Hi All,

I have two options....

1) Install Redhat as a server
or
2) Windows 2000 server

Can anyone give me a few ideas as to which I should chose and why.
Its primarilily for a mail server, and possibly email, but I cant decided between the two, as both are capable of doing the job.

depends on what you want to do and how skilled you are in AD and with linux administration.

for total uptime and upfront cost RH is much less (unless you are going with RHE).

are you running in a domain with lots of windows workstations, are you doing this for your house, what?

much more info is required before we can make any kind of sujestion.

Its simply for home use only.

I've already got windows 2000 server and redhat, I just cant decide which to go with.

I had a little mess around last night installing both OS's, but I found redhat was easier to setup in term of the webserver.

Er, typo?

First off, I would not suggest installing Red Hat for a server at all. Look into a real Linux distro for server use, something like Slackware or Debian. You will be much better off.

So, in my mind, RH is out of the running, and the question really is:

Linux vs Windows

Well, setup and administer servers running Linux and Windows, so I can talk from experience here.

Both OSes have their pros and cons.

Windows:
Pros
1. Nothing can touch Windows when it comes to domain control. Samba is still years behind it, and probably always will be.

2. Administering a Windows server (your day to day status checks) is just much, much easier. For instance, checking your DHCP leases is a simple matter of right-clicking on the DHCP range in question, and seeing a refreshable window that shows active leases, percent of range used, etc. Compare this to Linux which doesn't seem to have any method to check DHCP leases, other than manually paging through the dhcpd.leases file (which doesn't even list the leases in numerical order).

3. Hardware support is also untouched. You can buy pretty much go out and buy any backup or network device, and be sure that it will work with Windows and have technical support if you need it.

Cons
1. Expensive, and it only gets more expensive as the amount of services you are offering increases.

2. Security problems affect some of Microsoft's server applications. Outlook Web Access for instance, is the devil itself. You might as well leave a blank password for your Administrator account, if you are going to run OWA. Exchange is fairly secure, but can be trashed pretty bad if somebody can get access to it's configuration through a NetBIOS attack or something similar.

3. A firewall is required if you are going to run a Windows server. And by firewall, I mean a hardware firewall, or at least a machine that is setup as a dedicated firewall. Firewall software is garbage, never install that on a server. Of course it could be said that no server should be run without some sort of firewall, but with Windows, you don't have much of a choice.

4. Can be a resource hog, which means you will need more money to buy better servers.

Linux
Pros
1. Can be installed and configured as a secure server faster than a Windows machine (if you know what you are doing, anyway).

2. Free, that is all I have to say here.

3. Better community than Windows has, such as this lovely board we are on . Of course, some may say that a professional technical support line is better than a bunch of nerds on a message board, but those people probably never called tech support before...

4. More secure in a standalone environment. IPTABLES can lock down the machine without the need for an external firewall. And most (not all) of it's server applications are secure and updated frequently.

5. Samba makes an outstanding file server for Windows clients. Much better than running a Windows machine as a file server.

6. Runs great on low resources, meaning you don't have to buy new servers nearly as often. You could even recycle old servers (Windows ones perhaps ) and it won't cost you anything.

Cons
1. Lacks much of the polish that Windows servers have. Like I said with my DHCP example.

2. Hardware support is questionable. You might get your brand new tape drive to work, but most of the time it is going to come with Windows backup software that you certainly can't use, but had to buy because it was bundled with the drive.

3. Lack of political backing can be a problem with the administration. It can be hard to sell the idea of Linux to the higher-ups because it isn't nearly as widespread as Windows, and many people in the non-technical world have never even heard of it. The lack of tech support, or responsible party's behind it are also problems when you try and get the backing of the administration.

4. Can be harder to master than Windows, so it is going to require more effort and research materials before you are ready to go live with a Linux server.

5. Simply cannot perform on-par with Windows if you are doing a Windows Domain. This is a big problem for organizations that use the domain model heavily.



Hmm, I think I might have went out of the scope of your original question. I get a little too into the Linux vs Windows debate at times, sorry about that.

To answer your real question, if we are talking about a home mail server, I would go with Linux (not RH though, as I said before) with qmail. I suggest Linux since to use Windows 2000 as an email server, it is going to require Exchange, which you would have to buy, plus Exchange uses massive amounts of resources, and would require a serious machine to run well (Exchange 2000 can kill 512 MB of RAM, easy).

The downside is that a Linux mail server is probably going to be harder to setup than a Windows one. But, nothing is perfect.

anyone trying to run a mixed mode domain setting is just asking for issues. either 100% of your servers need to be linux, or 100% need to be M$. its that simple.

if you are crazy enough to make the bad choice to mix and match the 2 you are begging for nothing but problems.

its that simple.

for home mail server, stay with linux. just about any of the distros out there will be fine. RH would not be as good atm, as you have lost all future update access. so move on to FC2 or to a different distro.

as for ease of configuring. the click and point wizard of windows is a breeze, when everything works. often times, more then not, with exchange you are looking at reinstalling exchange several times to get it to work.

yes on a rare occation you can get it to go in perfect the first time around, but not often.

the linux e-mail server/client system is extreemly complicated and is something im holding off to learn later on this year so i can set up a nice little mail server for my small business. i hope to move off ot M$ and onto linux as soon as i can find a way around a few issues ive dug myself into with running my business. its a matter of retraining myself and my employees. first train self, then employees when there are only 3 total ppl in the business.

That is the whole reason Samba was created, so Linux could interpolate with Windows.

Without Samba, and without being able to serve Windows clients, Linux would have had a much harder time catching on in the corporate environment.

It is a necessary evil.

ok, linux newbie here.... but isnt Samba only a file shareing protacal/program/thing?

linux servers can run your permisions, set up enviroments, programs, isolate restrictions via group and units just like win2k does with AD.

AD is a copy basicaly of what linux has been doing for years (at least 10 years longer then M$) from a security standpoint with permisions and restirctions for the end user and administrators. not to mention from delegations and the RFC standards for LDAP, and other protocals that win2k just started using with AD that linux has been using since they were established no?

when i started learning about win2k and the AD structor i was impressed with how closely it resembeld the linux security structor just in a very easy to work wizard based GUI.

now from that stand point windows has linux beat hands down, but has always been better then linux in the GUI end of things, but not in stability, or customization. heck if you still want to do some of the real powerful fetures that win2k offers you can not do it with any M$ tool, you have to go out and buy a powerful 3rd party tool. with linux, its right there built into the kernal.

so overall with win2k, microsoft for the first time created a valid server that was close to the overall power of *nix.

i know next to nothing about win2k3 due to a few facts that have turned me 100% against M$.

1. if you are running clients other then winXP pro you have to buy new seeds for them. license even though you already own a license for that OS you have to buy a 2nd leased license (18months) to connect to a win2k3 server.

2. the license for win2k3 server is a 36month lease. you do not own the software and the key for it. you have to buy it again after 36 months. sorry, but if i pay someone for a server license, i own that licnese. i will not pay you a 2nd time for it.

3. only 1 built in TS administrative login is alowed. sorry, but i use TS for all of my administrative activities as 99% of my admin work is done remote. that is what the 2 license with win2k are for. to alow more then 1 person access to the server at a time, and to alow for a botched connection to be repaired with the 2nd account.

that being said. please enlighten me to what samba is if not only a file sharing system between OSs?

its not a server so far as KERBOROS, or and LDAP server, its not for assigning permisions to end users desktops or programs.... what is it for?

linux newbie wanting to learn. please teach me so i will know better.

BTW - RH make a perfectly good server - LQ runs on RHES.

Google use Red Hat in their cluster.

If it is a home server and not amazingly critical, install the OS you know the least about - that way it's a learning experience. For just a webserver, Apache is far simpler and quicker to secure than IIS on windows, but if you're a techie you might benefit from getting dirty with IIS (if nothing else, you'll appreciate Apache more).

Additional Linux server Pros (and speaking as someone who's spent the last 9 hours rebuilding a clients bloody stupid NT4 setup from scratch):

a) With Linux, you only need to reboot when patching the kernel - with Windows, you reboot for _every _ patch and then you get to play "patch jenga".
b) Uptime - Linux stays up for longer with less problems. In the past 2 years, I've had no unscheduled downtime with any of my nix boxes (*touches wood*)- the Windows boxes look like Zebedee (magic roundabout) by comparison.

Re tape drives / backups: Most of the tape drives and backup software I use (HP and increasingly Sony AIT2's) and fully Nix compatible. Arcserve comes with Linux, Solaris, SGI etc as well as the various w32 flavours all on the same disk. My hardware policy is "if it doesn't run under Linux, we won't buy it." Of course, my budget is probably a tad larger than the "home server" funds.

Mixed-mode domains: I've run mixed-mode for about 2 1/2 years now and, once the initial setup is done, it's seriously reduced my workload - things don't break for stupid reasons under Linux - it's usually a _real_ problem, or you've screwed up. All the file, mail and proxy servers run Linux and so do the "kiosk" boxes available for contractors. The old domain controllers get recycled as snort boxes / firewalls / internal webservers.
The downside from a company point of view is that they won't be able to go "cheap" on a replacement network admin - but in the long run that's a good thing for them.

GUIs: Are overrated. I can spend 5 minutes twiddling my way through the GUI of $bloody_stupid_OS or I can spend 30 seconds editing a text file in vi. Of course, YMMV.

my 2p