Which Linux distro to pick for dedicated server?

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andrew wee

andrew wee

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I got a choice of:
OS: CentOS Enterprise Linux, Version 4
OS: Centos Enterprise Linux, Version 5
OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Version 4
OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Version 5
OS: FreeBSD 6.2


The pre-sales rep says the version 4's comes with MySQL 4 and the ver 5's come with MySQL 5.

Anyone have a suggestion would be "better"?

I'd be using vbulletin, wordpress, joomla, and likely the latest versions, so i dont see the backward compatibility that MySQL 4 would provide.

Also some minor PHP scripts.

I'm leaning towards RH5.

Anyone have a suggestion either way?

Tks.
 


RHEL and CentOS are virtually the same.

i tend to lean towards CentOS for whatever reason. version 5. i ran FreeBSD for many years and it's good, but i switched over to Linux-based servers after getting my RHCE and realizing how solid the enterprise products have become since the early days.

in any case, RHEL5 or CentOS5 are both good choices.
 
Tks for the info.

I just got a reply from the system admin I was planning to use.

For those also making a similar decision, he mentioned that RHEL4 is more stable with cPanel.

So I'll probably go with RHEL4 and MySQL 4.
tks!
 
I think a lot of this is personal preference, but I would go with FreeBSD. It's easy to admin, everything is clean and concise (in my opinion), and the ports collection kills any other package distribution system around....
 
If an unmanaged server and you or your sysadmin know it well, then FreeBSD is about as rock solid as they come. Ease of upgrading and package management are unparalleled as mentioned above. But the BSD way of doing things is different enough from Linux to be a little confusing for a while.

If you are getting a managed plan though, I'd probably go with RHEL -- least common denominator and good commercial support.
 
I personally like FreeBSD.

I've used it a lot and it used to run our my companies web/mail/db server, which I admin'd, for over 3 years. However we've switched to Rackspace and run RHEL.

I currently run Ubuntu on my slice at slicehost.
 
Personally I'm a Debian fanatic, imo it's the the best solution for web servers.

What sort of load are you expecting on the server? RHEL4 will be the most stable and supported out of all of those versions, but unless you're really going to tax the server it won't really matter... for future growth might as well go with the platform supporting MySQL 5 if you're doing any type of large databases.
 
never use centOS.
if you're not so good with BSD use a LINUX distribution. if you can get someone that knows how to handle BSD - always choose BSD!
if you have to use LINUX - choose debian because its easy maintainable.
in your case chose the latest RH version.

and NOT centOS!!
 
tobsn said:
never use centOS.
if you're not so good with BSD use a LINUX distribution. if you can get someone that knows how to handle BSD - always choose BSD!
if you have to use LINUX - choose debian because its easy maintainable.
in your case chose the latest RH version.

and NOT centOS!!
Click to expand...

What's your gripe with CentOS?
 
if i may quote wikipedia:
CentOS is a freely-available Linux distribution that is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which itself is based on Fedora Linux. This rebuild project strives to be 100% binary compatible with the upstream product and, within its mainline and updates, not to vary from that goal. Additional software archives hold later versions of such packages, along with other Free and Open Source Software RPM-based packages. CentOS stands for Community ENTerprise Operating System.
Click to expand...

so centos is a fork of redhat. thats okay... but:

CentOS version numbers have two parts, a major version and a minor version. The major version corresponds to the version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux from which the source packages used to build CentOS are taken. The minor version corresponds to the update set of that Red Hat Enterprise Linux version from which the source packages used to build CentOS are taken. For example, CentOS 4.4 is built from the source packages from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 update 4.
Click to expand...

simple explained: if some major security bug is found in RH the update is released for RH first and then, sometimes weeks later, for centos what makes the whole thing unsecure like hell.
i would never relay on a system what is only a fork of a real linux distribution.

and for a matter of fact, centos is only common on servers in the states. i wonder why nobody else is using it... ;)
 
Stanley said:
What's your gripe with CentOS?
Click to expand...

For myself, I used to use Redhat (when it was free) right up until the Fedora/Enterprise split. Then I figured if I wasn't going to pay for a distro and was going to be using a community driven distro, I might as well go with debian. I haven't looked back since.

Etch might have been a little slow coming out, but other than that I've been very happy.
 
I am a Red Hat fan and am running RHEL5 as a production server for my company. I also use Fedora's as my personal web servers. (This is only due to me being more familiar with RH than any other distro)

In your case though, It depends on how important your dedicated server is to you and your business. But i'd definitely be choosing the latest RHEL over CentOS due to the support contracts that come with it and like stated above, the patch management.
 
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