Debian for servers??
 

Hi,
Is debian for servers recommended?With RedHat going commercial with their server release,I would like to know which is the best system for servers.I hear Redhat/Fedora people do not reccommend Fedora core 1 and 2 for server production systems at this stage. What is WhiteBox linux?Is it a free version of the RH enterprise server?Please help.

Debian is known to be a very stable distro and should work good on a server. As for whitebox, on their site

Debian works great for servers. With the smart program APT it is VERY easy to install new applications and install security fixes.

As others have said Debian is good for server use though I prefer Gentoo, no idea on Whitebox.

One of the reasons some people choose debian for servers over gentoo is that gentoo's portage isn't as stable as debian's.

Yup. I'm not talking down Gentoo - it's what I use on my laptop and desktops - but Debian is just rock stable. You won't have the latest packages if you run the stable distribution, but they are pretty much guaranteed to be stable and functional.

Gentoo exposes some strange choices and inconcistancies in their Portage tree (allowing packages that don't work pass as stable and not even warning users, etc) but other than that it's a great fun distro (and quite easy to use actually).


Håkan

Even though fedora is a direct branch off of the legendary Redhat,why is fedora cautioning people against using it for servers.Is it due to the new kernel.But it has shown itself to be quite stable.Comment?

If you feel like using it, nobody is stopping you. It's just that the software in Fedora has not been thoroughly tested. The software in the stable branch of Debian is put through a very long process of testing before it is placed in the stable branch. The intended use of the stable branch is for servers. If you find it Fedora stable enough, then use it.