Hi I'm writing a project based on securing a school network. I'm not asking for help in any way with my project, just opinion.

Currently the school has solaris 8 as there enterprise server. I was just interested in what people considered the most secure linux distribution. At the moment I'm edging towards redhat or updating there solaris system to solaris 10. So what does everyone else think? The school has around 300 computers.


Thanks

For me it is Debian(-stable). For others - RedHat AS/ES...

All Linux distributions can be as secure as each other - security primarily comes from configuration choices. Having said this, some have stronger configurations by default. The only way a distribution could be less secure than others would be if the vendor does not release patches, but then, you would be free to resolve this with by building your own packages if needed.

Any distribution that Bastille-linux is compatible with is a good choice. Red Hat AS is far more expensive than Solaris, so this isn't a good choice really.

If you're really looking for good default security, take a look at OpenBSD (yeah, I know - it's not Linux ) - but there are compromises here.

For off the shelf I tend to recommend SuSE just based on value for money and availability of support. For smaller organisations, Red Hat is just too expensive. SuSE do a good distro and their support is solid.

Thanks everyone, that was very insightful. I'll have a look into openBSD. I've got suse on my home machine and I like it a lot. Guess it all comes down to school personal preferences and most of all cash

Centos 4 is based off of Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 which employs a few guys to impliment the NSA's SELinux security system for many services (Bind, Apache, NFS, etc) It's damn secure!

Heck, the most secure distribution is the one installed by someone who really cares about security! I work with a number of sites on security and it is amazing how many of them still install systems with lousy passwords.

The best software on the planet is easily compromised by ignorance and/or plain-ass laziness.

Jon Johnston
Creative Business Solutions
IBM, Microsoft, Novell/Suse and Sophos Consulting
952-544-1108
http://www.cbsol.com
Blog:http://bingo.cbsol.com

Solaris 8 is just as secure as any industy-strength linux, & Solaris 10 is the first *nix to implemet RBAC ~ a extar security layer for applications\users, where access is 'delegated'

1 HUGE plus between *nix (UNIX\LINUX) over Microsoft Server OS's is that any box can be customized so much it can unrecognisable to a hacker, looking to identify it & possible vuner
abilites, hence the ideal-abiltiy for DMZ use,e.g. Mail Server, Web Server ~ 1 such server is still running unpatched over 4 years...