From: Eran Tromer (eran_at_nonexisting.hamakor.org.il)
Date: Tue 08 Apr 2003 - 20:14:00 IDT
Hi,
On 2003/04/08 16:42, Michael Sternberg wrote:
> Hello
> I'm looking for advice which distro to chose for our new server.
> Its going to be 2.4GHz CPU, 1Gb RAM, 2x80Gb hard disks machine.
> Will be used as server for 10-15 developers connecting via X-Win32.
> HDs will be probably used as software RAID.
>
> Candidates that I've thought about are:
> RedHat, Mandrake, Debian and Gentoo.
RedHat recently shortened the errata period of their RedHat Linux line
to one year. This means that with RedHat you have three choices:
1. Use RedHat Linux and track security issues by your own after 1 year.
2. Use RedHat Linux and upgrade every year.
3. Use RedHat's "Enterprise" line (expensive, and even if you find a
copy you won't get access to their errata service).
For me, the above was reason enough to move from RedHat to Debian on a
server I run. I'm *very* happy with this choice. The quality of
packaging+integration is excellent, and apt-get is as wonderful as they
say it is (once grokked) -- both for installation and upgrades. Not to
mention the warm fuzzy feeling of using a "pure" free distribution.
Notes on software RAID on Debian:
The standard installer has no RAID support so you'll need a different
boot floppy and some juggling:
http://people.debian.org/~blade/install/
(not tested personally; I used a messier method.)
Also, Debian's default kernels don't have RAID support. So you must
either recompile your kernel or use initrd (and Debian's mkinitrd and
mkboot are silly so in the latter case you'll need to give up on having
boot floppies).
Complications ensue. But once you get it booting, it works very well.
> How difficult it will be to move from Red Hat environment to Debian?
Based on my recent experience, it's not. The software is, after all,
basically the same (except for some different defaults, such as exim
instead of sendmail). You will need to understand the dpkg/apt system,
but that's hardly rocket science.
Eran
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