.

For the record, I use Gentoo on my home computer, and Debian on my server (as well as a Windows XP box for gaming).

Chris

Re:Gentoo

[jspectre (102549)]

if you're new to any operating system, WTF are you doing installing it in a production environment?

new to gentoo or debian or redhat or windows. if you don't know the OS you shouldn't be pushing it in production. if you know the product enough to be hired as an administrator in it, then you should have no problems with it in a production environment.

debian isn't any easier to learn than gentoo just because you can apt-get a package vs emerge some source to compile. both distros can install a successfully working package in one line (or bork a system in one other line)

Re:Gentoo

[SharpFang (651121)]

stability

Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.

high-level support options

None?

security

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

rapid updates

No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid.
apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.
emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour.

and ease of administration?

Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".

Don't get me wrong. Typing this from a Gentoo box, and I like my Gentoo. But that's a zealot/fanboy distro. Not a pro admin distro. I keep it because I like it, I can fiddle with it, learn. I can do cool stuff with it. If I was to manage a farm of 200 different of these I'd easily go crazy.

Re:Gentoo

[somethinghollow (530478)]

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

You can always get hardened gentoo [gentoo.org] if you need that extra level of security...

Re:Gentoo

[sp0rk173 (609022)]

Nice job missing the joke, Einstein. However, just to counter you with a bit of reason, and not dogma..

stability:
If you use their standard package set, meaning not keyed for your specific architecture, stability will not be bleeding edge. You'll be building programs with configurations that are well-tested, generally since the inception of portage.

high-level support options:
Yeah, you're right here. But as far as I'm concerned, if the bosses hired you, they should have confidence in your skills and your resourcefulness.

security:
Right here, too. Also - to me - any security in linux is standard, unless you're running an older (read: 2.4.x) kernel that doesn't have much new feature influx. At that point, kernel security approaches that of the BSD's, though I would argue that base system and system services security is still rather low due to lack of development cohesion.

rapid updates:
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. So wrong. For gentoo to be considered for a corporate environment, you would definitely set up a centralized build server, possibly with distcc installed on all of the workstations to mitigate the load, distribute it across the network and speed up compilation times. This build server would also act as a weekly package checkpoint. All of the servers and workstations would use this machine as their central package repository and using a little cron magic and universal, standardized config files, every machine would update on saturday or sunday, grab the new packages off the server, install them, and be done with it. There would be no office-drone typing emerge -u world, then going on an extremely long coffee break. If you were to set up a network of 200+ gentoo machines without making your own, custom stage three tarball, you ARE crazy.

and ease of administration:
See above. After you got the initial infrastructure in place, it would be a breeze. Assuming everything works out right. But hey, they hired you to admin the systems, right? That's what you're there for.

Now, personally i'm past my gentoo phase. Goin' back to the ol' faithful FreeBSD. But, just because Gentoo is a source-based power-user-centered distro doesnt mean you can't cook up your own in-house solution while taking advantage of the awesome tools gentoo provides. The only reason apt is faster than emerge is because emerge uses source by default, while apt-get uses binary packages by default. However, portage can use binary packages and apt-get can indeed install from source. In their default forms you're comparing apples to oranges.
Bottom Line: I can be done, and if you have the know-how, it can be done well.

Re:Gentoo

[ArsonSmith (13997)]

Me: Hi, Oracle, I am having problems getting Oracle 9i to install on my Gentoo server.
Oracle: We don't support Gentoo

Me: Hi, Veritas, I am trying to set up VCS on my Gentoo cluster.
Veritas: We don't support Gentoo

Don't think Gentoo is going on any of my servers. We standardized on Suse do to the huge support structure that has been put in place with them being purchased by Novell. When you are a single admin over 112 servers you need to be sure that each one you log in to is exacly the same. Automation is key. Good vendor support is a requirement.

Linux? Bah.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Hurd. Master of OS's.

Ubuntu

[dieman (4814)]

Hands down. Its debian, its got support, and we're going to see a new release every six months until they run out of cash. :)

Re:Ubuntu

[yamla (136560)]

I agree, though I still prefer Debian itself for servers which will not run any GUI at all. But then, I tend to be fairly conservative in my distributions for servers.

I tried FreeBSD but gave it up. The main problem was that it does not run the 4.x versions of VMWare, unfortunately still a requirement for me. However, I also found that Debian did a better job managing configuration files.

Re:Ubuntu

[misleb (129952)]

18 months of support is not good enough. I have servers that sit around for years which need to be up to date with all current security patches. Although apt-get dist-upgrade is not difficult to do, it is not practical to do every 18 months or so.

What about security releases? Is Ubuntu as good about security as Debian? You know, there is a reason Debian takes so long to release stable. It is very well tested. Ubuntu is a little too bleeding edge for most serious server environments. In my experience, the latest greatest packages are not generally necessary on servers. I'd stick with Debian, personally.

-matthew

To put it short

[A beautiful mind (821714)]

It's the administrator, not the distribution that matters the most. A different administrator might like a different system. There is no absolute objective "good".

Re:To put it short

[DeckardJK (555299)]

I beg to differ... the best distribution is clearly the one with the cutest logo at any given time.

Re:To put it short

[eln (21727)]

Wrong! My distribution of choice is superior in every way to your pathetic distribution of choice. You are the lowest form of loser to think that your worthless distribution could hold a candle to the God-like superiority of my distribution.

My distribution's superiority is clearly demonstrated by it's magnificent out-of-the box handling of my obscure feature of choice. Your pathetic distribution doesn't even support my obscure feature of choice without a course of action so complex that it's madness to even contemplate it.

Clearly, my distribution of choice will utterly destroy your distribution of choice. This is so certain it is pointless for you to resist it.

Re:To put it short

[gbjbaanb (229885)]

Your pathetic distribution doesn't even support my obscure feature of choice without a course of action so complex that it's madness to even contemplate it.

*sigh*. OK, WindowsXP it is then.

Re:To put it short

[aztektum (170569)]

And answers like this (I'm not arguing the point, I think it's valid) are why Linux has made few inroads on corporate desktops. PHB's want one answer to all of their IT problems. Not "Well it depends, we could use Distro A, but Joe likes Distro B better. Although Distro C has better support..." then they end up with Windows XP because there is no "It just works." answer for Linux.

Re:To put it short

[ScuzzMonkey (208981)]

There sure are "it just works" answers for Linux... the problem is that most of the advocates for it aren't content to just name one, but instead like to listen to themselves blather on and show off their technical knowledge of the differences.

The Windows crowd, on the other hand, simply don't have enough technical knowledge to blather about and so Windows wins out. PHBs don't like to be confused.

A competent IT manager will evaluate and present the recommendation best suited for the environment, not try to hold a pointless debate in front of PHBs who don't care and won't get it.

Flamebait -1

[Emugamer (143719)]

Don't you think that if there was a holy grail of Linux distros, that there would be more then one Linux distro? If people agreed on what you asked, there would be less distros to choose from, unfortunately all of them have their downsides, thus listen to what everyone says about their favorite distro, and do what I do, choose Slack. Oh you want a reason? How about "'caus"

Honestly I would choose slack or debian (different reasons for each) and then boot off network, change one image you change them all... then have box specific apps on the local hard drive etc. BTW: get a lot of ram

Management

[wombatmobile (623057)]

what, in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes - - the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?"

I don't know. My management just feels fuzzy.

Re:Management

[winkydink (650484)]

Tell your boss to shave his butt. :)

Define professional

[pronobozo (794672)]

If you are a professional admin, shouldn't you already know what's best?

Obvious

[pjf(at)gna.org (807061)]

> which Linux delivers the best balance of
> stability, high-level support options, security,
> rapid updates, and ease of administration

2.4

Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[PornMaster (749461)]

RedHat and SuSE both have software and hardware vendor support. You might find that companies with an existing relationship with Novell (or even a nostalgic one) will tend towards SuSE, but like in the days decades ago when "Nobody got fired for buying IBM", you'd probably have your best defense against a pink slip with RedHat.

Please, flame away

[Raunch (191457)]

Read no further. Without having to read the reast of these posts; you can get a sense of what is to come here, and hopefully avoid some painful reading:
"I like A".
"I like B".
"A sucks and so does your mom".

PS. Apt-get rules.

Mod Topic -1 Flamebait

[IcEMaN252 (579647)]

Isn't this more of a religious question than a technical one?

What is best for your everything might be best than what is best for my everything.

If I my organization does a, b, and c and requires d, e, and f, then Linux Distro G is best for me. But if you do x, y, and z and need u, v, and w, then Linux Distro T is probably better for you.

There is no _one_ answer.

One vote for SuSE...

[badasscat (563442)]

I'm gonna give my vote to SuSE... the ease and speed of updates is one reason I've stuck with it, after giving up on Mandrake and Red Hat/Fedora. YAST2 (the built-in setup utility) is just such an easy and powerful tool, and it "just works" - you can set it to auto-update if you want (it sets up a cron job for you if you select this option), but even on manual it will identify critical patches separately from non-critical patches, which makes it easy to pick and choose.

Plus, it's Novell now, so it's owned by a "real company", which may or may not be something your own company/organization is looking for (some business do require some level of centralized accountability and support).

I've also been pleasantly surprised with SuSE 9.2 in other areas - it's the cleanest and easiest-to-use distro out of the box that I've used, with no obvious bugs that I've seen. No reason not to use it, and lots of reasons to use it. YAST2 is a big selling point, in my opinion.

Re:One vote for SuSE...

[badasscat (563442)]

I'm gonna give my vote to SuSE... the ease and speed of updates is one reason I've stuck with it, after giving up on Mandrake and Red Hat/Fedora.

Argh...this kinda came out wrong... the reasons I gave up on other distros were not specifically due to the updates (Red Hat has a nice auto-update utility as well) but for a variety of reasons. SuSE is, IMO, the most polished distro I have used overall, and that includes the very nice YAST2. I have just not had any real problems with it, whereas I've had various bits of hardware that could never be properly configured under Mandrake or RH/Fedora, despite the fact that they were supposed to work out of the box. (This included the complete inability to even set hard drive mount points under Fedora Core 3, which is what finally led me to dump Fedora altogether.)

Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Gherald (682277)]

> the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration

Surely Gentoo delivers the best balance of the above. The only real disadvantage is compilation time, but that can be negated by nice'ing long emerges overnight.

Now, if stability and security are paramount I would go with Debian stable. But Gentoo is light years ahead of all contenders in the rapid updates department.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[lysander (31017)]

I, a Debian user, tried Gentoo on two machines. Here were the problems I found:

• Gentoo's idea of security updates is not yet fully developed. There should be a logical step between "this is a security problem" and "ooh, here is a new version". glsa-check needs to work in concert with portage, rather than as an afterthought. This will get better.
• Gentoo's build process doesn't include sensible FEATURES flags by default. In particular, collision-protect, maketest, sandbox, userpriv, and usersandbox really need to be on. I don't want to be building as root. I sure as hell want software to run its own tests to make sure it works (especially if I were trying crazy optimization flags, which I wasn't). And collision-protect, to make sure that packages weren't overwriting other packages' files, seems like a bright idea as well -- except that it doesn't work. I have to turn it off every other week to 'emerge world' for updates. It needs to work, and it needs to be on by default.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[mwhahaha (172475)]

While I concur that Gentoo and Debian are both great distros (i've managed to get a few gentoo boxes in at work), the problem comes from the lack of enterprise support for things such as Oracle and EMC. Oracle only runs on RedHat and maybe SuSE, and EMC software is only supported on RedHat and SuSE. While I have managed to get a gentoo box connected to an EMC, it doesn't have their PowerPath software for failover, etc. That and it took me a week to get the stuff working properly. If Oracle and EMC supported gentoo, i'd set our redhat licenses ablaze. Unfortunately the only thing gentoo/debian can do is web/smtp/dns which is fine if you run mysql/postgres as your choice of database, but these days in an enterprise environment you are stuck with at least one RedHat/SuSE box.

Debian

[Skuggamara (853341)]

As a system administrator and IS manager in a mostly windows environment, I have found Debian to be the most reliable and easy to maintain. The APT system makes security and package upgrades (and downgrades) considerably easier than any RPM system ever was.

While APT is available on Fedora, I have always found Debian to be well-thought out and reliable, even for a Windows guy like me.

Mandrake

[Cyhawkalewagee (854711)]

I work for a fortune 500 company as a Tech. (Only tech for california now, we've been completely outsourced, the only reason they keep me around is because im not afraid of spending my weekend running adaware ;) Anywho, our marketing support department uses several high end production printers nearly 24/7, so stability is key. Last year the printers were hooked up to each members Windows Machine. (No, I didn't set this up, and technicly im not supposed to change it) But recently with increesed adware on the marketing support's computers (i should say one of them, shes an idoit.. anyways) and printers going 'down' due to this single person, the office manager came to me and asked what he could do to stop this from happening. (It has happened almost 10 times this year alone). So i suggested Installing a linux box to handle all the printers. Needless to say, he was extremely skeptical. (Having computer-phobia) So i took another non-priority department, and set them up the way i wanted to see marketing support setup. A few days later, he wanted to see how it worked, so i showed him. At the time, i only had my mandrake cds on me, so i used it. He was extremely impressed about how 'cool' it looked and felt. It wasnt in his words.. 'blocky' (i assume he meant text based) I showed him around the system in general (not a thing about printing though heh) and he fell in love with it after i explained how there isnt any 'adware/spyware' in Linux {At least i dont think there is.. linus help us if the day comes} and how linux itself very rarely crashes. Today i just finished installing Mandrake 10 on his main computer, tomarrow i get to begin converting marketing support. Anyways, Mandrake has always been my personal favorite for computer-newbies/Phobic people, mostly because the install, general 'mandrakness' feel of the system isnt much like tradtional linux . IMHO, its much more graphical in nature, and other more 'common-office-type' people can easily get accustomed to the enviroment. Since your a system admin, also take into account that training new people to work on the new systems may/might/will be easier than on another distro. You also never know if your boss wants to poke around someday, its always nice to let them have their fun. My suggestion for linux: Mandrake My Suggestion in general: FreeBSD FreeBSD however is a whole differnt story =)

Thy *BSD

[ahodgkinson (662233)]

Seriously, for a free (as in speach) distribution with the minimum of feature overload and ease of administration, *BSD is a very good choice.

If ease of administration, stability and security is more important that than latest versions of the latest applications and the ability to use the latest bleeding edge hardware, then the *BSD distributions (e.g. FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD) may be the answer. Granted, a fairly good understanding of UNIX will be required, but if you're fairly proficient at adminsitering one or more Linux distributions, then *BSD will be very easy to learn. Even better, the documentation is generally better written, more complete and more up to date than any Linux distribution that I've seen.

This answer may not be what you expect, but then again the question, as posted, deserves a thinking outside the box type of answer. You stated that you want the best of all worlds, and then mention file/printer server and database boxes. It sounds like you're more interested in servers than clients. *BSD is ideal in this regard.

I have a couple other questions to add...

[Lendrick (314723)]

Should I use vi or Emacs?

Which is better... Gnome or KDE?

Should I get a PC or a Macintosh?

Should I have voted for Bush or Kerry?

Who's cooler: pirate or ninja?

Not Gentoo

[Drakino (10965)]

I hate to say this, but after running Gentoo on my home server for a year, it is not enterprise worthy.

Main reason?

Sure, on the surface, Gentoo seems easy to update. Problem is, updates break things. Time and again, I have watched emerge upgrade things, possibly give me important info somewhere in the millions of lines of code it scrolls pointlessly, then I reboot to a service not acting right. This last emerge cycle left me with:

Samba in a broken state. Non protected shares worked, anything else gave access denied. Why? Someone decided to move the default location of smbpasswd and didn't notify me in a way to catch it since I wasn't watching emerge line by line.

Apache was broken. It would start one process and hang. Examining the error log showed a problem in PHP. For some reason, it missed a package that has to be recompiled every time PHP is upgraded.

Postfix has been broken in the past by similar, as well as my imap server. Filing a bug report on one of the changes was simply met with "so, deal with it" basicially.

Gentoo has a lot of hype. Actually using it across 10 servers scares me though. It turns out to be worse then any other distro in the amount of work needed to keep it up to date, since you get to spend time hunting down problems. At lease SuSE was nice enough to generate messages to root about important changes I may need to check on manually.

SLES9 / SUSE9.2 combo

[siezer (223508)]

Im going to have to run with SUSE here.

We mainly use redhat/fedora here, and I do have to say that all of the things that I've "fought" with redhat to get working properly "just work" right out of the box with SUSE.

Scenario:

I wanted to unify all logins across linux/windows machines on my companies user network.

We were running an NT4 domain controller and using local passwd authentication for all linux servers/workstations.

The natural solution to this was to set up an ldap server, have all the linux machines authenticate off it, and then replace the NT4 domain that would authenticate off the same ldap database. While we're at it, we thought we should enable fine grained access control lists for local filesystems, the samba interface, oh, and they should work over NFS as well. (acl.bestbits.at)

After about 2 months with redhat battling compilation issues, config issues, library issues, and other issues, rpm issues, and a bottle of aprin. I finally managed to get an openldap server up and running, with samba3 authenticating against it in a test environment.

Another month later, I got the ACLs working.

I about kicked myself in the head when, upon evaluating SLES9, I found that during installation it acually gave me an option to use ldap as the main authentication mechanism. Also, it has a built in, YAST controlled CA magement system, replacing all the scripts that I had written to handle ssl certificates.

I recreated my entire test environent in under an hour using SLES9.

On the client end, Suse 9.2 "just works" in every imaginable way. The only things I had to install myself for workstations were enigmail and slocate.

To this day, I still have a few redhat machines that blow up when trying to use ldap/ssl, but everything suse has worked perfectly the first time.

Naturally, it comes with a bunch of databases, a kickass update mechanism (yast), an automated setup tool (autoyast), and now has very nice support from the nice folks over at novell.

On the flip side, I would probably still use redhat for "mission critical" things, as redhats QA proccess is insane. You wont get the nice new extras, but thats because the bleeding edge tends to be unstable.

Also, another thing that needs to be thought about is "googleability." Googleability is a measure of how quickly you can find your problem, then an answer to it, using google. Redhat has much higher googleability that Suse, or any other linux distro for that matter (except perhaps debian), but to be fair, Suse (from my brief experience) tends to have less problems.

In conclusion: Suse for your internal network/workstations/etc. Redhat for your webservers and other things that should have obscene uptimes.

-s

Re:First troll post!

[delire (809063)]

i'm sure compiling X.org for 4 days would impress the manager..

Re:Debian of course

[jgaynor (205453)]

I was about to say the same thing - although AFAIK we're missing one of the points hes looking for:

stability - Check
security - Check
rapid updates - Check
ease of administration - Check
high-level support options - No check

I don't consider google and usenet high level support options. Im sure someone knows of a commercial outfit that will do pay-for-play deb support - so please, chime in . . .

Otherwise go debian!

Re:Debian of course

[by Anonymous Coward]

http://www.debian.org/consultants/ [debian.org]

Re:Debian of course

[direwolf puppy (243414)]

It's my understanding that you can get Debian support through HP. I know you could get per-incident before, and according to this [hp.com], it looks like they support Debian as well as the "more commercial-friendly" distros.

Re:Debian of course

[kinema (630983)]

Actually if you are looking for a good support option for Debian (or any other distro for that mater) check out Progeny [progeny.com]

Re:Goodness

[tha_mink (518151)]

Yeah really. Asking Slashdot users which Linux to use will produce more results than asking google [google.com].

At least google won't make fun of you while you ask.

C'mon Cliff. Why post this kinda thing? What good will come from this.

[your distro] sucks...use [my distro]...

Killme now.

Re:Goodness

[rlandrum (714497)]

Yeah really. Asking Slashdot users which Linux to use will produce more results than asking google.

Maybe not. Re-read the question again, and what he's really asking is what makes managers feel warm and fuzzy.

Nothing makes my managers cream in their jeans more than the words "vendor support". That alone is what drives people toward other Operating Systems (Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, Windows).

If my business was just switching to Linux, and they wanted the best, my immediate suggestion would be Redhat. It's been around for years. It's a publically traded company (which says something about it's stability), and it puts together a widely supported and recognized operating system (AS 2.1 and RHEL 3.0). In addition, it's going to run most of the proprietary database software (including Oracle and Sybase), and just about every piece of open source software you might need for running a business is included on the distro CDs.

I've been a Redhat user since 1998. I love RH 7.2, but think every free distribution since then has sucked. Which is why I have begun switching to Gentoo for my desktop. It takes awhile to compile everything, but it seems like it's gotten around dependancy hell.

In general, Redhat for business and critical systems, Gentoo for SA workstations.

Can a whole story be modded as...

[cnelzie (451984)]

...flamebait? I mean come on now!

There's so many options and so many 'ways of doing things' with Linux and EVERYBODY knows they are right and everyone else is wrong or simply misguided...

Gentoo Linux users will proclaim that their distro is simply the best and the only option to go for. However, you still have a steep learning and a long setup time for building a system, which requires more then just passing knowledge of Linux, which isn't bad. It just isn't necesarily conducive to the 'standard' corporate environment. (My opinion may not match your own.)

Red Hat Linux is supported by a long standing team of Linux Engineers that has built itself around supporting the Enterprise computing environment, which makes it a good choice for such environments.

Mandrake Linux has made a name of itself for desktop use, mostly for consumer end-users, although they are working hard at making inroads to the corporate enterprise environment.

SuSe Linux/Novell is a long standing corporate computing environment corporation that should be able to provide support that equals or surpasses Red Hat. Of course, that would depend upon who you talk to.

Beyond that, there are tons of other players in the marketplace that will or won't be here in 6 months to a year.

Honestly, if I was setting up a Corporate Environment to create a standard setup across multiple servers, I would choose either Red Hat or SuSe/Novell. They are widely used distros, they both have easy to use tools, they both have certification programs, which could be used in order to certify that a support team, from the top Admin all the way down to the helpdesk jockey have a certain level of knowledge comensurate with their position as well as knowing the tools for that particular distro.

That's just my opinion anyway.

Re:SuSE

[by Anonymous Coward]

Keep preaching, Faithful!

SuSE

- great administrative tools to support large networks

- rolling out new servers / workstation with auto-yast with pre-installed configuration/software

- YaST - Best configuration tool under the sun for Linux.

- 10+ years experience + now Novell.

Re:SuSE What more could you ask???

[LWATCDR (28044)]

Well he did ask for high level support and stability. SuSE is now owned by Novell so I would say that answers the high level support issue.
For support I would have to put Red Hat and SuSE at the top. I think SuSE has newer stuff than Red Hat "Not counting Fedora". Mandrake is very good but I have no idea how good their enterprise level support is. That may actually depend a lot on where you are. If you are in France Mandrake maybe a clear winner for support. In Germany SuSE may have an advantage.
If one of the BSDs is an option the best supported one is probably OS/X.

Re:White Box, a clone of RHE3

[easter1916 (452058)]

Running with Linux for over 7 years!

You must be fucking knackered man. At least put down the CDs, at best just stand still for a while.

Re:I have to go with Fedora Core 3

[pivo (11957)]

I like Fedora a lot (modulo their strong GNOME leanings) however I don't like it for servers. Fedora is released often so you have very current versions of everything, I like this feature on my workstation. But it's not good for servers, Fedora distributions are obsolete if they're >= 2 releases old. That means that, in order to ensure you're going to get security updates you need to upgrade your distribution about once a year. That's a pain for servers, especially ones that are working just fine.

I prefer Debian for servers, even though I'd never consider using it for a desktop distribution.

In the end though, it just depends on what you want to do with Linux, I guess you'd have to say, "use the best distro for the job." Even though that might not sound very satisfactory to someone getting started with Linux.

Re:Gentoo of course

[steveg (55825)]

I like Gentoo. All my home machines and one of my work machines runs on Gentoo. Nor would I dismiss out of hand the idea of running Gentoo on a server.

However...

As an administrator, I'm not particularly intrested in a distribution that will "teach me the inner workings of Linux". Stability and predictability are lots more important for production machines.

The new servers I'm putting on line now are all running Debian, and I'll be switching some old RH9 servers to Debian as I get the time to do that.

Someone earlier emphasized package management as a prime requirement for easy administration. Debian does that very well. Gentoo is also pretty good, except when things break, which does happen. I see Debian as more stable, Gentoo as more configurable. For a desktop, I'd choose Gentoo, but so far I'm leaning to Debian in the server room.

My biggest objection to most of the commercial distributions is that they are far too "versioned". If old versions had security updates forever, that'd be fine, but having to do a disruptive upgrade every few years on running servers just because there are no more security updates on the running version is quite inconvenient. This is one place where Gentoo really shines, being essentially "versionless". Debian makes version shifting relatively simple, so I'm comfortable with the relatively infrequent version bumps I'm likely to see.

Re:Personally...

[opkool (231966)]

Yes, Mandrake is pretty good:
* Mandrake is Linux, as it is as stable as all other Linux distros
* includes recent versions of software
* easy administration: point-and-click interfaces (with text versions using ncurses) plus the classic ssh + vi + /etc
* company commited to GPL Mandrake golden rules [mandrakesoft.com]
* LSB-compliant (Linux Standard Base)
* The company is making money (the company will be here for a long time)
* 2 main versions
- regular version (including gratis download edition)
- corporate edition (including support 24x7 and all that jazz)
And, oh, yeah, Mandrake has a native apt-get like tool called urpmi, with both GUI and text interfaces.
Peace