What is the best Linux to be a server?

[Tamer Shaalan]

Dear ALL,

I have multiple of Linux disributions (Reda Hat Enterprise v.3, SuSE 10.0, Fedora Core v.4, Mandriva 2005). What is the best of these distributions to be used as a server machine for business of about 100 user.

ALL replies will be appreciated.

Tamer.

[Steven E. Protter]

Greetings Tamer,

I think right Now that Red Hat ES v 3 is extremely mature and stable. Its very reliable.

I would be concerned using Fedora Core for a production system. I have no experience on Mandriva and very little with Suse.

In general for such a large project, I'd go for a mature OS, ES 4 is fine, I use it a lot, but 1000 users, not so sure about that. Go for mature and debugged.

In the end though its like what the late James Doohan said as he played Mr. Scott on the Enterprise. "The right tool for the right job"

What I mean is it depends what the server is going to do. There may be features your user needs that are critical and can't be found in one distribution or the other. You may need to run products that require one or the other such as compilers and other software.

If you are talking basic email fileshare printer server, Red Hat Or Suse will be fine.

I work in a large shop with many users of Red hat 2-4 ES, and a few sprinkled FC 4 installations. They do heavy compiler work and Red hat is required by the compiler vendors.

SEP
NDS
Israel

[Tamer Shaalan]

SEP,

Thanks for fast answer. Your answer is good. Really, I trend RHES but I toke a look of SuSE 10.0 reviews that say it is very good and has been modified significantly. Which is better to deploy, RHES v3.0 or v4.0? by the way, I have no special applications or requirements for the server, just to have the normal server packages for networking and other business needs.

Tamer.

[Bill Thorsteinson]

I use Debian which installs relatively
easily and is easy to add packages to.
The stable relesase is Sarge.

I moved to Debian after a difficult transition
between Red Hat releases. Debian has
been consistently easy to upgrade.

I have seen recent reports in the news of
customers leaving Red Hat for Debian.

[Ivan Ferreira]

RHEL v4 should be installed on a new system. You will get kernel and LVM enhancements.

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

Definitely Debian, since it's upgrade policy is much better suited for servers than both RH and SuSE.

[Muthukumar_5]

RHESv3.0 is good and gives more performance for server standard compared to SuSE and Fedora Core.

Have to see about Mandriva. May be good to go with RHES itself.

hth.

[Van den Broeck Tijl · Accepted solution]

I have to agree with Ralf and Bill.

Debian is -the best- if it comes to upgrading & maintaining packages and applications. Combine this with "checkinstall" for custom packages and you're living in a package management dream ;-)

For RH & SLES there is offcourse apt-rpm which is a clone of the Debian system and isn't quite as good yet (certainly not when it comes to distribution version upgrades !).

If you want easy to configure graphical interfaces definitly go for SLES. Yast (and Autoyast for deployment of multiple machines) is a very handy tool.

RHES on the other hand has the big advantage of support. RH is the most supported distribution around. The costs for Support for RHES and its licenses is practically nothing compared to the help you get when you encounter problems. Also RH has a more -stabl e- fixed business course compared to Novells SLES.

Essentialy, you have to ask yourself these questions:
- Do I want great package management and minimal downtime with updates? Configuration in .conf or webmin? -> Debian
- Do I want great graphical management & configuration for my environment and I'm willing to pay license fees for it. -> SLES
- Do I want great support and guarantees that it will run on virtually any hardware? I want support for commercial applications/databases such as Oracle,DB2,SAP,... -> RHES (or RHAS for enterprise usage).

I think every environment & distributions should be evaluated against the requirements made.

[Peyman Javaheri]

Great comments above.

Also, you should consider which application you want to run, and which platform that application runs better and is more supported and tested.

There are some App vendors that don't even bother supporting Debian and go straight for Redhat and in some cases both Redhat and Suse + others. (not to mention some go to Windows and other UNIX)

I would let my application choose the path if staying with a familiar O/S. Down in vanes a Linux is a Linux. A UNIX a UNIX, and a Windows not UNIX ;)

regards,
peyman;

[Oguz Kutlu Asik]

Hi,

If i would be configuring a linux server, i would definately choose debian (or debian based ubuntu). If it is necessary to get support from vendor, i would choose Suse Enterprise Server since i'm familiar with suse versions and quite happy with them.

[Ross Minkov]

Tamer,

They are all good... In your case you have no application reqs, so I'd say go with the distro that you know best (that is if you are going to support it). If you know Red Hat go with RHEL4. If you know Debian, go with Debian. If you know SuSE, go with SLES9.

-Ross

[Tim Chambers]

I'm impressed that so many people recommend Debian. That's the distro I used to prefer. But I'd like to put a plug in for Ubuntu Linux [1]. It's based on Debian, and although most people think of it as a desktop distribution, it works great as a server, too. Unlike Debian releases, which are on a multi-year release cycle (how long did we wait for Sarge?), Ubuntu is updated every six months.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Linux