Member Avatar for thisara

Hi

I need to know what's the best/stable and free OS for servers. (I was advised to install Ubuntu 9.04 Server). Did anybody installed this before on a heavily loaded commercial environment?

Regards,

Thisara

Edited by crunchie because: Removed URL
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Member Avatar for ryuslash

Debian stable (used to be the most stable one from what I know)

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

RHEL5.4 of course.

Member Avatar for liviux76

RHEL5.4 of course.

Thisara asked for a free Linux so RHEL can't be suggested. Maybe CentOS (it's a Red Hat rebuilt) could be a good choice or Debian stable as suggested by ryuslash. Ubuntu server is based on Debian and could be a valid solution. My suggestion is to install the distribution that you are most familiar with.

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

Thisara asked for a free Linux so RHEL can't be suggested. Maybe CentOS (it's a Red Hat rebuilt) could be a good choice or Debian stable as suggested by ryuslash. Ubuntu server is based on Debian and could be a valid solution. My suggestion is to install the distribution that you are most familiar with.

Who said you can't get RHEL for free? support and RHN cost money, Linux is free

Member Avatar for liviux76

Who said you can't get RHEL for free? support and RHN cost money, Linux is free

Actually I disagree with your sentence.
Linux isn't always free and RHEL is not free (intended as gratis). You can install it (if you find cds) but without a subscription it's almost useless (you don't have the access to their repositories and so you can't use yum, pirut and pup). Linux is always open (in fact even RH gives you the permit to access their sources), not free. Here there's an interesting discussion about it.
It's not always simple to understand that "free'' is short for "freedom'': the usual explanation of the meaning in this environment is the famous sentence of R. M. Stallmann "free as free speech, not free beer". Those interested in reading advocacy pieces for open source software and free software should see http://www.opensource.org and http://www.fsf.org.

Member Avatar for jbennet

yep, centOS is a free rebuild of RHEL but its a crap choice for a server (peoplke say its great - read on to see why i disagree)

1) No support. if you are running a misssion-critical business system, its worth it to pay for the support

2) The lag in patch-time.

When RedHat discover a vulnerability, they announce it and release a patch. It takes Centos 1-7 days to release thier own version. In that time, you could be hacked.

I say RHEL, SLES or if you want a low-cost solution, debian.

Edited by jbennet because: n/a
Member Avatar for blud

I agree with the statements about CentOS, the lag time is a bit excessive recently due to the whole power struggle in the organization. Ubuntu is a good choice, but if you are going to use it for a server, use the LTS (Long term support) release. 8.04 was an LTS and I believe 9.10 is going to be an LTS (Not sure on the specifics of that though). The normal Ubuntu lifespan is only about 6 months, but the LTS releases are supported for 2 years.

Member Avatar for ploo

I'd say Debian, as it is very stable compared to ubuntu, as other distrobutions.

Member Avatar for neithan

I know you asked for a linux OS but why not FreeBSD? I'm setting up my own server and i was adviced to use it as an excellent choice for my purpose.

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

I know you asked for a linux OS but why not FreeBSD? I'm setting up my own server and i was adviced to use it as an excellent choice for my purpose.

ever considered why freebsd is not widespread in corporate server setups?

Member Avatar for jbennet

ever considered why freebsd is not widespread in corporate server setups?

MS ran hotmail on FreeBSD between 1996 and 2003. Worked fine for them.

Yahoo also (still) run on FreeBSD as do big names like Sony, the Apache foundation and Netcraft.

I agree that it indeed an excellent choice for servers.

Edited by jbennet because: n/a
Member Avatar for DimaYasny

MS ran hotmail on FreeBSD between 1996 and 2003. Worked fine for them.

MS isn't much of an example where OSS comes in

Yahoo also (still) run on FreeBSD as do big names like Sony, the Apache foundation and Netcraft.

they are also using qmail, which is deprecated everywhere.

I agree that it indeed an excellent choice for servers.

it used to be before kernel 2.6 for linux came along. but Linux is nowadays much farther ahead than BSD.

Member Avatar for neithan

it used to be before kernel 2.6 for linux came along. but Linux is nowadays much farther ahead than BSD.

I'm still a wannabe, what makes linux better than BSD in this matter?

Member Avatar for jbennet

I'm still a wannabe, what makes linux better than BSD in this matter?

Better hardware support for wireless cards, video cards, laptops etc makes it better for home users.

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

...and better enterprise grade hardware support makes it better for companies

Member Avatar for NetByte

Hi

I need to know what's the best/stable and free OS for servers. (I was advised to install Ubuntu 9.04 Server). Did anybody installed this before on a heavily loaded commercial environment?

Regards,

Thisara

Whats the best/stable and free OS for servers.?

1) CentOS (Basically a rebranding of RHEL without the Commercial $upport, app$ and logo$, binary compatible with RHEL)

2) Debian (Rock Solid FREE! without Commercial $upport truly your community backed linux distro)

after those 2 above another free community backed rock solid distro that would be great for servers would be Slackware Linux, IMHO.

**Commercial Offerings:
If you want with Commercial $upport then go for RHEL.
A 2nd runner up in this commercial category, would be Novell's
Suse Linux Enterprise Server Edition (SLES)

**GNU\Linux set aside:
If you decide to try something really secure that's not GNU\Linux but another unix-like OS that's really stable and secure Especially Great for Servers and FREE, FREE, FREE, probably more free than GNU\Linux because of such BSD licenses, go for FreeBSD.

Edited by NetByte because: n/a
Member Avatar for neithan

2) Debian (Rock Solid FREE! without Commercial $upport truly your community backed linux distro)

**GNU\Linux set aside:
If you decide to try something really secure that's not GNU\Linux but another unix-like OS that's really stable and secure Especially Great for Servers and FREE, FREE, FREE, probably more free than GNU\Linux because of such BSD licenses, go for FreeBSD.

So between Debian and FreeBSD what would you choose and why?

Member Avatar for jbennet

Debian because its easier to keep patched in my opinion and it has lots of software available.

Member Avatar for neithan

Debian because its easier to keep patched in my opinion and it has lots of software available.

Which version of debian should i ask? :D

Member Avatar for jbennet

Use Debian "Stable" (currently "Lenny" 5.0.3 ). Use the "testing" repositories instead if you want a more up-to-date desktop system, its generally pretty safe (do NOT use "testing" on a server, as those packages do not recieve timely security patches compared to "stable"). I dont reccomend ever using "sid" (the current bleeding-edge, akin to fedoras 'rawhide')

Edited by jbennet because: n/a
Member Avatar for psycotherapist

I agree Red Hat Linux is the best
I am using it.
Also Ubuntu is a good option

Member Avatar for Crash~Override

Go with Debian. Extremely Stable!!

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