Hello, I'm new to the linux scene but I've been developing websites for the last 3 years or so. Basically me and my partner want to have our own servers so we can have much more control over everything. To that end we're looking to linux because it's free and can do everything we want to do on old hardware.

Currently we are with a shared Windows 2000 server and an SQL 2000 database. However we will be switching to a linux/mono/oracle solution.

Basically my question as I'm new to linux is what distro to use. I'd like one that's fairly easy to configure, however security and stability are the top 2 things in my books. I'd like to run an extremely slimmed down version with just the programs that I need. I will be running 1 webserver and 1 database server connected over 100mb cat5. Here are what I would need on each server:


Webserver (P2 450, 256mb RAM, 40gb 7200rpm HDD)
- linux
- apache v2.0
- mod_mono
- qmail (mail server)
- spam assasin (spam stopper)
- web mail program
- webalizer (log analizer)
- dns server
- ftp server
- remote admin program


Database Server (Unknown specs at this time)
- linux
- oracle
- ftp server
- remote admin program


I'm just wondering what would be the best version of linux to run? Preferably we would have the same version on both boxes. The only purpose for both these boxes would be running a website and nothing else. Anyone got any suggestions?

* If you have suggestions could you list the reason for that type of linux?*

thanks.

debian.

Slackware

It really does come down to those two debian and slackware, because those are the more lightweight distros (which are major).

a 450 doesn't have the oompf to run high power gfx driven distro's they way they are meant to be run. SuSE, Redhat, MDK are out. Knoppix might just scrape in, but some of it's software might be lacking because of the consumed resources.

You will probably want to find out about what services you want running and which you don't need to free some resources, and odds are you won't need a GUI anyway.

You can run other distros, but odds are you'd regret it in the long run;in the short run, you might have a steep learning curve for setting up either of the other two, because they aren't that easy initally. Nevertheless, odds are they will give you more of what you want.

I would recommend Debian (even tho i am trying to mess with slack) but yeh all those things works with both

really up to u

I would say gentoo, I had the most success with building thin servers with it. not to mention easy administrator and friendly forums. all of those packages you listed are VERY easy to install and fairly easy to configure and all the dependancies are resolved for each of them automatically on install.

So generally you have 3 primary choices: Slack, Debian and Gentoo. All 3 are fairly easy to administer and maintain. (Emphasis on fairly for some of the 3, but Gentoo is easy ). All 3 maintain some kind of mechanism for installation of new packages and resolving of dependancies. If i was asked for a linux distro to use for a server, i would say Gentoo without thinking 2 seconds on it.

Of course you can always go with compilation from source (heavily modified Fedora, maybe?), yeah right! Good luck finding dependancies.


In the end the choice is yours. My only advice: avoid any CD-distributed distro (eg: Mandrake, Fedora) like a plague.

Yeh thanks,

Welcome i chosen slackware and i am really happy with it KDE is alot quicker then Redhat and i am going to deffenly keep away from redhat and fedora

Thanks all for your sugesstions