Hey All,

Well, I need to have a linux installation tunned to be fast secure and "clean", when I say clean, I mean, I don't want it to have thousands of libraries and files that are not required for the server to function properly (the server is a server for hosting porpuses and should mainly run apache/php/mysql).

I don't know if someone did such a research but here are my results:

RedHat -> for some reason, even when you install packages individually and you manually calculate the size of all packages together (which I had about 300MB, no GUI) it installed 800MB
(I checked that there are no dependencies required before installing, so it didn't install anything else except what it said it will)

Slackware -> Installed a real clean system, approximately 200MB installation (no GUI ofcourse)

LFS -> great, but too much work

So slackware seems to be the best choice, the main problem is that it does not support RPMS, so any updates/package installations should be done manually, same for LFS.

Maybe other distributions are cleaner and support automaitc updates, RPMS and a normal init.d directory?

Did anyone check this issue out? or nobody cares to have thousands of MBS, libraries and other files on their production systmes?


Thanks...

yup, slackware is very clean as you say, i used before RedHat 9 and SuSE 8.2, and when i installed slackware 9.1 i saw the difference after few seconds.
it's really faster, and without any garbage.
SuSE is very nice, but for a server, or a system with no GUI, i think you should take slackware.

Moved: More suitable in the Distribution forum.

Any distro you can customize to your own needs, so basically, they call can work. Install what you need or use, remove or don't install what you won't use, etc. Its really that simple, don't rely on the default installation cause when you strip down each distro, they're all the same in the end, just packaged differently.

Trickykid, The key is 'When you strip them' they are the same,
Unfortunately, after you install RH9, with the minimal packages, you get a 800MB OS, and with lots of shared libraries, configuration files and other stuff you'll never use.

I guess it doesn't bother most of the people, but when it's a production server, it should be clean as possible and tuned as possible to do the exact things the OS should do - but it's just my opinion, you don't to agree with me about that

If you have a large hard drive, in which most have over 20gb in most systems now, even if you do have some libs you won't use or programs installed that won't be used, that I believe isn't going to affect the performance of the machine, or have they changed something lately that it will...

Pal, you'r missing the point
It's not about the amount of physical blocks that you spend for the mass that the distributions do while installing, it's the feeling that you know exactly what each file does on your system, when we'r talking about production servers, it is important, don't you think?

The problem is that using distributions(it's not not real distrubtions actually ) like LFS is that anything that you need to upgrade or do later on is a pain in the ass, and the support is not really good, and if you did a mistake with the parameters, while compiling glibc or gcc or any other critical parts of your Linux.. then.. it can be real not funny

I would for sure go for the Slackware dist (which I use about 6 years already with great results) , the only risk (fix me if i'm wrong) is that...it's mainly built on one person, on the other side, RedHat is a big company.

I'm missing the point, are you wanting support now or a fast system with a minimal install.

I know exactly what your saying, you don't want files that aren't going to be used. Again, I can say, any distro can do this, its just up to you to customize it and remove packages you don't see fit and install the one's you will be using.

If your going to run apache, mysql and php, well, research exactly everything they need and build your system around that....

And I've built a Redhat install/system down to about 300 megs before... So it can be done, really, it can.

you might look at gentoo, it has auto update/package install features and is custom compiled for your system.

Tricky, 10x anyway :>

And ye, brew, just trying Gentoo right away :>