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

That's my

Kindest regards,

.

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

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