Server Distribution of the Year
 

What distribution do you think is best suited for a server environment?

--jeremy

I prefer Debian but I realise it is probably not the most used.

I migrated our server room to virtual hosting and I picked Debian.

Brilliant distribution and I'm a FreeBSD lover.

Debian

My preference: Slackware

Slackware... Duh!
 

That's my :twocents:

Kindest regards,

.

For a personal home server, I really like Debian. I once tried Slackware, but found it too confusing to get started with. :banghead:

slackware the best :)

i was going to vote... then i decided, "screw it... lets nominate exherbo". exherbo please! :) :)

yeah, i know. i'm crazy. it's still my vote. ;)

Slackware. Because I, the sysadmin, remain in control. Who else should be?

There are so other many reasons as well why Slackware is the best server distro (of the year, of all time? Who cares about the distinction here). It's stable. It doesn't just add random new packages into the mix every two seconds that I haven't heard of and/or don't need. It doesn't patch the hell out of everything to the point that regressions and security/stability issues are created. It doesn't mess with my config files and keeps everything where I expect it to be (buh-bye Debian). The team keeps on top of security issues and release patches in a timely fashion. It has fixed releases so I don't have to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of everything under the sun just to keep on top of security issues (this is probably one of the main reasons Slack is the clear winner over Arch). It includes a sane development environment on a default install, so I don't have to go around hunting for stupid headers and installing a zillion development packages that are 1KB each. There is a sane upgrade path from release to release with instructions in UPGRADE.TXT and CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT that allow you to keep on top of upgrades while remaining in control. Its package management is simple and stays out of my way; I know when I don't have the right libraries installed because when I try to run an application--by gosh--the system will tell me which library the binary is linked to that is missing! What a concept!

Anyway, that's probably enough for now. Words cannot describe how much I love this distribution. It lets me use Linux, a system I know how to use, thank you very much, without you (the hypothetical distributor) adding a whole bunch of hand-holdy crap I don't need and just gets in my way.

i just use fedora to host my apache server. not sure if i should vote redhat or cent-os.

There's a good reason why Fedora is not one of the nominees in the server category:)

Heh, well, since you're running a webserver on Fedora you probably would be using CentOS if you were running a production server with a sane release cycle.

But I have to say, I don't see any reason Fedora shouldn't be on this list of Gentoo is. A rolling-release distro for a server? No thank you. At least Fedora has a 6-month release cycle!

The only situation in which I can see Gentoo being used for a server would be if you're running hardware that barely any distros support and literally need to compile everything from scratch

ubuntu server

RHEL

Used to be Slackware, but switched to Debian when I installed my new server. Less work to maintain an up-to-date configuration. It just runs in the background and doing an apt-get update/upgrade once in a while is all that's needed.

You're all crazy :) Scientific Linux easily! RHEL rock-solidity; proper professional documentation from upstream; a genuine will to help from the sysadmins at Fermilab who build it; ten years(!) of free security patches with the ability to stick to the original point install base for that whole period; RPM based (yes I prefer it to dpkg - so shoot me); Sensible packaging & config policy - no unannounced application retirements / replacements, config changes or disappearances or re-naming of config files (Debian devs I'm looking at you). etc..

Fedora! Although I may be changing to CentOS soon (if I can ever get my HP ProLiant's network cards to be recognized).

Slackware is what's installed in my VPS.

Should the RHEL clones be combined? While CentOS and Scientific aren't 100% alike, they're pretty much 99.9% alike, so overall any minor differences wouldn't matter.

That said, I think Slackware stands as a good server distribution, with Scientific as a close second. I'm not sure why people seem to think that Slackware package management is still 100% manual. Slackware 14 comes with slackpkg, which will pull in any updates from the Slackware repository based on a changelog file.

Debian!!

RHEL as always, but Scientific Linux is a nice clone from CERN...

RHEL and CentOS are the standards when it comes to Server Deploment...

Regards,
-Mukesh.

RHEL - The Ultimate ..

I agree, but I think all RHEL/CentOS admins should give Scientific a shot. There are both pro's and con's when compared with CentOS, but I like the fact that I have a choice when I need to go to a clone. Of course I prefer RHEL over both, but it's not always an option.

Slackware on my home server. Set it up when 13.37 came out, haven't had to touch it since then. Rock effin solid.

Probably ought to run the security updates tho.

RHEL!!! Definitely.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

i always use centos as production and development server

CentOs is still the best for me!

Ubuntu Server has been awesome for painless deployments. Plus it's stripped of all those tainted Unity feces.

Slackware of course. :)

Companies and their sys-admins love to put blame on the vendor support in case of goof-up, thus RHEL will unarguably be the one which is most widely used in server deployments because of the paid support.
Otherwise, Slackware won't make a less than professional server choice. Install, setup, run and forget. Update when you want without breaking the core. Isn't that what all sys-admins want.

Regards.

OpenBSD. Come on! It is probably considered the top secure OS in terms of the code being audited, as well as still its security measures, to a large extent.

Aren't we talking about 'Linux' based OSs here? Sure *BSDs are good when it comes to server usage, no doubt.

Regards.

There have been BSD sub-forums at this site for some time now.

I was talking in context of the poll options we have here. Linux "distributions".

Peace..:)

Gentoo :D

CentOS for my MySQL, LDAP, JBOSS ...
njce Distribution

CentOS

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