Recently a LAN was set up at my office. The server was originally running Windows XP, but then the IT consultant (ie the person who set the whole LAN up) installed Fedora Core 2. I don't have much experience with Linux, but I find it very strange that he installed an O/S that isn't even supported anymore. Does anyone have any clue why he might have done this? If not, should I upgrade it to a newer distro, and if so, which one? Everything is working fine, so maybe I should go with the old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"..

He probably installed what he was familiar with or had the CDs for. I see a lot of newbies do this (it's frightening how many posts I see here saying - I just installed RH 7.3 and want to know...)

There ARE good reasons to install older operating systems:

Hardware compatibility - if the hardware is older sometimes the drivers have dropped off the map of newer distros and kernels. Sometimes you can figure out what you need and compile it into later things but it takes an effort.

Software supportability - Some vendors specify requirements and call it "unsupported" if you don't use the versions of things they specify. Sometimes this actually is because of a compatibility issues but those often can be gotten around often with compatibility libraries. Often things will work just fine - the vendor just doesn't want to have to keep track of multiple versions of OS to be able to support their application. My rule for vendors is if they don't have active support for an OS that's been out for a least a year then they're not actively developing in my mind so should be dropped like a hot potato.

My guess however goes back to what I put at the top of this.

Once upon a time I subscribed to the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality but in the commercial arena this usually gets you into trouble. You'll want to do something that requires newer technology and find you aren't able to do it without a major upgrade of your OS.

I'd suggest working on moving forward. However you would need to plan for it carefully. Make sure you know every app you're using and research it's availability and capabilities in later distros.

Also I suggest reinstall rather than upgrade. Often with upgrades you end up keeping a lot of garbage you don't need but aren't sure about. A fresh install lets you determine what to install and makes it fairly pristine so you know what you have from the get go. This approach often requires you to have a new server so you can do this all on it while the old one is still handling Production/Business needs. It's beauty is that at switchover you still have the old system so if you run into any really major snag you go back to that original system and tweak the new one to try again later.

Yeah, I totally agree that I should be installing a new distro.

Anyone have any suggestions as to which one I should go with? I'm really new to Linux and don't know much about any of the different distros. I just need it to act as a HTTP proxy, run mySQL 5 and Apache Ant. As I'm pretty strapped for time, I'm also looking for something that is really easy to install and configure - ie do-able in an afternoon or so. Would Ubuntu be a good choice? Or is there something better out there? Thanks

There's nothing wrong with Fedora Core - just suggesting upgrading to a later version. FC6 is out already. You might want to go with FC5 because it's been around a little longer so you'll likely find people who have worked out most of the kinks. Since you're already using Fedora going to a later Fedora will probably be the easiest transistion.

Can't help with the specifics though. Not really a web Admin myself and we use Oracle rather MySQL. I wouldn't think configuring apache would be much different - just get your httpd.conf from existing system. MySQL has a lot of fans so you should be able to find a lot of help on it.

You might want to open separate threads. That is one for migrating MySQL and one for migrating apache. You can even ask which is best distro for each.

Just remember "best" is a subjective term. Folks like me that don't mind RedHat having split out Fedora some time back have no problem with it. A lot of people were annoyed by that so will tell you not to use it for non-technical reasons. I on the other hand would tell you not to use Suse for non-technical reasons (e.g. their recent agreement with M$). That doesn't mean you can't use whichever one you damn well want to use (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Slackware, Linux from Scratch etc...) and ignore all opinions.