I just purchased the innexpensive 400sc for use as a general web server. I'm going to setup a couple of sites for friends (http), do a personal site, a little DNS, ssh, mysql and php.

For the last couple of years I've run my servers off of redhat boxes and enjoyed the easy install process of the OS, and installed my server apps with source. Now that redhat has decided it will no longer provide a "free" redhat (just Fedora) I'd like to get familiar with another distro. Speaking to friends it seems Debian is a good pick.

I'm jigdo'ing the iso's as we speak and once installed on the server I'm not sure as the best way to go about installing Apache, mysql, and php. Like I said, I'm used to installing from source but with this "apt-get (install)" feature in Debian I'm not sure of the most efficient way.

Should I apt-get install the server applications or should I install from source? How different is installing in general on Debian machines vs (Dead)hat?

I'm not familiar with debian, but I really like installing server applications like apache and proftpd from source. Configuring from source enables you to be more specific as to what options you want enabled.

It really bites that redhat will no longer produce free RH distros. I switched from mandrake and now this. I will have to look elsewhere too.

Well when you have enjoyed the RedHat way of installing software you will be quite happy you have had that experience since there are better ways of installing; like automatic dependency resolve & more.

apt-get will be your friend ... apt-cache search <package> like apt-cache search mysql | sort | more

I use Debian and I do a little bit of both. I mostly use dpkg/apt-get/dselect (the Debian package system) to install stuff and keep my system up to date, but some things, like PHP, I build from source since I need the latest version. There's nothing stopping you from both using the package system and building from source, but you might run into problems where the package system wants to satisfy dependancies you have already filled by building from source.

Håkan

Honestly I build Apache2 + PHP from source :-)