Best Linux for Webserver
 

Hey All!

Thanks again for all the help you have all provided me in the past! It is very much appreciate and I am very grateful to you all.

I have another question for you though. I work at a small, not-for-profit school that wants to switch over from some old solaris webservers to a linux platform. They are trying to help support the open source community more and I have been chosen to help get this started.

I know that slackware and debian are supposed to be very strong OS', but I am still learning with linux and need something a little friendlier.

I thought about using Fedora, but I have heard that isn't a good idea because it isn't stable.

Now I know everyone has their own opinion on what is the best, but I am looking for any help I can here. I need something that is somewhat easy to install and has a GUI (I know, I know, you should never have a gui on a production server...but that is what I need right now).

They are open to trying anything, but would prefer not to pay (ie, Red Hat). But they want one that has a good following so if we run into a problem, we will have a community to go to to find answers.

I know this is a tall order, but I know that if anyone has the answer it's you guys! Thanks in advance for any help and advice!


linux216

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ight=lq+awards
Slackware hasn't graphical install, but is pretty easy to install. (and you'll learn a lot of useful things).
If you want the easiest installation ever, then Mandrake is yours.

I have run a Debian server based on woody for 9 months now and it is rock solid. There is an excellent step by step tutorial on it here which I used as a base. I have run Debian for 2 years so did have some background. I would recommend not running X on the server but running it headless and controlling it via another box. You can find some very useful info at one of my pages about setting up the networking and DNS stuff as well. There are links on the page about various different setups. Because of the Debian package management system ensuring the server is kept up to date is very easy indeed.

Any distro can work as a webserver. If you have experience with Fedora Core or Redhat, then use that. If you want enterprise class distros then you can use RHEL clones like CentOS or whitebox.