best web server distro
 

i must build up a web server and use it with vnc; what is the best freeware distro for this?

every distro is the best: it's linux! :-)
i would take fedora cause it's easy to install and use. the rest of configuration effort is distro independent and just apache, php, mysql (or whatever) stuff.

there is no best distro because if there was one everybody would be using it :-) of course. any of them and maybe the easiest if you are a newbie the rest is about installing apache, vnc,etc... and configure it. (most of the time servers don't run X, you could use ssh to connect and execute commands,etc... on the server)

Ugh, I would never use Fedora in a production environment: Use bleeding edge and you're bound to cut yourself...

Mandrake claims that their version of Apache is much faster because of some special optimizations (seems like every distro claims to be "optimized"), and of course Red Hat is a favorite of many corporations.

Like you i would not use fedora, even not mandrake, gentoo, suse or redhat for a server but a bsd or debian or slackware.

Ooops, I just noticed that said "freeware", of which Red Hat is not (you'll definitely want the ability to get security updates).

Like mrcheeks, I would personally not use a full-blown distro like Mandrake for a webserver (although they claim some pretty nice performance numbers for their Apache--you would have to install a very stripped down config of the box since Mandrake is fairly bloated). If it were me, and I had to use Linux, I would probably go with Debian or SuSE (although I haven't looked at SuSE lately). Debian because there's a lot of developer attention, but very stable code base or SuSE because it's being developed by a large and more or less stable company with more resources than most distros.

Of course, I personally would use FreeBSD, but this is Enterprise Linux, so I'll keep those thoughts to myself :)

Oh by the way, why on earth do you want to allow VNC to a webserver??? SSH seems much safer to me...

I would suggest against a bloated distro too. You are just wasting your hardware resources.

Debian and Slackware are server favorites, and for good reason. Look into them.

For servers you need something just for your needs - nothing more eating resources ;)
debian or slackware :p

Whats wrong with using Fedora?...I thought Linux was Linux. I think It works fine for those who are familiar and comfortable with RedHat and cannot afford the the RH enterprise support.

This was mentioned already. Fedora is "bleeding edge" technology review releases, it's not stable for production environments where you need 99.999% uptime.

You're mistaken. "Linux" is only an OS kernel, not a full OS. To make a complete OS you need to have userland utilities and service daemons to actually do the "stuff" that you do with a server. The kernel only handles things like processing packets and sending them to the right place, handling I/O activities, etc...

What is more, most Linux Distributions (distribution is the Linux term for an OS that incorporates the Linux kernel) have actually tweaked their kernel in different ways, so a 2.4.20 Linux kernel on Red Hat will be much different than a 2.4.20 kernel from Slackware. Other than the kernel, the userland utilities and daemons, how software and configurations are managed, etc all differ greatly from one distribution to the next. Some distributions (especially Red Hat) will make very proprietary versions of their tools that either use the same commands as normal, but have much different options, switches, and output, or they will use a different command all together to do the exact same thing.

So the short answer is no: All distributions are not equally interchangable at will.

I just had a salesman from a company that builds servers tell me that I needed RedHat Enterprise, because we are going to be using the server as a web server for about 20 web sites.

This doesn't sound right to me. We are currently running 4 year old Linux distro (Caldera 2.4) and are replacing this server with a new one (going from 5U to 1U) and thought about using a newer version of Linux.

Back then there wasn't the selection of Linux commercial OS that there is now. The posts seem to mention Debian as the favored OS for a web server.

Would it be better to use a commercial Linux distro for a webserver with multiple web sites???

If you do not require a GUI, check out Trustix.
http://www.trustix.org/

I would suggest FreeBSD for both performance and security.

Well, it depends on what you need to do. If you need to install commercial software on it, than you're pretty much stuck with either Red Hat ES/AS or SuSE Enterprise. The reason is that most ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) only build their software for Red Hat and often SuSE (check with the ISV prior to picking a distro). There is virually zero commercial software support for Debian, Gentoo, etc...

If you don't plan on running any commercial software and you're going to do everything with Open Source tools and software, then you really don't need to worry about that.

Again, this totally depends on what you're doing with it. Most expert sysadmins prefer distros that do not install a lot of bloat and are very "lean and mean" by default. This is because they're a lot easier to secure and tune for performance--by removing pieces, or not having them installed in the first place. For site operators that won't have expert staff and may need to install third-party software, commercial distros are more preferred because they often have easy GUI tools for performing administration tasks and they have much better software support for commercial applications.

Thank you for your input!
We are going to use an Open Source distro. I'll check out trustix.org but I think we "may" go with Debian. FreeBSD is also being considered - but RedHat is out.
Thanks again.