Slackware Server Quality
 

I am putting togerther a web server and a DNS server on a seperate box. Currently they are running FreeBSD. I am looking at different Linux Dirstros, trying to decide what might be better to use. I have noticed that most people on this discussion board use Slackware. Is Slackware a good Server Distro or is it better for Desktop/Workstation. How is Security and is it easy to keep updated? What do major corporations use? It looks like Redhat is one of the Top Enterprise Servers. Does Slackware compare in speed and stability? Or should I just stay with FreeBSD?
Thanks.

Most of us that use slackware do so for the same reasons that you just mentioned, speed, stability, ease of use. For me, most of the so called 'professional' distro's are more difficult to administer because the stray from many of the given UNIX standards. For a basic server (file/web/POP3/DNS/DHCP) slackware will perform as good if not better than any of the other distro's out there, and given your familiarity with BSD I think you will find administration easy.

just my :twocents:

slight

Well, the nifty thing about slackware is that it contains packages pretty much in their vanilla form, they haven't been modified to fit into the distrobution. To answer your qestion, it makes as good a server or as good a destop as you want it to be, because you're going to be the one setting it up. It the same with security. When major security flaws are are found in supported aplications, pat is usualy pretty quick in coming up with new packages, though there is no automatic update of any kind. It's up to you to keep up with any security issues that migh occour with packages you have installed and install the fixes yourself. The automatic updates available for other distrobutions are a strong selling point for many enterprise users.

As far as speed and stability goes, I've never used anything that compares with slack. It's so minimalistic that there is little cruft to become unstable and/or slow things down.

Slackware is an awesome server distro. Apache (w/ mod_ssl and mod_php), sendmail, mysql, proftpd, bind, ssh... they all work with minimal configuration. As was mentioned, the packages are all in their vanilla form, which helps eliminate unknowns when you're tracking down problems. Also, since Slack uses BSD-style inits (instead of SysV), you'll find that administering it is ridiculously easy.

Slackware's goal is to be the most UNIX-like Linux distro - and it does a very good job at that. I highly recommend it.

Re: Slackware Server Quality
 

If FreeBSD does what you want stick with it.
You'd probably miss ports here, too :}

From what I understand gentoo's emerge
should be the Linux equivalent of ports.

I can't offer you a direct comparison of
Slack and BSD since I've never used BSD.

Slack, however, is a very mature and lightweight
distro that's more tailored towards security than
the mainstream distros that made simplicity their
primary target (just look at permissions on sound
devices, for instance). It's hardened much easier
than Mandreck for instance.



Cheers,
Tink