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Thinking of switching Distros for my server.

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  • #1

    Thinking of switching Distros for my server.

    I'm considereing switching my server from Mandrake (which most consider bloatware, as do I) to something a little more serious like Debian. The only reason I installed Mandrake 8.2 on there is because it's REALLY easy to just click a few buttons and have all the network sharing and such that I need. Debian I know I'd have to configure all the network cards and such and the actual routing myself, which I've done a few times using squid/Nat. Anyone else know of any problems I might run into with doing this? (of course I'd have to back up my web stuff and I could just recreate my email stuff) I think this would be much easier to mantain though than Mandrake. What does anyone else think?

    (Also I posted this in here because I figured this forum is all but dead at times, let's get the ball rolling, people )

    Leech
    Wah! Wah!

    In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.
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  • #2
    Well, I've tried debian.. i personally didn't like it.. I believe however that redhat is perfectly good as a server, (you do however need to customise what's installed).

    If you're looking to be more hands-on with linux, then try debian or slackware or gentoo, (the latter is my preference).

    Colin
    You wanna piece of me? here, *crunch*, o.k. not _that_ bit.

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    • #3
      well, it may sound crazy, but I use debian as my desktop OS. I got bored and updated some stuff to cooker on my Mandrake server box and messed up PHP that's why I'm considering just doing a fresh install of Debian Woody on my server now. RedHat's nice, but I want to get away from RPMs. Usually when I have problems it's due to the way RPM does it's dependancies.

      Leech
      Wah! Wah!

      In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

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      • #4
        I use RedHat on the server here, but I havn't used an rpm to install for... ummm.. damn I've forgoten how long.
        Juu nin to iro


        English doesn't borrow from other languages. It follows them down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.

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        • #5
          Debian is not nearly as hard to install and configure as people make it out to be. Just read the instructions, read the installation manual as you go along. It's not too bad.

          Just for example, you may have to tell debian to load a module for your network card, and you might just need to tell it what kind of network it's on (static ip vs dhcp, for example). Under normal conditions, you won't really need to play around with the routing tables directly, because it'll handle those details for you _if and when_ you want it to.

          If you have specific, detailed questions about debian (while you're installing it for example), join #debian on irc.freenode.net, and you'll always find people there. Whether or not they answer your questions depends on how well you ask them: Be detailed about your problem, and ask a specific question. '/msg apt ask' for some tips about how to get your question answered quickest. (apt on freenode IRC is an auto-answer bot, with a dictionary of various tips)
          Tilable Desktop Backgrounds, perfect for DualHead: http://bg.rifetech.com/

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          • #6
            Ever considered FreeBSD or OpenBSD? May be Slackware?

            And oh is this a home server or coporate server?
            P4 Northwood 1.8GHz@2.7GHz 1.65V Albatron PX845PEV Pro
            Running two Dell 2005FPW 20" Widescreen LCD
            And of course, Matrox Parhelia | My Matrox histroy: Mill-I, Mill-II, Mystique, G400, Parhelia

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            • #7
              This is a home server. It just sits there with my own personal Email server and web server on it. It's also my firewall/router for Three computers.

              Thanks for the IRC tips, I'll try that out. For now I actually got PHP working again in Mandrake (stupid cooker, it was just too tempting to try to install the newer packages) I'm still considering switching over to Debian, just to make things easier for updates and such.

              Thanks for all the tips, guys.

              Leech
              Wah! Wah!

              In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by WyWyWyWy
                Ever considered FreeBSD or OpenBSD? May be Slackware?

                And oh is this a home server or coporate server?
                I <i>could</i> try FreeBSD, since I already downloaded 4.5, but it's significantly different than Linux is on quite a few fundamentals, making it almost a entirely seperate learning process (and since I'm already in the process of learning HTML/XHTML/CSS and Perl then I'd rather not have to learn how to put FreeBSD together as a server.) Slackware is really good from everything I've heard/read, but again the reason I'm thinking of Debian is because of Apt (which I do know has been ported to Mandrake, but Mandrake doesn't update the sources on it as often as they should. Anyone who's ever used apt has a hard time living without it!)

                Leech
                Wah! Wah!

                In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

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                • #9
                  i tried apt, didn't like it.
                  The *BSDish ports system was why i tried gentoo in the first place, its great knowing that everthing on the box has been compiled by you.
                  You wanna piece of me? here, *crunch*, o.k. not _that_ bit.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by leech


                    I <i>could</i> try FreeBSD, since I already downloaded 4.5, but it's significantly different than Linux is on quite a few fundamentals, making it almost a entirely seperate learning process (and since I'm already in the process of learning HTML/XHTML/CSS and Perl then I'd rather not have to learn how to put FreeBSD together as a server.) Slackware is really good from everything I've heard/read, but again the reason I'm thinking of Debian is because of Apt (which I do know has been ported to Mandrake, but Mandrake doesn't update the sources on it as often as they should. Anyone who's ever used apt has a hard time living without it!)

                    Leech
                    You will find that FreeBSD is significantly easier than Debian... and its ports system is just as good as apt. But then of course, you can choose what you want

                    Okay what about gentoo then? The only thing I don't like about Debian is that their stable branch packages are just... too old! (still using XFree86 4.1 I think...)

                    Btw, there is nothing to learn from HTML/XHTML/CSS... you don't need to learn, you don't know WYSIWYG editor, you just need a reference. I hope you can take a look at XML/XSL plus SOAP/WSDL if you are serious about web development. http://www.w3schools.com has some good and easy tutorials.

                    Perl is good, but what about awk, sed and shell scripts?
                    P4 Northwood 1.8GHz@2.7GHz 1.65V Albatron PX845PEV Pro
                    Running two Dell 2005FPW 20" Widescreen LCD
                    And of course, Matrox Parhelia | My Matrox histroy: Mill-I, Mill-II, Mystique, G400, Parhelia

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                    • #11
                      Shell scripts I'd like to look into. Sed and Awk, I believe I can pretty much do similar or the same things with Perl.

                      I know the Debian stable packages are old, but then again Debian stable is STABLE. Besides, it's not like I even need X at all on the server. There are 'beta' packages for X 4.2, but they're only beta in the regards that they aren't packaged for all platforms yet and I think they need to finish the translations as well.

                      As far as Gentoo goes, my server is only a Pentium2 266 with 256mb of Ram, compiling everything on it isn't exactly my idea of a good time. (I may just wait until I upgrade my desktop, then I'll be putting in a Dual celeron 500mhz into the server, THEN I'll probably do the upgrade) Compiling things with dual processors is just nice to watch how fast it flies

                      Leech
                      Wah! Wah!

                      In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

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                      • #12
                        266 will be fine, the large packages, (read X) are overnight jobs,.. but lets face it, most things are realativly quick to compile
                        You wanna piece of me? here, *crunch*, o.k. not _that_ bit.

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Colin Morey
                          266 will be fine, the large packages, (read X) are overnight jobs,.. but lets face it, most things are realativly quick to compile
                          True, oddly enough at one point I had WindowsXP on it and it ran ok. Though of course XP isn't anywhere NEAR as versatile as *nix OS's.

                          Leech
                          Wah! Wah!

                          In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

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                          • #14
                            Wow, a dozen posts without Windows being bashed once That thirteenth post proved all too much
                            Meet Jasmine.
                            flickr.com/photos/pace3000

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                            • #15
                              You knew it <i>had</i> to happen eventually I just like the idea of having cron update all my packages through apt. As far as using windows XP, rebooting everytime a freaking update came out is just ridiculous. They should be banned from the server world just for being so stupid.

                              Leech
                              Wah! Wah!

                              In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

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