Server OS

[bubylou]

I have used Ubuntu for my servers OS for while now and haven't had any big problems with it. I wanted to check out what other Linux distros would have to offer. More specifically if i should make the big change to a RHEL based distro like Cent OS. I also wanted to see if there were any other Debian based distros that might be a better choice or maybe just use Debian. Mainly looking for personal experiences, knowledge, preference, and someone to help me make an educated choice of which distro is best for use on a server.

Some Questions
Big Difference between Debian and Red Hat distros
Reason to pick either Ubuntu or Debian
Which is the most used distro for both personal and enterprise

[bubylou]

bump for discussion

[nathan.the.sane]

Why not install some other options in Virtualbox and try them out? That's the best way to find out about something, rather than taking someone else's word for it. They may have an entirely different set of needs/preferences than you.

Personally, I use CentOS on my server. You can kinda sorta think of it as Fedora, of course, so expect yum instead of apt-get and selinux etc.The biggest difference from Ubuntu I noticed is that it is slightly more secure/paranoid by default. For example, it has a firewall enabled by default that blocks ALL http traffic from ANYWHERE, even the LAN. Took me a couple hours to figure out why I couldn't get the Apache test page to display in my laptop's browser when I could ssh just fine. Yeah, I'm not a professional sysadmin, just a curious amateur! Maybe someday...

Edit: Of course, that turned out to be a positive learning experience in the end, because now I know a heckuva lot more about using iptables

[CharlesA]

The CentOS firewall blocks a lot of stuff by default. I think the only thing that isn't blocked is SSH and (maybe) SMTP.

An OS is only as secure as you make it. Ubuntu/Debian/RH/CentOS are pretty secure by default but you can lock them down more if you so desire.

[Holdolin]

An OS is only as secure as you make it. Ubuntu/Debian/RH/CentOS are pretty secure by default but you can lock them down more if you so desire.

This.

As far as use, the last report I read listed Debian as the top used Linux web server. It uses older, more tried and tested codebase. Ubuntu uses a newer codbase (based off of Debian unstable) and has a longer support cycle for it's LTS's. CENT also has a long support cycle if you wish to make uses of it.

Personally, I think Debian and Ubuntu have a more active, supporting community, hence why I'm here. That however is just one person's opinion. If you have the means, try nathan's idea. Try them all out. Find the one that works best for YOU, as you're the one using it

[bubylou]

i actually just freed up a server so i may try centos out on it rather than use a virtual one. I especially like the idea of having a very secure system at start then open things as you go rather than vice verse As far as debian goes is its stability really worth it, i havent had any crash with ubuntu and love the community thus far. Any other big reasons to pick red hat over debian distros.

[CharlesA]

Having a firewall set to not allow connections to a port by default when there is nothing listening on that port is pretty much the same as having the firewall set to allow connections to a port that has nothing listening on it.

There is nothing to connect to in both cases.

In any case, you should tailor the firewall to your specific needs instead of using one that blocks or allows everything.

[bubylou]

Well i definitely try centos soon but can anyone else say why centos would be a better choice over Ubuntu. More specifically big reasons and not personal preference. Also Debian or Ubuntu. Any input would be immensely helpful.

[nathan.the.sane]

Well i definitely try centos soon but can anyone else say why centos would be a better choice over Ubuntu. More specifically big reasons and not personal preference. Also Debian or Ubuntu. Any input would be immensely helpful.

The thing with Linux is that you can (in theory) make any particular distribution do anything any other distribution does. The difference in distributions is how close by default they are to what you need in your particular situation. For example (this is completely hypothetical), Ubuntu might come with version 5.6 of OpenSSH with password, public key and PAM authentication enabled, whereas RHEL and CentOS may come with an OpenSSH 5.2 package that has PAM disabled and listens on port 2222 instead of port 22. But there's nothing stopping you from manually downloading and installing OpenSSH 5.6 on your CentOS box and changing sshd_config to enable PAM and listen on port 22, to make it just like Ubuntu. But if you were going to do that then you would have to ask why not use Ubuntu to begin with? It's not really a question of which is 'better'; maybe CentOS's OpenSSH has fewer bugs but Ubuntu's has a new feature that you might need.


The point is, you need to have some idea of the kinds of things you are wanting to do and the way you like things to be set up, and find something close to that that you can tweak. The best way I can recommend is trying LOTS of things out. I haven't experimented much with server distros (I mainly just used Ubuntu server until giving CentOS a shot, which I really like), but on the desktop side I've used Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Mandriva, Slackware, Fedora, LFS, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, Zenwalk and a bunch of others I can't remember right now. Each one has tradeoffs which make it easier to do some things and harder to do others, but in general I've found Ubuntu is the best at giving me close to what I want so I use it. One reason is that Ubuntu's GtkPod package has ALAC and MP3 support compiled in, whereas Debian's (because of their licensing stance) does not. So if I used Debian I would have to get the GtkPod source and compile it myself. That sort of thing is partly why I use Ubuntu instead of Debian, but if all I asked on a forum was "Is Debian better than Ubuntu?", how would the other people know to mention that? Experience is the best teacher.

So just pick one, and if you run into something about it you don't like maybe try something else, which might be fine with that but have a different set of annoyances. Of course, if you're doing this for a production server this might not be the best way to go about it! Hopefully if someone is doing this for anything other than a personal project they have long since found something they're comfortable with and know the ins and outs of.

[bubylou]

Very well put. I will be trying several Linux ditros as time goes on this post was intended to give e a head start on what to try and what to expect.