Slackware as an enterprise server

Gerard Lally · 06-14-2011, 01:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xspartan

The answer to your question is that it depends on your taste and your knowledge. If you feel that you can deal with Slackware then go with Slackware. If not and you need professional support, then go with RHEL and stick with it.
Definitely Slackware is good enough for a SOHO or a medium size company. When you say "Enterprise" do you mean huge companies like Yahoo and Google? If that's what you mean then i don't know and i am very curious to know.

Yes what I meant was how Slackware would shape up if it was used, for example, as a Squid proxy or file server for perhaps a thousand users. I just wanted to know if there were technical limitations, like in the kernel, or with CPUs, memory, but zordrak pointed out the only one really is PAM, and that is now shipped with Slackware. RHEL do backport some changes to the kernel but in essence it's the same Linux kernel, so really the only difference is commercial support, not to mention the ready supply of admins which certification guarantees.

As for me, I use Slackware and it's a GNU/Linux I understand. I don't understand the innards of SL6/RHEL much, or Debian for that matter, or Suse. I understood and liked the Unix philosophy straight away, and for me Slackware (and faithful derivatives like Salix) and NetBSD implement that philosophy without bloat or fudge.

Gerard Lally · 06-14-2011, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SL00b

Then perhaps you shouldn't talk about things you have no experience with, because you've been criticizing other distros and their users quite a bit in this thread

Anybody reading this thread will see that your accusation is not true. Goodbye.

PrinceCruise · 06-14-2011, 03:43 PM

Guys, peace.
I was having a good n' useful read until last few posts. Lets carry on with a good spirit.

Regards.

SL00b · 06-14-2011, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gezley

Anybody reading this thread will see that your accusation is not true. Goodbye.

Right, because this never happened:

Quote:

Originally Posted by gezley

What the GUI tools do is lower the bar of expertise; they don't increase the technical capacity of the machine. By tying competence using these tools to a certification path the Enterprise Linux providers increase the number of IT admins who can administer their enterprise servers, that's all. They don't increase the technical potential of a RHEL x86_64 server vis-a-vis Slackware. At least, that's what I suspect. If Slackware was big enough to offer a certification path and commercial support I can't see why it wouldn't be one of the best enterprise servers around. But then you'd need a plentiful supply of skilled admins happy to work the traditional Unix way. These days point-and-click is all the rage. To my mind it's only a matter of time before the OS bloat that goes with this mentality has a security price-tag as well as a monetary price-tag.

xspartan · 06-16-2011, 02:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gezley

Yes what I meant was how Slackware would shape up if it was used, for example, as a Squid proxy or file server for perhaps a thousand users. I just wanted to know if there were technical limitations, like in the kernel, or with CPUs, memory, but zordrak pointed out the only one really is PAM, and that is now shipped with Slackware. RHEL do backport some changes to the kernel but in essence it's the same Linux kernel, so really the only difference is commercial support, not to mention the ready supply of admins which certification guarantees.

As for me, I use Slackware and it's a GNU/Linux I understand. I don't understand the innards of SL6/RHEL much, or Debian for that matter, or Suse. I understood and liked the Unix philosophy straight away, and for me Slackware (and faithful derivatives like Salix) and NetBSD implement that philosophy without bloat or fudge.

What i know for sure is that a University in Greece was running several servers on Slackware. (Apache, Squid,Sendmail&Openwebmail,File and print server etc). I even had a shell account there!! And yes, Slackware was running smoothly. I think they are still running all those servers on Slackware. That University had to cover the needs of more than 5000 students.