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Which Linux for Professional Admins?
LazloToth asks: "Short and sweet: with so many distributions of Linux to choose from, and so many of them good to excellent, which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration? If an admin wants to standardize on one Linux distribution and have the best of all worlds on everything from file-and-print servers to database boxes, what, in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes - - the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?"
This answer was specifically optimized for your question.
Surely, Debian?
Hurd. Master of OS's.
Gentoo, obviously :H
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
This should be fun to watch.
Solaris 9!
I say debian. Choose stable and use apt-get for updating. Yup Debian
Hands down. Its debian, its got support, and we're going to see a new release every six months until they run out of cash. :)
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Slackware of course. :-)
KISS all the way
It's the administrator, not the distribution that matters the most. A different administrator might like a different system. There is no absolute objective "good".
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Don't you think that if there was a holy grail of Linux distros, that there would be more then one Linux distro? If people agreed on what you asked, there would be less distros to choose from, unfortunately all of them have their downsides, thus listen to what everyone says about their favorite distro, and do what I do, choose Slack. Oh you want a reason? How about "'caus"
Honestly I would choose slack or debian (different reasons for each) and then boot off network, change one image you change them all... then have box specific apps on the local hard drive etc. BTW: get a lot of ram
Yes, I said it! Or, for a free version.. consider CentOS
SuSE, SuSE, SuSE...
Simple & Easy - more than you could ask...
Gentoo All the way. nuff said
if you're a linux admin, you want to be running debian. Unfortunatly, the 'only' linux (at least stateside) that the management types will let you run is Red Hat, because thats what Oracle supports.
Dunno, might be different in non-oracle shops but that's where I live so *shrugs*
what, in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes - - the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?"
I don't know. My management just feels fuzzy.
would have to say debian or bsd. just for reliability issues and general ease of use and a 1/2 decent package mangament
http://www.thegreynomads.com
I recommend Mandrake with a support license. Frequent updates, rpm based for easy package updation (bwahaha, updation), it's gotten press with being traded publicly now, so it may trigger PHB's to pull a "hey, I read about them in (insert CIO style dummy mag here)".
But that's just me.
How Jaded Are You?
FreeBSD is scalable, dependable, and very high performance. It's also easy to maintain since people didn't make the distribution without a plan.
There are naked people!!!11
Long live slackware!!!
If you are a professional admin, shouldn't you already know what's best?
------
insert sig here,here, and here
> which Linux delivers the best balance of
> stability, high-level support options, security,
> rapid updates, and ease of administration
2.4
echo "getuid(){return 0;}" > e.c; gcc -shared -o e.so e.c; LD_PRELOAD=./e.so sh
http://www.openbsd.org
vodka, straight up, thank you!
RedHat and SuSE both have software and hardware vendor support. You might find that companies with an existing relationship with Novell (or even a nostalgic one) will tend towards SuSE, but like in the days decades ago when "Nobody got fired for buying IBM", you'd probably have your best defense against a pink slip with RedHat.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
I've never used BSD, but I knew some scary guys who were really into it, so I figure it must be good. How about we just get all the best stuff from every distro and use it with BSD?
If you want to satisfy managment you'll probably have to go with one of the majors that have support contracts. I.E. Redhat, Suse, etc
For stability it's hard to be Debian. And from what I've heard (no experience myself) they do a pretty good job on security updates.
Myself, I prefer Gentoo. Although I'm not sure I would use it for production, though many do.
they all pretty much suck, so just choose on that you personally thinks sucks the least.
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, IRIX, Win2k, then Linux.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Link:
Mandrake of course. Lots of good pre packaged Goodness.
Nah Only Kidding. For me, Debian or Gentoo would be the pick. I havent used gentoo enough to suggest it however I have heard many good things about it.
In general, RHEL on the production servers, and Fedora Core everywhere else in the office.
If you don't like that, and if you don't have important production servers (i.e. print servers and file servers are all that Linux is running in the shop), then debian everywhere would also be a good choice.
As for the desktop, anyone who is putting Linux on thier desktop becomes thier own admin. I wouldn't even TRY and maintain those boxes, just let them be and slap them if they start blowing up the network or something.
You know, I've used lots of versions of Linux in my day... Versions of Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE... I really can't say any one is better than the other.
It really comes down to what you've played with and are used to. Debian has apt-get, and with an additional package so can pretty much any of the others.
If you don't want to pay for support, then Red Hat may be the best for you because more people use the "Fedora Core" in the US than any other version I'd guess, but SuSE has a big following as well... so that can be considered a toss up.
I think the best bet is for you to mess with more than one and pick the one that you like the best.
It's all a personal preference thing.
We run SuSe over a cluster of several hundred servers. Extremely easy to deploy, very secure out of the box and it supports auto-updates which saves us a world of admin time.
Base install w/apache, mysql and mod_backhand takes about thirty minutes to online.
Anyone who knows what they're doing should run Gentoo because it gives you the most control, and it teaches you the inner workings of Linux. Gentoo is quick to patch security problems, and they have an extensive user community which answers most support issues. As linux as linux gets, since it's all community based. Corporations just have alterior motives IMHO. ;)
"the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy" may or may not be the best solution.
Generally non-techie types tend to relate RedHat to THE Linux. As a general rule I think most people have more luck selling the RedHat name to a confused upper management than some voodoo weird named "slackware" linux or what have you.
Your mileage may vary though.
This post is sure to generate a ton of replies :) Really though, it depends exactly on what you need. For the company I worked for, the most important thing was ease of maintainability. For that reason, we chose to go with Debian. It was easy to update things across multiple machines. That was the biggest appeal for us. Other distributions have other features to offer.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
OSX and OSX server running on xServers and PowerMacs respectively is the obvious solution. ;-)
and mine didn't :-) Who do I have to sleep with to get something posted?
OK, OK, my story sucked big time, but this question beat me hands down!
I would buy karma from ebay but I'm not sure I can trust the seller.
Slackware with slapt-get or swaret for dependency checking, which slackware's pkgtool does not do.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Read no further. Without having to read the reast of these posts; you can get a sense of what is to come here, and hopefully avoid some painful reading:
"I like A".
"I like B".
"A sucks and so does your mom".
PS. Apt-get rules.
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
I've switched over to Debian from Redhat because it just works and feels better for updates and installs. Aptitude is really powerful stuff.
Of course, there are some server products that dont support debian, so redhat is still my fall back.
Why, it's Mandrake of course! Those Frenchies are such stalwarts of stability, steadfastness, and sheer willpower to withstand any attack on their infrastructure that I can't imagine a computer operating system that isn't founded on exactly the same principles!
Right?
This is less of a flaming attempt that you might think.
Linux has always been good to me- i have no regrets. But the numbers (insert real netcraft census, not the typical BSD is dying troll) may indicate better than hype (or maybe not).
Mention OSX as a BSD if you like, but I don't know about its performance vs Free/Net/Open.. (meaning i have no experience with it) I would hope that you can boot it w/o the expensive GUI running all the time. Also, if you have existing PC hardware, Free/Net/Open will not require a new hardware purchase. If you have old PPC machines lying around, Free/Net/Open will not require new hardware purchase.
do() || do_not();
Isn't this more of a religious question than a technical one?
What is best for your everything might be best than what is best for my everything.
If I my organization does a, b, and c and requires d, e, and f, then Linux Distro G is best for me. But if you do x, y, and z and need u, v, and w, then Linux Distro T is probably better for you.
There is no _one_ answer.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
The one you like the best obviously. Try out as many distros as you can and find the one that suits you best.
Personally, I'd recommend Mandrake, but then I have no doubt that many people on here will be squarely against it.
Free will is just an illusion
Just don't pick Slackware.
No offence to Slackware, which has it's place and which I ran at home, but surely no large organisation would decide to base their business on it ?
Apart from mine that is...
He's right. I personally like Suse. Yet I know people that will spit teeth before using Suse. I like Suse because of its ease of administration via Yast. Some hate that and perfer the command line. Gotta try'em before you use'em. Support and scalability are an issue too. I sell servers to small SOHO type offices. Most any Linux will do the job. I don't expect the download version of Suse to handle a grid cluster.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I wish folks would just stop this nonsense. Let the problem define the solution. If three problems are best solved by three seperate distributions, or even another os (BSD), then deal with it, don't force folks to stick to one canned solution.
if your sysadmin staff is worth anything, they can easily pickup/adjust between them.
Aren't all Linux admins professionals?
Like RedHat Enterprise Linux, plus it just plain works.
All others pale before this mighty distro.
Yeesh, what a question. Guaranteed page refreshes and add views.
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
If you had said UNIX I would have answeared FreeBSD or NetBSD. However, you asked for Linux so I guess I have to say:
:P
Debian Linux, or maybe Debian BSD, just to be rude
I'm gonna give my vote to SuSE... the ease and speed of updates is one reason I've stuck with it, after giving up on Mandrake and Red Hat/Fedora. YAST2 (the built-in setup utility) is just such an easy and powerful tool, and it "just works" - you can set it to auto-update if you want (it sets up a cron job for you if you select this option), but even on manual it will identify critical patches separately from non-critical patches, which makes it easy to pick and choose.
Plus, it's Novell now, so it's owned by a "real company", which may or may not be something your own company/organization is looking for (some business do require some level of centralized accountability and support).
I've also been pleasantly surprised with SuSE 9.2 in other areas - it's the cleanest and easiest-to-use distro out of the box that I've used, with no obvious bugs that I've seen. No reason not to use it, and lots of reasons to use it. YAST2 is a big selling point, in my opinion.
My company runs Red Hat Enterprise. Upper management likes big names. So, when you tell them, "Hey, I think we should run Mandrake", they'll stare at you like you're retarded.
But now say, "We're thinking of running IBM, RedHat, or Novell", they'll say, "Oh, I read about them in the Wall Street Journal. Go with it."
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
actually - a good admin is able to handle any distribution.
That's what makes the difference between the "called" admins - and the real ones.
If you know how a Linux System works - you can administrate any system, e.g. any Distribution.
I thought BSD was... Oh forget it.
We are talking about admin tasks, aren't we? FC3 would be the bleeding edge equivilent of WhiteBox, for the daring admin. WhiteBox and be a server or a desktop. The admin would probably run GNOME and the desktop user would probably prefer KDE.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
that's what I use and I love it as both server and desktop.
Doesn't the question hinge around the hardware vendor certifying a particular distro? I mean, Debian or Gentoo may be great, but it is not so good when you can't get a driver for a Fibre Channel card for your HP StorageWorks SAN, or if you do manage to get one going, your configuration is unsupported (ie no regression testing performed by the vendor).
Slackware is GOD
So far, I've seen 3 comments or so backing up why someone suggested a certain distro.
/. and will require a bit more cash, but you'll probably get a better feel for all the things you like or dislike in the distros you try. What says that if you take the advice of someone on /., you'll get the best one for you? Chances are, you'll try what someone says, and not anything else, and miss out on a distro that really suits your needs.
I think a better idea for you would to go buy a $50 (after rebate) 120gb hard drive, partition it 10 ways, and then try out 10 different distros.
Sure, it'll take more time than asking
> the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration
Surely Gentoo delivers the best balance of the above. The only real disadvantage is compilation time, but that can be negated by nice'ing long emerges overnight.
Now, if stability and security are paramount I would go with Debian stable. But Gentoo is light years ahead of all contenders in the rapid updates department.
The unofficial
I would prefer debian for administration, but it's more of a religous preference than one based on technical merits.
Corel GNU/Linux.
First thing I ask of interviewees "do you have Corel GNU/Linux on your bookshelf"
If they don't, they won't get the job. That simple. Its like the Code Complete of the GNU/Linux world.
a cohesive OS developed by a group of people with a single vision is good. Something cobbled together out of dozens of unrelated projects is bad.
An OS that is well documented because it is part of the job is good. An OS that is poorly documented because documentation is boring is bad.
*BSD or Solaris > Linux
Not sure if this was a troll or not - I guess the drugs have/have not kicked in yet.
However assuming it is not....
The question concerned internal systems, not a platform for external or software for distribution. So it is no consquence whether the license is GPL, CDDL, MPL, *BSD or any other free to use type license.
g's up, hoes down.
I haven't found a better put together distro that found so many devices with out a hitch. I have a Deb box, and ran slackware for a bit too. I tried suse, and mandrake, but that was a while ago. There are so many places to find pre-packaged add-ons for Fedora, it's great. In fact I'm writing this on Fedora Core 3 using my Dell Precision laptop with the wide screen, using the 802.11g access point secured via WPA_EAP.
OSX is also very well put together, but you said best linux distro.
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
Someone is begging for a flamewar here. Out of topics that actually matter?
Personally, I grew up with Debian, so my preferences are clear. It might have its shortcomings, but I learned to cope with these over time.
BSD... Isn't that a Windows thing?
:)
Yeah!, "Blue Screen of Death" right?
Relax!, I'm just a friendly Linux user screwing with you!
You BSD people take everything so seriously.
Never trust a programmer holding a screw driver!
Tell them you'll work as a volunteer and will split your 401k with the board of directors.
If that doesn't work just tell them to outsource your department.
Regards.
if you need the lowest TCO, a distribution that scales best from firewall, server, desktop choose Debian (stable and testing for the desktop).
:) So for an admin, you wont
Debian makes everything work with 15000 packages, or tries its best.
If you have to make your boss happy with "supported" plattforms choose SuSE.
sed -e 's/Oracle/SomeExpensivePiceOfCode/g'
Oracle runs like a charm on Debian, but this plattform is not officially supported by Oracle.
As a system administrator and IS manager in a mostly windows environment, I have found Debian to be the most reliable and easy to maintain. The APT system makes security and package upgrades (and downgrades) considerably easier than any RPM system ever was.
While APT is available on Fedora, I have always found Debian to be well-thought out and reliable, even for a Windows guy like me.
As RedHat is the most well recognized name in the Linux landscape, most employers choice will be on this end of the linux spectrum, whe time comes to deploy a server. Even though SuSE has the backing from an industry giant (or at least once it was a giant) like Novell, RedHat still has the squatter's rights to the Linux. I resemble the relationship between RedHat and Linux to that of Kleenex and cleaning paper tissues.
Hence, as linux looms in my corporation's near future, I am running a Fedora Core 3 box on my desk to play with, to stay on the legal side of licensing with RedHat. We already have a a couple of RHEL operated boxes on the production floor by the way. So, the choice is not actually much of a choice in its full meaning.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Because professional support is there. You can find it 24/7 for these distros.
Oracle, IBM, HP, all the big guys are there for you too, the best of breed.
The best distro for any admin would be Slackware. Why? It's not bound by any other 'distro's' view as to how Linux should be... it's the raw Linux kernel, and GNU applications ported to your choice of hardware. Plain, vanilla, raw linux all the way baby!
Of course this is a question with a different answer depending on who you ask, but if I were to be the admin of a fairly large system, I would probably go with Debian unstable. Stable doesn't provide the software I want, but unstable will of course need close monitoring of the packages you use. If you're fine with Debian stable, you could probably also go with FreeBSD if that fits you. The major distributions (RedHat/Fedora, Mandrake, etc.) put their focus too much on desktop usage and usability, which also takes the focus away from simplicity and stability. Every server admin should prefer to study and learn the system, instead of adjusting the system to fit his/her own incapabilities.
This should be a poll, not an ask slashdot. That way Debian would still win, but you'd be able to tell without reading 10^8 responses.
They want to know about LINUX, not a BSD. BSD's are great (I'm typing this on a super-BSD right now, Mac OS X), but they're not Linux.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
If you're a Mono/.NET shop, use SuSE.
If you depend most on Postgresql, RedHat's a good choice because they employ Tom Lane.
I am a professional software developer.
:o)
Should I use
if ( ) {
}
or
if ()
{
}
???
OS X!!!
muahahaha
*ducks*
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Please let the world know which editor is the best in the world. emacs or vi. This is the most obvious place to discuss this and get an aboslute answer.
/. comments.
Q: Is there sarcasm in this post?
Hint: REAL admins laugh at most
That one key phrase, "high level support options," pretty much restricts your choice to two: RedHat or SUSE. Both are RPM-based, get in your way unless you do things their way using the GUI, and are generally less streamlined than other distros that may be technologically superior but lack the huge corporation behind them.
Sorry....
Holy Troll, Batman!!
/. story itself was bad...
And I thought the
Here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/default .mspx
Come on. Go figure out which works best for you. Don't rely on these people.
I'd love to see the official document you submit that says "9 out of 10 Slashdot'ers use Distro X"!
It's all Hood
If you are going to spend money for a server system, then I believe hands down it would be Suse Server. There administration tools are second to non.
If you are a sys admin wanting to learn linux start with debian. Easy to install, easy to administer, yet still lots of power and options.
If you are a linux user and your looking for an even more powerfull system use gentoo. Gentoo will compile everything from scratch. Now while this will increase how long it takes you to install everything, it will add to the performace of your system.
Which deity is the best?
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
Well he did ask for high level support and stability. SuSE is now owned by Novell so I would say that answers the high level support issue.
For support I would have to put Red Hat and SuSE at the top. I think SuSE has newer stuff than Red Hat "Not counting Fedora". Mandrake is very good but I have no idea how good their enterprise level support is. That may actually depend a lot on where you are. If you are in France Mandrake maybe a clear winner for support. In Germany SuSE may have an advantage.
If one of the BSDs is an option the best supported one is probably OS/X.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If you are looking for support with a trained staff it depends on where you are. The only distro I foud with technical support in my country was Suse. And I didn't trust their technical staff and their prices where a bit high, so I decided to stick with debian and train people on the way.
-- EOF
Try this time with quotes.
:)
Results 1 - 23 of 23 for "which distribution of linux should i use". (0.06 seconds).
There ya go.
Well in my humble experience, although I "love" Gentoo to death, I would be compelled to say Redhat and/or Suse. ;)
I don't necessarilly agree with having to standardise on these, but they have the corporate backing from the big hardware vendors.
It's a decision devoid of "what is best". It's what will work with the latest hardware and give support for the managers that need that type of warm fuzzy (blaiming the vendor) feeling
my 2cents
Might not be the 'cool' answer, but I've never seen a decent sized company use anything else. Management types like bragging, and their buddies at least know about RedHat. They offer support, and have a bunch of hardware compatability agreements with 'enterprise' machines.
Beyond that, linux is linux and the IT infrastructure matters more in making it usable and functional for the company than the distro.
'Nuff said
It's all been downhill since Ygdgrasil Linux 1.0 in 1992, with the 5.25" boot floppies and all.
Might as well have said "What's the best Cola?" (Pepsi, Coke, RC, Sam's Choice, Big K, Remarkable, etc.) or "What's the best text editor?" (vi, vim, emacs, joe, pico, edit, Kate, etc.)
It's all subjective, and there's really not enough data for anyone to make an informed decision. Do you need support? You might look at Red Hat Enterprise or a derivative of it. Want bleeding edge? Gentoo or Fedora Core. Want stability? Debian or Slackware. Want it to be easy? Mandrake. Want it to be snappy on old hardware? Vector. What about feature "x"? Then look at Yoper, Vidalinux, Ubuntu, Feather, DSL, Knoppix, Lycoris, Connectiva, SAM, etc...
The best advice I can give you is head on over to Distrowatch.com, download a bunch of distros - in fact, get the top ten as listed over there, maybe evne the top 20, and check them out. Install them on a box - what do you like about this certain distro? What are it's strengths? It's weaknesses? And how does it all fit with what you need it to do?
Otherwise, you're just going to get people's personal favorites.
Red Hat Enterprise on the production servers. Gentoo on the play^Wdevelopment boxes.
Yes, RHEL's got outdated software and an outdated kernel. I don't care. It's rock-solid. The security updates can be applied without upgrading the config. I don't need anything else.
Although I am by no means a Linux expert, I've considered sending our laptops and software out on Linux. Why? Our client base is Public Health -- they ain't got no money, so... 'cause it's much cheaper than MS Windows. Especially if you need a server. Having said that, must of them are scared to death of Linux because of lack of experience or desire to relearn (don't fix what ain't broke). That said, I'd stick with the big players with support just a phone call away -- Red Hat or SuSE (Novell). I don't think it will make a real difference either way. Red Hat is more well known, so upper management would, more than likely, get a better warm-fuzzy. Personally, I went with SuSE. With Novell behind them, I hope they will give RH a run for their money.
One final note: Pay the $$$ and get the supported versions. Don't mess around with the free-to-download versions. Upper management wants mission-critical stuff on a proven (and supported) OS.
Epona! The celtic goddes of fertility. Appears as a white mare of unearthly beauty.
1.) Who should have won the last U.S. Presidential election?
2.) Which is better, Ford or Chevy?
3.) Which Star Trek captain is really the best?
4.) Abortion and gay marriage: should I be for or against them?
I just wanted the opinions of my fellow slashdotters on these questions. I figure that they're less inflammatory subjects than the original poster's.
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
Because you asked the question the way you did, the answer is Red Hat Enterprise (in the USA, at least; rumor has it that SUSE is better suited to European businesses).
For all its failings, RHE offers the best balance of the attributes you desire, and it's a viable option in the eyes of the PHB (unlike, say, Gentoo, which will terrify the typical PHB even more than debian).
It's unlikely that you really need the "best balance" of these features, though - you probably need some more than others. Which might give you a different answer (for example if you need solid LDAP integration). Prioritize your needs and do some research - but in a lab, not on ask slashdot.
until they run out of cash. :)
Then what? Personally, I like the idea of either paying for a supported thing from a big company like RedHat Enterprise Linux (for a business that doesn't mind paying for things) or taking advantage of the work of thousands of unemployed software engineers (for a cheap guy like me).
My other first post is car post.
OS X is the best operating system. Period. The fact that you would even consider Linux shows that you do not have what it takes to be a "professional system admin". Dumbass.
Give Suse a look.
Um, shouldn't this be a poll, rather than an "Ask Slashdot"? It would be like having a story asking for comments on what everyone's favourite pizza topping is.
Celebrate the finer things in life
With HP having the largest of the commercial x86 business(they lean toward RedHat) and the general feeling about novell being one of 'don't want it in the environment'(Suse) with larger companies Red Hat is your best bet. With it you will have all of the skills you need to support other distros and a certification that show you know it.
- Deb and Ian's "unstable" release (debian).
- Bloody Warthog releases (ubuntu)
- Platforms named after diseases (mono)
That's probably the single biggest impediment to Linux adoption today -- that business schools teach so much about branding/product-marketing/product-naming that the best releases get overlooked.his point was GPL coders are less skilled than bsd counterparts, which makes gpl code suck
:)
hes sorta right
and before you complain let me tell you a little story:
"if you sit down at a poker table and you cant tell who the sucker is in the first 15 minutes, you are the sucker"
so yah, go ahead, argue
I love the control that you have over it. Also its the oldest distro still doing its thing. It's like a good truck you can aways depend on it, and it gets the job done.
This thread really warms the hearts of Windows serfs. It illustrates the recursive fractal division of the Linux community that keeps Linux from having a truly coherent desktop offering.
We can't even select the right root here. Then subdivide recursively by window manager, application programming model, metadata repository, etc. etc. Could a community be more divided?
It's Unix all over again, people, just with less funding.
Word to the wise: stop starting new desktop "initiatives." Fold your project (and someone elses) into an existing development thread. Suppress your NIBMP (not invented by me personally.)
Do you really want to spend the first decade of the 21st century achieving parity with Windows XP, or do you want to deliver something truly new? Free crap is still crap.
Any professional admin should already know which is the best distro... (it being, of course, whichever said admin feels most comfortable with)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
yea right - the BSD license is fundementally flawed( and this is why linux has grown so fast and BSD is still yet to hit the BIG TIME) - the GPL guarentees that no one will steal your IP.
1 81 4242&tid=117&tid=218
Plz * R E A D * this article that came out a few days back >
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/29/
I d insult you but you probably are too dumb to understand.
WhiteBox is obsoleted by CentOS. See this FAQ and answer.
:: "I am non-refutable." --Enik the Altrusian ::
If he has RHAT stock, RHAT.
If your CEO is rich enough to be a limited partner in any of Azeo Ventures (Lazard Group), ABN AMRO, Viventures, AXA Placement Innovation or OFIVM's VC funds: Mandrake - since those VCs invested in MandrakeSoft.
GNU/Linux.
There's so many options and so many 'ways of doing things' with Linux and EVERYBODY knows they are right and everyone else is wrong or simply misguided...
Gentoo Linux users will proclaim that their distro is simply the best and the only option to go for. However, you still have a steep learning and a long setup time for building a system, which requires more then just passing knowledge of Linux, which isn't bad. It just isn't necesarily conducive to the 'standard' corporate environment. (My opinion may not match your own.)
Red Hat Linux is supported by a long standing team of Linux Engineers that has built itself around supporting the Enterprise computing environment, which makes it a good choice for such environments.
Mandrake Linux has made a name of itself for desktop use, mostly for consumer end-users, although they are working hard at making inroads to the corporate enterprise environment.
SuSe Linux/Novell is a long standing corporate computing environment corporation that should be able to provide support that equals or surpasses Red Hat. Of course, that would depend upon who you talk to.
Beyond that, there are tons of other players in the marketplace that will or won't be here in 6 months to a year.
Honestly, if I was setting up a Corporate Environment to create a standard setup across multiple servers, I would choose either Red Hat or SuSe/Novell. They are widely used distros, they both have easy to use tools, they both have certification programs, which could be used in order to certify that a support team, from the top Admin all the way down to the helpdesk jockey have a certain level of knowledge comensurate with their position as well as knowing the tools for that particular distro.
That's just my opinion anyway.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Not a "linux" distro, but nothing screams "professional admin" more than BSD...
Why, Nipples, the Vulcan distro. It's logically intuitive.
;-)
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
We migrated to Debian from RH7.3 not so long ago and my only regret that we had not done it sooner.
Debian is rock solid and much easier to administer than RH, in my experience, so I highly recommend it.
P.S. uptime - 47 days and counting
I agree that this subject is not going to do anything but generate a giant flame war with maybe 3 or 4 intelligent posts, and those will be buried so far beneath the steaming heap that most folks will never see them.
Oh yeah, I would tell management I was going with Red Hat, because it's got a nifty stock symbol. When they balk at that I'll tell them I'm going with Microsoft, and then just use Slackware like I was going to in the first place. They'll never know...
It doesn't matter anyway. I dropped out of consulting and now sell porn at the retail level.
At my shop, we have been using CentOS 3 for quite some time now, and are extremely satisfied with it. Now, if you work for a big company that gets off on spending lots of money to make sure they got something tangible, then go for Red Hat Enterprise linux. People like to run their mouths about how disorganized RedHat is etc. Its untrue, at least presently speaking. Yum is an admin's dream come true when it comes to updates. Now, as CentOS 3 is just a recompile of the RedHat Enterprise sources, CentOS has been completely compatible with all that good stuff(TM) that is certified to run on RHEL 3, like oracle, not to mention completely free (as in beer/speech). I would wait until February, when RedHat Enterprise 4 comes out as it will include the 2.6 kernel series and much more up to date software. CentOS will likely build those sources and create CentOS 4 near or around that same time.
CentOS Page
For me, low hassle, long term support is what I look for at work. For my home machine and laptop, auto-detecting my scanner and USB Flash drive is more important.
"Does this OS make me look fat"? (Or is that "phat"?) ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
If the discussion relates to desktop use, Ubuntu and Mandrake will be recommended as well. Someone might even recommend Xandros and Linspire.
Someone will recommend a BSD. Even if the question specifically asks for Linux.
Someone will recommend booting a Knoppix disc and storing your data on removeable drives.
If Gentoo gets recommended a lot, someone will recommend Arch.
If we're lucky and a troll is feeling exceptionally clever, someone will recommend YOPER.
Moral of the story: don't ask this question here. You won't get a useful answer. Fact is that no one here has the time to use all the various distros regularly enough with every release to know what issues pop up with each of them beyond just a week's use.
Short and sweet: with so many distributions of Linux to choose from, and so many of them good to excellent, which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration?
In my opinion the Linux that best fits these criteria is Ubuntu. Its stable releases ARE stable (so far) and they come every six months. You can get support from the company that makes it. Updates come in precompiled binaries so you don't have to waste all your cpu time updating your machines. Administration is based mostly on Gnome tools (which are very nice in 2.8+) and other configuration can be done in the time-tested "debian way."
If an admin wants to standardize on one Linux distribution and have the best of all worlds on everything from file-and-print servers to database boxes, what, in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes - - the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?"
Hmmmm...See making "the suits" happy is a different thing than having a good distro. This is where Ubuntu fails, because despite its greatness, its name "Warty the Warthog" would make any MBA type shoot heineken out his or her nose.
Therefore something with a bigger corporate bend is probably needed, and you second best option is probably MEPIS or SUSE.
Remember, a Jack-of-all-Trades does no one thing well.
Open Source Sushi
I'd concentrate more on where you will get support. If you have a competent Linux team and well-supported hardware, then go with whatever your admin group is familiar with and whatever you can easily install and maintain on your hardware. If you have a bunch of Debian gurus, go with Debian, etc. And by a bunch, I mean a large enough group that you can continue to train new admins on Debian specifics. If you only have a few Linux-savvy admins, opt for SuSE, RHEL, or preferably whatever is supported by your hardware vendor.
You can probably configure any typical server distro (slack, deb, SuSE, RHEL, et al) to run the applications you need, so ask yourself the important questions: Who will be supporting the OS? If in-house, how can we keep newhires trained? What works easily with our hardware and what will easily meet our software requirements?
If you can't easily answer the last question, use the first few questions to narrow down your choices, then do a few installs on test servers. See how easy you can get a production server up and running. Gentoo is great, but a typical admin probably won't be able to do a quick reinstall if your drive array fails and you have to get a mailserver up and running ASAP (or if you opt for a distro that takes a while to install, will you be able to have backup servers, etc?).
I don't think choice of distros is nearly as important as these other questions.
It's Debian with a great installer and includes Crossover Office which runs MS Office, Notes, Studio MX, and countless other Windows apps.
For office use it is probably the best option because of the included, very simple, Windowsesque VPN app for remote users.
It also includes proprietary drivers such as Nvidia and ATI, so it "just works" out of the box. Xandros picked-up Corel's file manager app that is quite stunning after the updates the Xandros folk've made. Yes, it has a per-seat license. That shouldn't make the PHBs nervous at all; in fact, they'll probably feel better about the decision.*
*Considering the notion that most PHBs feel it's important to have a single company to blame when something goes awry.
put the what in the where?
As with any tough question this isn't simply answered with Distribution X is obviously the way to go. Corporate focus has been mainly on Redhat and Novell lately. I've heard very good comments from the usability front when it comes from Novell/Suse, although I can't vouch for it myself. But a beginning linux admin can manage their linux servers pretty easily, even in more advanced setups like OpenLDAP.
On the other hand, Redhat seems to somewhat more of a more popular choice for most commercial software and is more widely supported by third parties when it comes to binary drivers. Yet again, your mileage may vary. If you're working for a large company that is willing to pay for support contracts, definatly check out RH Enterprise Linux or RH Advanced Server.
But if you're running on standard hardware, don't need the latest and greatest software (eg. a standard firewall/mailserver), give Debian a try. Together with backports Debian can even be a Samba 3 fileserver, or a mailserver with the latest and greatest spamassassin installed. Debian stable is well, to put it most eloquently, stable.
I've seen a lot of developers start out with a linux from scratch system for embedded systems. Although for server administration, I'd definatly advise not to go down that road. Don't ignore the smaller distros, but remember that your managements warm and fuzzy feeling comes from that reassuring "It's been done before and I have full documentation".
But honestly, do some research on what you're going to run on those machines. Invest a little time into what your management wants, and then use google to find where you get the results you need best. And stop starting flamewars on slashdot :)
I work for a fortune 500 company as a Tech. (Only tech for california now, we've been completely outsourced, the only reason they keep me around is because im not afraid of spending my weekend running adaware ;)
Anywho, our marketing support department uses several high end production printers nearly 24/7, so stability is key. Last year the printers were hooked up to each members Windows Machine. (No, I didn't set this up, and technicly im not supposed to change it) But recently with increesed adware on the marketing support's computers (i should say one of them, shes an idoit.. anyways) and printers going 'down' due to this single person, the office manager came to me and asked what he could do to stop this from happening. (It has happened almost 10 times this year alone). So i suggested Installing a linux box to handle all the printers.
Needless to say, he was extremely skeptical. (Having computer-phobia) So i took another non-priority department, and set them up the way i wanted to see marketing support setup. A few days later, he wanted to see how it worked, so i showed him. At the time, i only had my mandrake cds on me, so i used it. He was extremely impressed about how 'cool' it looked and felt. It wasnt in his words.. 'blocky' (i assume he meant text based) I showed him around the system in general (not a thing about printing though heh) and he fell in love with it after i explained how there isnt any 'adware/spyware' in Linux {At least i dont think there is.. linus help us if the day comes} and how linux itself very rarely crashes. Today i just finished installing Mandrake 10 on his main computer, tomarrow i get to begin converting marketing support.
Anyways, Mandrake has always been my personal favorite for computer-newbies/Phobic people, mostly because the install, general 'mandrakness' feel of the system isnt much like tradtional linux . IMHO, its much more graphical in nature, and other more 'common-office-type' people can easily get accustomed to the enviroment.
Since your a system admin, also take into account that training new people to work on the new systems may/might/will be easier than on another distro. You also never know if your boss wants to poke around someday, its always nice to let them have their fun.
My suggestion for linux: Mandrake
My Suggestion in general: FreeBSD
FreeBSD however is a whole differnt story =)
If ease of administration, stability and security is more important that than latest versions of the latest applications and the ability to use the latest bleeding edge hardware, then the *BSD distributions (e.g. FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD) may be the answer. Granted, a fairly good understanding of UNIX will be required, but if you're fairly proficient at adminsitering one or more Linux distributions, then *BSD will be very easy to learn. Even better, the documentation is generally better written, more complete and more up to date than any Linux distribution that I've seen.
This answer may not be what you expect, but then again the question, as posted, deserves a thinking outside the box type of answer. You stated that you want the best of all worlds, and then mention file/printer server and database boxes. It sounds like you're more interested in servers than clients. *BSD is ideal in this regard.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
BSD has yet to hit the big time? Thanks for the laugh.
Pick 3 or 4 distros and call their sales department. See what support package deals they're willing to make.
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
How may boxen? Is this all servers, or workstations too? How much administrative time are you budgeting?
There's no perfect answer. And commercial support is often inferior to user community support - which is often best on the non-commercial distros. But, over the longer term, there are two big issues: How easily can you keep it current; and how well can you keep it current?
You can easily keep Debian current, but "current" for Debian lags way behind the actually-current versions of most programs. You can keep Red Hat current between minor distro versions, and reasonably close to current versions of programs, but upgrading between major distro versions is so painful you might as well reinstall (kind of like Windows that way). You can keep Gentoo very current in both senses (and well-optimized to your metal), but there's the overhead of compiling everything. Slackware, the last I looked, you can't keep current at all easily.
On the other hand if it's workstations and you want minimal admin time, consider doing hard-drive installs from Knoppix, and keeping the user's files off in some mounted partition so that when desired you can just re-install a current Knoppix. Knoppix is just a superset of Debian, and you can use the Debian upgrade method, too, on minor stuff. You can also roll your own Knoppix-derived distro, if you have a bunch of users who need to see the company's custom desktop. And it does great hardware detection, so you don't have to worry much about differences there.
Servers that matter that are outward facing, definitely not Debian - you'll get neither current features nor current security. Gentoo if you've got the admin time to support it, or Red Hat if your model is paid support because the boss insists.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Should I use vi or Emacs?
Which is better... Gnome or KDE?
Should I get a PC or a Macintosh?
Should I have voted for Bush or Kerry?
Who's cooler: pirate or ninja?
The best distro is whatever the sysadmin feels most comfortable with. I wouldn't give a windows guy debian even if I belive debian to be the best.
Where I work we go with RedHat since they give us a customer support person to yell at when things break.
you aren't an admin
yeah, it was sorta flamebait, but that was funny
what are the business requirements? what size business is it? what applications need to be supported? what level of support from the vendor is desired? are security clearances necessary? unless the problem is specified more clearly it's unanswerable.
Really, this is wasteful. Everyone has their own opinions/experience. You need to ask yourself the questions not others who have no idea what you currently run, what management would be happy with, etc.
That being said SuSE and Redhat are the only serious corporate vendors for Linux. Debian is what I use (and migrated the shop to it from RH). It's great if you can get it past management.
And it really depends on your needs. Redhat and Suse are pushing enterprise support and scalability. Debian and Gentoo are great for customized installs or slim back-end server stuff (Server Beach moved to Apache on Debian, with the apt-get updates its a real snap to use). Mandrake is good on workstations or for more general small business servers (preconfigured cups server, pretty GUI, etc).
Even Microsoft has multiple 'distro's' and you certainly wouldn't choose an XP Pro system to run your as Active Directory server or as a Database server on an heavy load SMP system.
It's got the best of linux AND WINDOWS! w00t!
P.S. Made you look.
On a slow "news" day this is the topic to post. Once people get their fill of replying to "news" and just come to read, then replies drop..but bring up up such a topic as this and you've got the hordes all clambering to get their opinion heard.
And with a fresh froth on thier lips they will surely return for a few more days or weeks to participate.
It's a theory of mine anyway..
This is a Linux distribution How ???
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
If you really need to have the kind of accountability from your OS support vendor that you get from Microsoft for Windows, then you want RedHat. It's pricy, but it will give you the same kind of support. I guess it all depends on the environment where you work. Presonally, I really don't understand why people don't use more in-house people to do things with Linux. Many of us Linux users do a lot of very complex things with Linux at home and businesses could gain from that same kind of implementation at the workplace. Check out my linked JE below about OpenSSH. But there seems to be this wrongheaded thinking that you need to have something out-of-the-box even though you're going to wind up spending time customizing that. Seriously. How many companies will buy a product and use it as-is without having to configure it for their needs in some fashion or another. So if you're going to do that much anyway, why don't you just hunker down with your staff and build your own custom OS/App distribution? Hell, most IT departments worht their salt do this with Norton Ghost. And all the talk saying "linux is too complicated" is complete garbage as well. If you can take the time with Windows to sit down and install the OS, grab all the updates, add the 3rd party software + configuration and data and then make a Ghost image of that for further duplication, it doesn't take much more effort to use a distro like Debian the Unix Ghost clone g4u to do exactly the same thing.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Red Hat Enterprise Linux on important servers. Guaranteed updates until 2010 makes me happy.
CentOS or Whitebox on servers that are less important, or more numerous than the notes in the corporate kitty. Both are Free rebuilds of RHEL that should have similar update availability, compatibility and QA.
Fedora on expert users' workstations or servers that need the latest and greatest TODAY, and damn the consequences.
I vote Redhat, because they have the money and the support. They are strong and stable, etc.
If you don't have mission critical stuff and don't being pwned when the patch isn't availible ontime, then try another distrib maybe.
I think this should be modded FUNNY rather than FLAMEBAIT
And, why does not our glisteny little OS-that-could not enter into the conversation here? BSD based, command-line tools, rapid fixes, missing large holes, and able to run just all of the necessary open-source applications, if they aren't already included...
I'm about ready to just move my server in-house using a Mac Mini with OS X Server. It's not like it gets huge amounts of traffic, and less than a grand isn't bad at all. Last time I ran the servers inside, they were Cobalt boxen, which illustrates my level of capability...
... The best distribution of linux is the one that fits your needs, you should get an easy to upgrade, add and remove packages distribution.
Gentoo is the one for me. I can install, upgrade or remove packages with easy commands AND I get the performance that the processor can give (and the diference is incredible).
ajf
Or "informative".
Here's the real question: vi or emacs?
*ducks for cover*
You're asking THIS question HERE? Ha! Good luck, you'll get a recommendation for every fringe wierd distro out there.
Choose: SuSe, Fedora, or Debian. Whatever floats your boat. For a corporate environment where you need lots of fellow admin users and the ability to run proprietary software (Informix, DB2, Oracle, other such packages) these are your choices.
Do you really want advice from people who think compiling their own kernel actually buys them anything even remotely worth the time it took?
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
My previous employer was big into Suse Enterprise Linux (european financial). It worked, it was scalable, and had a good support model.
When I left that company to a US based financial last year, they used Red Hat for the exact same reasons. Since the two distros are comparable [shields up for flame bait], the decision by management is go with what the UNIX engineering group recommended.
I like to use the LiveCD version of Linux (such as Slax) so when my friends come over they're like "OMG You Use Linux?! LOL!!!!11!" and I'm like "Yeah its the pwnz!" and when they leave I can just boot back to my Windows ME Desktop and run AOL 7.0.
mount
...at dawn in the west and they will come to your aid. or something.
the preferred distro seem to have gone from redhat a couple years ago to debian more recently (although with gentoo in a close second).
maybe there should be a regular poll, a survey if you will, so we can graph changes over time. that would be hawt.
The question is worded well and is tasteful, asking for a specific Linux for a specific application (administration), however it still seems to me like a topic for a flame war. I'll just give the editors the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a slow news day.
With that being said, I think the only two distros that have a chance are Redhat, SuSE and Debian. I personally use Gentoo and love it, but from an administration standpoint, binary packages are faster and easier.
I've had lots of bad expierience with Debian. They have one thing going for them: An insane amount of packages. They have everything you could imagine for Debian. However their packages are poorly designed compared to RPMs and their configuration is awful. You should never be asked package installation config information during the install! Installs should be fully unmanned.
SuSE seems very professional, however it does cost money (there are free downloads, but the installs aren't as simple) and it doesn't quite have the package repository.
Redhat's only major flaw is the lack of a package repository. However the Enterprise edition comes with about everything you'd really need for a server (Web, DNS, DHCP, Print, etc.). And with Fedora out and more open than ever, I think the package repository will catch up soon enough, for Fedora anyway. Also with RHEnterprise being closed off the way it is, it's very easy to provide pay support and keep careful track of the distro for security updates.
That's MHO.
-SumDog
There have been a few comments suggesting this should have been a poll, so I have very unscientifically turned it into one.
:)
Number of times distro mentioned:
Debian 29
Red Hat 29
SuSe 22
Gentoo 12
Slackware 8
then my finger started hurting from clicking "find next"...
These numbers were found by searching for the terms "debian", "red", "suse", "gentoo", and "slack". Told you it was unscientific.
In order to run Linux in clueless's department you have to deliver the warm and fuzzy. Novell is already big in the company so Novell/Suse is the way to go here. In clued in's department Debian rules.
Roll your own conclusions from there on ...
TCAP-Abort
There is no perfect distro. If you rely on the vendor to make sure your box is up to date, then you're not doing your job as an admin. You should be proactive in that.
What is the box used for? Ahh, a database server with connects over ssl? Well, then upgrade your db, upgrade ssl, and upgrade ssh (gotta have some way to admin it). webserver? Same thing applies...
If you're not proactive in upgrading packages from source yourself, you need to find another career. How can a company put faith in you, if all you do is wait for another company to do that work for you? If you're going to do that, you may as well be a Windows admin.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
LazloToth asks: "Short and sweet: with so many religions to choose from, and so many of them good to excellent, which religion delivers the best balance of popularity, moral support options, afer-life benefits, reincarnation, and ease of conversion? If an agnostic wants to standardize on one religion and have the best of all worlds on everything from simonism to death-bed repentance, what, in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of religions - - the one that does it all while also making parents feel warm and fuzzy?"
Most "professional" admins I've been seeing these days are nothing but paper certs.. and the answer to your question is "Not Linux".
But to give you an answer you want to hear..
Novell SLES 9 is pretty sweet..
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I worked with idiots before that were all about "enterprise level Linux" and saying that "Gentoo will never be a REAL distro" (stupid assholes) ... and then they went and started putting friggin White Box Linux on servers. So, a distro that's funded by a Library somewhere in the south is somehow more "enterprise level" than Gentoo? I just don't get it.
Also, White Box Linux has apparantly been obsoleted anyway...
.. was that they branded themselves the way they did. The manager who's reluctantly in charge of choosing a linux flavor, will go with what he recognizes. He doesn't have the first clue of what makes a good distro for his business, but he remembers that clever RedHat ad in his last issue of "Ignorant Managers Monthly".
#include
int main(){
string str;
string distros[100] = googleQuerryToArray("Linux+Distros");
for(int i = 0; i < distros.length; i++;){
str = "%s sucks! Use %s!",distros[i],distros[i+1];
slashdotPost(str);
if(i == (distros.length - 1)){i = 0;}
}
return 0;
}
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
It doesn't matter what distribution you use as a starting point. If you are a professional admin, you will be customizing, upgrading, and modifying the packages installed on your system. If it's not on your system, you download the source tar ball and install it yourself. Installing packages is fairly straight forward these days.
Step 1: "./configure >output.txt"
Step 2: "more output.txt" and look for dependency errors.
Step 3: Resolve missing dependencies and repeat steps 1 and 2 until all dependencies are satisfied.
Step 4: "make -d >output.txt"
Step 5: "more output.txt" to find errors.
Step 6: resolve errors found in step 5 and repeat steps 4 and 5 until the errors are gone.
Step 7: "make install"
If you are a professional admin, these steps must be mastered. Do you really want to be limited to only supporting one variety of Linux? Learn how it works so you can work on any variety of Linux or Unix.
That's all just well enough, because in reality there is only room enough in this world for one superior Linux distribution. One shall be the number of superior Linux distributions in the world, and the number of superior Linux distributions in the world shall be one. Two superior Linux distributions is too many, and three is right out! So the only superior Linux distribution there is room for in the world shall be mine!
Ease of installation: yes!
Security: yes!
Updates: it's so good, they made it run off a CD!
Ease of administration: who needs hard drives!
Support: burn a new CD!
Who needs updates!
If there's one thing I hate more than distribution zealots... it's people who don't use Slackware! ;P
...well sorta.)
(Yes, that's a joke!
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
FreeBSD
There are only two real enterprise level distros: SUSE and Red Hat. We have about 50-60 production linux boxes all running RHEL 3.0 AS. At $50 a node for educational institutions you just can't go wrong. The main reason we use Red Hat over SUSE is because out linux team had been using Red Hat linux since the stone age and we are comfortable with it. SUSE sounds like a great enterprise level distro as well, but I don't have a lot of production expirience with it. I'm not going near anything else as an admin because no one else has a corporate backing, and most managers won't go there either even if I wanted to.
GRML is debian based and tailored towards sysadmins. It is console/text centric, and provides a number of security "features". For those still(?) afraid of runlevel 2, there is fluxbox. It is Reaping the benefits of knoppix's hardware detection, debian's repositories/apt-getables, and gutted out KDE and others from knoppix and replaced with MANY console/text based tools. give it a whirl. For the afraid-to-leave-M$, try QEMU and run grml within your current OS. http://grml.org/
crawancon
The problem with asking this sort of question on Slashdot is that you'll get all the hobbyist answers: Debian, Gentoo etc. SuSE is always my first choice for business. Why? SuSE has the best integration of KDE and GNOME, is solid, and more thoroughly QA'ed than the hobbyist distros. SuSE isn't for folks who just have to have the latest and greatest, (hobbyists) rather its for production use! Its very easy to deploy security updates with SuSE, and as a server or Business Desktop, its hard to beat for ease of deployment, maintenance and compatibility. If your goal is to save yourself time and effort, and save your organization some money, check out SuSE.
This sig kills fascists.
My distro *is* your distro!! How can it be both "superior" and "pathetic"?
I wonder if this will throw his brain into an infinite loop or something...
OS/X doesn't count as a BSD. Sure the kernel is a BSD, but OpenDarwin is hardly the best supported of the BSDs. PowerPC does make a good server archetecture, theoretically, but Apple hardware is not cheap (though neither is Sun's), so each machine requires a decent sized investment. There is no support if the OS is not run on Apple hardware, since OS/X can only be run on Apple hardware according to the EULA.
This whole post is pointless, sorry.
The obvious answer is Knoppix.
Why don't you ask a nice, simple question like "Which is better? Star Trek, Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica?" I'm sure that a large enough group of respondants should be able to come up with a straightforward answer to that too.
As I'm sure has already been discussed, this is an utterly pointless question. Linux is without any doubt the most 'horses for courses' OS on the planet (before anyone flames me, I mean anything with a linux kernel and a GNU userland welded on top...ok?) so asking which is best is, frankly, asking for trouble. For those morons on here posting "OMGGG LIKE GENTOO IS SOOOOOO MUCH BETTER" etc etc, then let me say this: if you're a real gentoo user then its very philosophy makes a fool out of you. By now you should realize that the right Linux distribution, is the one you are successfully running.
Windows or SCO. Take your pick.
(they're all coming to kill me now)
FLR
That is a really tough call to make, because so many distro's can be used for many different things. As for me personally, I like Fedora Core 3 as my desktop, but I use Mandrake 10.1 as my web/file/print server. It really just depends on what you want to get. If you like total control, go with Gentoo. If you like stability, go with Debian. If you like nice GUI's go with Fedora, or Mandrake. It really just depends on what you want, which is what I love about linux, and why I'll use it from now on.
I have nothing clever to put here...
It usually goes the other way. Tell your boss to shave his d***.
For all the other critera, everyone will have their arguments. But for this one, I think it's Red Hat, hands down.
I'm not saying it's "the best", for whatever technical defintion of "best" we might choose; but I think we're moving toward a situation of "no one ever got fired for buying Red Hat".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I did not say OpenDarwin I said OS/X. What other BSD offers as much support as OS/X? I am not talking hardware support on Intel but calling on the phone hey this is not working support.
Also why does it not "count" as BSD? Who in charge of what counts and does not count as BSD? As you said the kernel is BSD.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Now that's what I call flamebait
I hate to say this, but after running Gentoo on my home server for a year, it is not enterprise worthy.
Main reason?
Sure, on the surface, Gentoo seems easy to update. Problem is, updates break things. Time and again, I have watched emerge upgrade things, possibly give me important info somewhere in the millions of lines of code it scrolls pointlessly, then I reboot to a service not acting right. This last emerge cycle left me with:
Samba in a broken state. Non protected shares worked, anything else gave access denied. Why? Someone decided to move the default location of smbpasswd and didn't notify me in a way to catch it since I wasn't watching emerge line by line.
Apache was broken. It would start one process and hang. Examining the error log showed a problem in PHP. For some reason, it missed a package that has to be recompiled every time PHP is upgraded.
Postfix has been broken in the past by similar, as well as my imap server. Filing a bug report on one of the changes was simply met with "so, deal with it" basicially.
Gentoo has a lot of hype. Actually using it across 10 servers scares me though. It turns out to be worse then any other distro in the amount of work needed to keep it up to date, since you get to spend time hunting down problems. At lease SuSE was nice enough to generate messages to root about important changes I may need to check on manually.
A better question would be which management is best Linux.
The answer is: ME.
is about as smart as dropping an 80lb crack rock into the middle of harlem
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
IBM is so much pro-linux. Which distro do they support/recommend?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Are you trying to impress us with the fact that you know how to spell basic English words?
If you want something that doesn't require a subscription, then you may want to use fedora, which is just behind redhat's bug fixes, and a bit more cutting edge with new software.
Your mileage may vary, but I'd give redhat a shot.
If something I said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, I meant the other one.
of his requirements. Tell me, how do dual G5's sound?
(And no, I'm not talking about YellowDog)
Depending on your contract with Novell, you may want to pick SUSE, but any of the RedHat professional distros (RHAS/RHES) is probably your best bet.
... "We support Linux 7.3, 8.0, 9.0..."...
:)
If you don't have a contract with Novell or you are going to have to pay a load of cash to use SUSE, go with RedHat...
The first reason to stick with RedHat is that RedHat is one of the oldest of Linux server distros which means that RedHat has pretty good support, and the second one is that outside of the Linux world...RedHat is synonymous with Linux....The perfect example of this is going to a hardware manufacturer's site looking for a device driver and seeing a page that says some thing along the lines of
That's also why you should choose EXT3 as your Journaling Filesystem...forget Riser, JFS, XFS, etc...all of the Linux rescue utilities and admin CDs support EXT2/3...
IMHO, there's a time for preferences and fanboy-ism, but that's not when it comes to your data or your job. Stick with tried and true technology.
As a side note, don't go with WhiteBox...for some reason the legal departments don't like it
In a few years, hopefully you will be able to add Pro Mepis to that, but it's still in beta stages and current debian distros leave alot to be desired when it comes to administering professional machines...mainly, there's noone I can get on the phone and yell at till it's fixed...and 3rd party support don't cut it...3rd party support for OSes is for sunset systems...
All distributions will inherit _core_features_ from each other. This pushes the reasons to pay for them to the services(updates & compatability) behind them. We use Redhat, but I can see any ditribution as a replacement in the absence of any other one, except Caldera.
Lots of opinions here. Some say "there's no best choice" or recommend one of any number of johny-come-lately distros. Some recommend clones of Red Hat enterprise.
I would say that for serious enterprise use, the reality is that the "best" is a toss-up between Red Hat and Novell's enterprise offerings. They have the support that enterprises need. Most of the others don't. Debian could be good if it were supported by the likes of Oracle AND had more frequent updates, but quite frankly, the delays in the Sarge release has cost them most of their credibility in my book.
I wanted to recommend Debian stable to my organization, but the current version is so ancient I could not dream of it before the Sarge release. Wouldn't have mattered, because most people here know Red Hat/RPM and they wanted to stick with something that uses RPMs. That doesn't have to be an issue for everyone, but it was for the management here.
Why I say Red Hat or Novell: What they charge is reasonable. I work for a non-profit organization without tons of money, but we will soon be buying at least two contracts for RHEL support in this one location alone. We have offices around the world, and others may also buy RHEL, though some may stick with CentOS. We are willing to buy the RHEL contracts because they provide a solid system at a reasonable price. We will know they can support us if we need it.
I'm not sure if there's any enormous reason to choose either RH or Novell above the other one, but I am confident that those two are the best "serious" work distributions right now.
Now, for less important projects and hacks and such, any of Gentoo, Debian, Mandrake, Ubuntu, etc. would be fine. I'm talking mission critical servers.
Im going to have to run with SUSE here.
We mainly use redhat/fedora here, and I do have to say that all of the things that I've "fought" with redhat to get working properly "just work" right out of the box with SUSE.
Scenario:
I wanted to unify all logins across linux/windows machines on my companies user network.
We were running an NT4 domain controller and using local passwd authentication for all linux servers/workstations.
The natural solution to this was to set up an ldap server, have all the linux machines authenticate off it, and then replace the NT4 domain that would authenticate off the same ldap database. While we're at it, we thought we should enable fine grained access control lists for local filesystems, the samba interface, oh, and they should work over NFS as well. (acl.bestbits.at)
After about 2 months with redhat battling compilation issues, config issues, library issues, and other issues, rpm issues, and a bottle of aprin. I finally managed to get an openldap server up and running, with samba3 authenticating against it in a test environment.
Another month later, I got the ACLs working.
I about kicked myself in the head when, upon evaluating SLES9, I found that during installation it acually gave me an option to use ldap as the main authentication mechanism. Also, it has a built in, YAST controlled CA magement system, replacing all the scripts that I had written to handle ssl certificates.
I recreated my entire test environent in under an hour using SLES9.
On the client end, Suse 9.2 "just works" in every imaginable way. The only things I had to install myself for workstations were enigmail and slocate.
To this day, I still have a few redhat machines that blow up when trying to use ldap/ssl, but everything suse has worked perfectly the first time.
Naturally, it comes with a bunch of databases, a kickass update mechanism (yast), an automated setup tool (autoyast), and now has very nice support from the nice folks over at novell.
On the flip side, I would probably still use redhat for "mission critical" things, as redhats QA proccess is insane. You wont get the nice new extras, but thats because the bleeding edge tends to be unstable.
Also, another thing that needs to be thought about is "googleability." Googleability is a measure of how quickly you can find your problem, then an answer to it, using google. Redhat has much higher googleability that Suse, or any other linux distro for that matter (except perhaps debian), but to be fair, Suse (from my brief experience) tends to have less problems.
In conclusion: Suse for your internal network/workstations/etc. Redhat for your webservers and other things that should have obscene uptimes.
-s
I used to run Red Hat on my website server. But then those money greedy clods decided to charge money for updates. I switched to Gentoo (had a friend install it) and now it runs very very smooth. The administation is FAR easier then with Red Hat once it runs. I am never changing back!
Slashdot 1|0 Productivity
We have tested out a number of distros and decided for Gentoo. Except for the lack of an automated installer it is the easiest to maintain distro, offers superior performance, and in terms of security you are always on top of things. Gentoo offers you the choice of installing precompiled binaries or installing from source with optimized flags for your particular architecture. A Gentoo installation from source is an admins dream - it leaves you with a blazing fast, stable, and easy to maintain system.
13 years experience and have gone from
SOLARIS to BSD to LINUX specifically DEBIAN for all my 300+ servers
The parent is absolutely right.
And as a competent admin, I choose the distro that don't get in the way, that let me do the things my way. By that aspect alone, LFS would be the best, but it a bit exagerated. (I highly recommend to install it once though, if you are interested in better understanding of the system, it's parts and how they work, from boot to the password prompt and applications. I used it at my machine at home for quite some time.)
I choose Slackware. I used to install everything (after the initial instalation from the distro CD) from source, but it got tedious. Now I use swaret to upgrade the security-related packages. The software more importantly used (in my case: postfix, clamav and spamassassin and squirrelmail) are monitored from freshmeat and upgraded manually as I see fit (some from source code). Other software are not upgraded unless needed (if it works, don't mess with it).
The main source of problem, in all the distributions I tried, is the package system. Ugrading (or, in some cases, even installing new packages) can break the system. Of course when installing from source you also have the risk, but things are more under control if you know what you're doing.
which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration?
The whole point of having a Kernel around which you may configure to your hearts content is to avoid the situation where you are at the mercy of somebody else's definition of "the best balance of X,Y and/or Z". The very heart of the linux ideal is robustness in differing situations, and organic responses to changing situations.
Just do what you do best
Arnold "Red" Auerbach.
um... let's see. it's not released under a bsd license. it's not a bsd kernel, it's a mach kernel...
Sitting Walrus Blog
I purchase RedHat licenses for everything that is in the DMZ, or runs software that requires RedHat Enterprise Linux for support (think Oracle Databases).
Then I use Whitebox Linux for everything else. It's pretty much exactly the same as RedHat (you can pick another RHEL rebuild if you want, CentOS and Whitebox Linux are my two favorites). Whitebox can have problems from time to time, because it's a one man show. CentOS looks nice, but it sounds like the mailing lists are used less, and the web boards more for discussion and help (I've never participated, but that's the a complaint I've seen on WhiteBox lists about CentOS). I like e-mail lists for help/support. Call me silly. While web boards are nice for random discussions, I'd much rather review e-mail for technical support (both on the giving and receiving end).
I use that for the desktop. Other then, it's a bit RAM hungry, it's fine for a desktop for most people (the lack of a good MP3 player might bother most, but I play oggs, so I'm good with it). You need more then 128MB of RAM to run OpenOffice on it at a reasonable speed. (I was running a PIII-500 w/ 384MB of RAM and it was acceptable, with a new P4 w/ 128MB of RAM it was unbearably slow running Mozilla and OpenOffice at the same time. I put a 1GB of RAM in and now it's wonderful).
In the end, it means I can run almost exactly the same OS at home that I do at work. It's industrial strength, and all of the expertise I build up using it, is going towards one of the two distro's that all major software vendors support. I don't know of any Suse "rebuilds", otherwise I might recommend those.
Kirby
I am an automotive engineer who happens to be the company system administrator as well. All of the engineering applications that we use target RedHat, with some now supporting SuSE as well.
I personally have gone with CentOS, as some of our apps will not run on SuSE.
Is this a joke?
The guy is looking for an enterprise solution not software for highschool kids (i.e. Gentoo) or software that only runs on 5 year old hardware (i.e. Debian). Please try again.
if you want rock solid reliability and ease of installation and configuration.
Works out of the box.
9.2 is quirky....
FreeBSD is not in any way easier, Net and Open are very similar, and all 3 are just as easy to use, you just have to learn the specifics. If you started with Free, of course you will think its "easier" since you already know how to do everything.
And OpenBSD is not concentrating on a niche, I use it for all my servers, including a 12 server cluster for a very busy dynamic website, as well as on my laptop.
And FreeBSD's "handy" things like portupgrade are only handy when they work. The 10% of the time they fail, they make things so much more difficult, its not worth dealing with them to start with.
I mean, linux is linux is linux. Usually the only things that change are:
1) the package system
2) the installer
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
sorry i am not fluent in 31337 plez translate
Seriously.
There's no easy answer to such question. In fact, I think there's none. The best Linux choice for a professional admin is the one he knows better. A serious admin knows how to harden any linux distro (if security is a concern) and how to quickly deploy solutions if ease of use is the main choice for linux. If he is truly a professional, he knows how to learn quickly any distro's tool.
If he relies too much on the tools the distro has I'd not call him a true Linux Admin.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
How do you choose a distribution when you have software or drivers that is only supported on certain distributions? Like that driver runs only on that version of the kernel an this software is only supported on that distribution. With some software you're not free to choose (yes the software is not gpl). But if you're dependent on such software - the one distribution dream keeps being a dream...
Which Linux? You mean Which Distro? I can understand when a Linux newbie says Linux when he means Linux Distribution but Slashdot...
We run Slackware on all of our servers because we can configure EVERYTHING as we want it.
I've tried other distros and their GUIs were nice but not for servers. The text configuration of Slackware is GREAT!
Slackware has been around the longest, Partick doesn't rush things and it all just works.
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Now, it's very likely that the above poster upgraded his config files blindly and this is what messed up his installation, FYI config files in Gentoo aren't automatically overwritten, you're supposed to "merge" / manage them, and the process isn't very simple.
So, what to run in Production? Ideally you roll your own to production, Gentoo makes a great base system, trim it down to minimal files you need to do what your server needs, and then lock down all permissions. Ideally your production server will be as tight as it can be and still do its job. So keep a "master/build" server that has all your development files on it, and then a "production" server that only has what's needed to run on it. Make images of your production, and update by updating the master server, then the test production servers then the production servers. If you're running yum/emerge/urpmi/etc on a live production server you're opening yourself up for many risks.
Oh, it's hard to go wrong putting FreeBSD into production also, too bad it's
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
it may come as a shock to you, but MOST of the people alive today do not speak English as their mother's tongue language.
in fact, most do not speak English at all.
it does not mean they are less intelligent THAN you.
Omry.
I've tried quite a few Linuces in the last year or so, in the quest of finding that "perfect distro". The most important piece of advice I'd give is *don't* try and update a distro with a source that isn't specifically designed for updating that particular distro. There are just too many things that can go wrong.
:)
For example, I installed a couple of RPMs on my first ever Linux distro, Mandrake 9.2, that I downloaded from an RPM search engine. This worked fine, but after about a month I tried to install some normal Mandrake packages and the package manager kept telling me that I needed to uninstall X, along with a couple of dozen other packages, and then reinstall them, in order to get it working.
Example 2: I installed Knoppix 3.4 on my hard disk and updated it to the latest version using the Vanilla Debian tree. This increased the startup time by about five or ten minutes while some service was busy timing out. I could have probably fixed it myself, but that's not exactly a warm and fuzzy feeling right?
Example 3: I installed Ubuntu Warty Warthog and tried to install Mplayer on it using Debian Marillat. *Nothing* I tried could get it to work. Apt-get just kept failing in a loop of unresolved dependencies.
Out of these failures I have learned that it is best to stick to what is guaranteed to work, and to make backups just in case that fails too!
Of course, a good package manager is necessary as well. Out of the package managers I've tried I like Debian and apt-get, Fedora Core (and I assume Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and Yum (Apt-get also works well for these), and Mandrake and Urpmi. I've tried Gentoo and Emerge, but I don't like the way it (doesn't) handle config files. I hope this changes in an Emerge version soon...
Of these, the easiest to install are Mandrake and Fedora (and presumably RHEL), which gives them +2 fuzzy karma straight away. And if you're into security, Fedora has firewall and SELinux setup built into the installer...
I've never tried SuSE though
One good turn - gets all the covers.
I tried out a bunch of distros way back in '97, and Slack was The Answer. It still is. All the sevrers run Slack. All the desktops run Slack. My home PC runs Slack. Hell, even my wife's home PC runs Slack now. Yeah, there are lots of other distros, but Slack is the best in my opinion. Your mileage may vary, objects in mirror may be closer than they appear, yadda yadda yadda. But Slack is The Answer.
Cheap and good?
Debian.
Fast and good?
OS X.
SuSE and Redhat/Fedora are good for starters - especially SuSE since they're the better all in one kit imho. Not only because SuSE comes with solid documentation. But in the end, SuSE and RH are just the Microsofts of the Linux world.
If you really want to use Linux professionally there (hardly) is no other choice than debian. All Linux people I know started of with SuSE and switched to debian once they were firm enough. Same with me.
OS X isn't Linux, I know, but if a customer wants a box with that OSS solution and wants it fast, an Apple is my 1st choice. Buy, unpack, power up, 10 minutes of upgrading, finished. Can't beat that.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Suse Pro/SLES or RedHat Enterprise Linux. They are the only distros supported by all major software vendors with a linux strategy. All others, while nice to know, really in the long run mean nothing.
If it is warm and fuzzies for the pointy hair types, then on servers you want RH Enterprise if you have the budget, and one of the RH clones like CentOS or Whitebox if you don't. The bosses always like it if you can tell them you are using "Enterprise Linux" in the data center.
(note: lately Whitebox has been kind of slow with the errata so I have been using CentOS.)
If managment is not involved CentOS is still a good choice or Debian if you want something that is just rock solid and supported forever.
If you want a nice desktop OS I would suggest Mepis. It looks good and there is enough hand holding that your users don't freak out too badly.
(By the way, at home I run Debian, just because I got tired of installing a new Fedora every six months.)
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
Seriously, what motivates admins isn't necessarily what motivates upper management. In fact, there's not a helluva lot of overlap between the two, unless you've already been assimilated by upper management. Slick, über-cool admin solutions are futile when compared with high-level business requirements. Or the seldom-remembered top 3 layers of the OSI model: Politics, Religion and Marketing. ;-)
If you have the luxury of having a little flexibility to use the tool of your choice to do your job better/faster/however you want to quantify it while your boss looks the other way, more power to you. Gentoo may be the biznatch, and so long as your Gentoo solution doesn't require ATG/IBM/BEA to support their app engine on it (or if your decision makers have opted to "make it work on Gentoo" regardless), you should be good to go.
To quote Spongebob, "Good luck with that!" ;)
The postman hits! The postman hits! You have mail.
I love debian on servers - when I can get it installed.
Trying to get it installed on recent hardware can be a nightmare. Debian is great for the first 6 months after release. After that drivers start to get out-of-date and I'm stuck trying to build my own kernels and modules for install.
Everyone always says to use testing and unstable, but I've tried those on my home server, and I don't want my production machines replacing half the packages on the box everytime I update - otherwise I'd be using Gentoo!
ubuntu is great. its stable debian for desktops, released twice a year.
redhat is a major pita but is the only choice if you have major commercial software that needs to run on linux. vendors supporting "linux" all lie and only support specific versions of redhat.
Don't forget to pay you $699 liscensing fee, you cock smoking tea baggers..
The point is that to try to button down Linux into one distro is, IMHO, an artificial limitation to the OS that does more harm than good. Those in charge of the eventual switchover to Linux should get used to one of the its most attractive facets: choice.
At work you shouldn't be using linux. You need an operating system that is actually an operating system. Not a kernel with a userland made up of a nasty mish mash of contributed crap.
OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, Linux would be the order I would consider unixen in my list of professional unixes.
Clearly, the answer is to avoid Linux altogether since you'll just have to buy a license anyway.
I highly recommend going straight to the source for the be-all, end-all "Linux" - Unixware.
After all, if you're looking for stability, security, et al, then wouldn't you want to get the "real deal" rather than some hacked-up, 3rd-party, pirated crud that you probably can't trust anyway? Even Microsoft says it's crap.
If you're truly looking for an enterprise-ready system with the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, I suggest you look to OS/2 Warp
</sarcasm>
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Tthis one is a no brainer. You have to have:
1. A supported Distro on the hardware you are running. You don't have time to workout issues with flakey drivers or unsupported hardware you might otherwise at home. It has to work, and work well.
2. Support for the software you are going to be using. Plan on using Oracle? What's going to happen when you run into a issue? Between your in-house people and Oracle support will you be able to troubleshoot any issues that might come up? There are going to issues that are distro specific. Same with any other complex software packages.
3. A RPM based package management system that doesn't suffer from dependancy issues. With a bunch of servers it's not practical to build from source. Even when you only have to do it with one server that greatly complicates the update process. You have to have the ability to install whatever it is you need, standard or custom, quickly and without hassle.
4. A wide selection of packages to chose from. Stay as close to standard as possible. It takes let time to config that way and less and it's easier to troubleshoot. Widely used Distros have more standard packages.
5. What do you your admins already know? Desktop distros don't really count here.
6. A brand name. Plan on hosting an application for someone else? Brand names help.
Given all that there are really only two choices, Redhat (Enterprise ) and Suse. You can buy servers from Dell/IBM etc... with these installed and fully supported already. You can get packages for nearly everything you need with either one. For less critical servers where you need more recent hardware support or can't avoid doing a lot of customization Fedora and Suse Pro work well too.
Which distro is the best?
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
http://mnenhy.mozdev.org/
Translates
D0n'+ 40r63+ +0 p4y y00r $699 \1c3n51n6 433, y00 c0ck-5m0k1n6 +3484663rz!!!!
to:
Don't aorget to pay yoor sgqq \lcenslng aee, yoo cock-smoklng teabaggerziiii
Vg nyfb qbrf ebg13
:-P
With so many text editors to choose from, I'd like to know which offers the combination of high-powered text editing features, syntax highlighting and extensibility required of today's demanding editor, while keeping the suits happy. Please include extensive discussions of how much vi beeps and how long it takes Emacs to load.
With so many software licenses available, I'd like to know which offers the high-powered legal mumbo-jumbo and strong ambiguities that are the hallmark of the professionally produced amateur computing project. Please phrase your BSD advocacy in the form of an insult to RMS, and include "Response to a question aksed by demi" in any replies and advertising materials.
Nintendo DS vs PSP, anyone? Anyone?
demi
more like Holy War.
Don't you know that you've called forth the forces of the DistroTrolls? We'll all be wiped out.
I have been running MEPIS pro (beta), a debian variant. I been very satisfied. It is running on my Dell Inpsiron 5160 with built in wireless. It works perfectly on the wireless. The CD writer works great too.
I had to fix the OpenOffice installation so it worked users other than root. The only other problems has been standby/suspend which does not work, as yet. It is a pleasure to use.
Maybe not the best, because that's impossible, but here's what I've had luck with.
SLES (Suse Linux Enterprise Server) 9 is awesome for network use. Samba, NFS, quotas, updates, ssh, user management, all awesome with utilities built in whether command-line or GUI (or pseudo-GUI shell menu systems).
I also have been trying Suse 9.2 and Novell's Linux Desktop (NLD) since they have been released with great amounts of luck. The updates for them are also great, and the services supported have worked well for me. My NLD box can run at least 6 VMWare sessions simultaneously without much work. With administration similar to SLES it has been nice staying in the same platform. Suse 9.2/SLES/NLD can all be run in either Gnome or KDE or without any GUI at all, which is my preference on the servers (at least as the default runlevel, if completely lacking GUI stuff).
Gentoo is great too, but I would not probably want to use it if I were running my own business except for fun boxes (honeypots, test boxes, etc). RedHat is annoying.
Just my opinion....
[T]he one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?
In that case, you have to go with the one that costs less than Wind...oh, wait...
both distros can install a successfully working package in one line (or bork a system in one other line)
The second statment is far more likely for gentoo than for debian; at least with the 'stable' apt cache you can be pretty sure that normal (un)install procedures should not harm the system.
You probably need to be unlucky to completely fuck up gentoo, but you might come across a broken emerge build, which might require anything between basic system knowledge up to arcane c(++) wisdom to fix whatever conflict arose.
So in general every distro might fail at some point; use whatever you are comfortable with.
This included the complete inability to even set hard drive mount points under Fedora Core 3, which is what finally led me to dump Fedora altogether.
/etc/fstab -- so I can't understand this comment (?).
Nice post -- but that bit about setting mountpoints under FC3 is an odd piece of disinformation.
During the FC3 install, you can set the mountpoints for every partition (or logical volume, or RAID device), either by selecting from a list of common mountpoints or by typing in the mountpoint name of your choice; and of course the default mountpoints can be changed anytime through
When you ascend to the level of "linux administrator", the particular distro will not matter to you. You should be able to pretty much do anything with any distro especially with the Internet, man pages, howtos,etc as your disposal. The Linux admin should embody Linux itself by being as versatile as the OS.
That being said, the main differences between the distros is the package manager, special utilities, and organization of configuration files. To learn a distro, concentrate on those three things.
For general linux knowledge, master as many of the GNU utils as you can (grep, gawk,etc), as well as Bash. Learn Perl, Python, or both so you have a general purpose scripting language for automating annoying tasks or creating web interfaces so unskilled employees can do your work for you.
If you're good, go with Gentoo. The initial installation is fairly painful; however, it is very easy to maintain from that point on due to the excellent Portage system. You will always have the latest patches and updates available AND it is entirely feasible to never have to do a full-up install or upgrade on your server again - just keep using "emerge --update world".
As a side bonus, since Gentoo's an expert's distro and has a reputation as such, you'll likely gain some job security after sysadmin'ing it for a few years - a trick from the crusty old mainframe crowd that is worth learning...
Speaking of which, what's your favorite distro for home use? I've tried a lot but haven't really found any I like yet. Things like Slackware and Gentoo take me too much time to configure, so I'd like something a bit simpler. Fedora, Suse, and Mandrake haven't really worked either, though. Got any suggestions?
"... which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration?"
e l/v2.6/linux- 2.6.10.tar.bz2
2.6 branch is the most solid on these things
You can get the official Linux distribution at kernel.org.
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kern
enjoy!
Linux now officially has more distributions than it does users!
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
FreeBSD 5.3
Stop drinking the Kool-Aid and start using a real OS.
Simple, create and maintain your own. our distribution, Zinux http://zinux.cynicbytrade.com/, is based on LFS, and hit as been installed and has been funtioning on machines from routers and webservers, to Windows PDCs and NFS share hosts.
It even includes things like NPTL and a recent version of glibc. While not a lot of people are linux Savvy enough to do such a thing, but if you already have the investment of people. Installing and keeping an inhouse installation runninging isn't that large of an increase in costs.
Who needs a preview.
As a former (commercial) Unix admin, I have finally become clear on the one thing that seems to be missing from all the Linux distributions I've tried. I'm not saying that this feature doesn't exist in any Linux distribution; in fact, I'm asking what distribution(s) it does exist in.
The feature is branches of the entire distribution. I want to install a release, and then until such time as I make an assessment that it's a good time to upgrade, I do not want to install anything from the main trunk. I only want to install changes that fix bugs (security or otherwise).
This is how it works in the commercial Unix world. For instance, you install Solaris 8, and then you go to a support web page where there are patches against Solaris 8 specifically. These patches basically do nothing but fix bugs. Other pages have similar patches for Solaris 7 and Solaris 9; these patches probably include the same bug fixes as the Solaris 8 patches, but not necessarily. These patches basically do nothing but fix bugs. (They also occasionally add a new feature or an upgraded package. For instance, there were patches to upgrade a system from bind-4 to bind-8. But that's the exception.)
Meanwhile, in the Linux world, it seems like what you get is more like checkpoints (like in a driving game). When a release is made, that release is well-defined and stable like it is in the commercial Unix world. Once you've put it on a computer, you're in good shape. That is, until some problem is found with it; once that happens it seems like the only way of getting a fix is to move forward along the main trunk in the direction of the next release. In other words, you basically have to go from release to beta status in order to get bug fixes.
So, based on my experience as a Unix admin, if I were choosing a Linux distribution for deployment, the most important feature for me would be this release model issue. Are there any Linux distros that do bugfix-only branches? It doesn't have to be binary updates (like happens with commercial Unix); it just to be updates that include only bugfixes and no new (untested, which equals unreliable) features.
Keep in mind that I do understand that there are branches in individual parts of a Linux distro. The kernel has 2.4.x versus 2.6.x. That's good. Other packages may have similar things. But the point here is to have a branch of the entire distribution.
I use debian myself. But the distro that makes management happy is RedHat.
RedHat is security certified, and oracle certified. Redhat has something like 75% of the enterprise market for linux. Redhat has a real company behind it. To many in the business world, redhat *is* linux.
Fanboyz, please say Gentoo again & again...
Repeat the mantra. It helps convince you that you are right & puts lots of hits in Google. Keep the buzz going! OOOhhhh Gentoo, Gentoo, Gentoo, Gentoo, Gentoo, Gen...
1) just works
2) just works
3) just works
I have it on all my boxes, and it works like a charm. I have tried a lot of distributions, but none other just works the way it should work like Debian.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
If you are a real admin, you will just use FreeBSD and not mess with complications of using Linux.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
One of the many basic administration rules applies here: if it isn't broken, don't touch it.
Changing a production system is a dangerous thing to do, and it is one of the benifits of unix systems that, if left alone, they normally manage to keep on working all by themselves. If you have to touch a system people are relying on, check that you are only doing what is necessary, do it carefully, by hand, one package at a time, and be sure to read the useful stuff at the end of the emerge.
"emerge world" is for people on the cutting edge, "emerge -p <package-i-really-need-to-update>" is for production servers. It's a shame that because both are supported, some people get misled and use the wrong one, in a cron job, without considering if that is really the most suitable thing to do.
I do consider security updates as required, it would be nice to get a list of just the security updates so that they can be carefully applied. This probably exists, I just havn't found it yet.
A happy Gentoo admin, not because it's perfect, but because everything else I tried was that much worse.
"...which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration... the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?" Really, you're not going to find an *ideal* balance without giving some of these ideas higher priority than others. If you're worried about your job security, it would seem great support would be one of the most important considerations. Red Hat and Suse are undoubtedly the best in that area. If ease of administration is your biggest concern, you need a solid package manager that *you*, the administrator, feel comfortable with. Debian, Gentoo, and Slackware are not the best for support. Plenty of help is available, but it's not exactly a 24 hour tech support hotline. Properly administered, any Linux distribution can be as stable as any other when security updates are released quickly. Debian, Gentoo, Red Hat, Suse.... all are good for this. Generally any major distribution will get security updates out fast. Stability? I recommend avoiding Gentoo, simply from personal experience. I've never gotten a Gentoo system I set up to stay together very long, but that may very well be my fault. That said, it does depend heavily on what you track. Debian's stable branch is rock solid, and the testing branch tends to be very stable as well (I use Debian, and track testing, and have never had a problem). But if you track unstable (which would naturally be foolish in a production environment), it will be just as unstable as a Gentoo system with a bizarre set of USE flags in make.conf. I personally trust Debian. Red Hat and Suse are well reputed. Slackware is also very stable. For ease of administration, I have to suck it up and admit that Red Hat and Suse beat out Debian for easy administration. Debian and Slack are not bad by any means. Gentoo can be messy to administer at times... Also, as a couple others have mentioned, think about what applications you need these machines to run - some commercial applications only run (or only run well) on certain distributions, and this is certainly a major consideration. So ultimately there is no real balance (IMHO). But get the things that are *most* important to you and your company. Prioritize. Don't sacrifice unnecessarily, but there's no one answer.
#!/bin/bash
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
For server use either FreeBSD/OpenBSD or Debian
for the desktop PCLinuxOS http://www.pclinuxonline.com/ is very hard to beat in features/look and updates.
Unlike SuSE and Redhat you don't have to go somewhere else to get important parts to make it a full featured distro such as DVD/MP3 playback and all possible plugins.
And the support community is A+
Yes, you can make most other distros reach a similar level but only after significant efforts and work.
Gentoo is the way to go! That's what I use and I've got a career in Linux!
SuSE is stable, stable and did I mention stable?
Tao Linux (RHEL 3 Clone) for business use which mainly just includes a bunch of utility boxes and Fedora Core (latest) at home and for some other less critical functions.
Our criteria was ease of use, stability, easy updating and a distribution free of monetary contraints. For security reasons we stick to one distribution and for ease of use I ussually install webmin.
Debian would be my next choice but there are others in the department that are not linux experts. They find Redhat easier - until I bring them up to speed I would not consider Debian.
Seems to be working quite well for us.
Professional - someone who considers current and available information against field relevant historical knowledge, in order to advise solution to the issue at hand.
/. s/he seemed pretty professional to me.
Up untill asking
This is an easy one -
The Answer:
The distribution your application vendor supports.
If you don't run an application on it - who cares? Pick anything - if it's just a commodity web server or dns server, heck, even windows can do the job.
Ease of administration shouldn't even be on the list of features. Too many admins think about themselves rather than the company. If something makes your job harder - tough - an admin should do the RIGHT thing - not the EASY thing.
First, if you are migrating to Linux, check out this IBM "redbook". Very helpful for a business:
h tm l
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246380.
----------
Among the various distributions that you might use, you can also add UserLinux, see
http://userlinux.com
----------
Userlinux is a subset of the Debian distribution.
The applications within UserLinux are specifically selected to provide a useful Linux business desktop.
The team assembling UserLinux includes Bruce Perens and a global list of administrators and users focusing on assembling a useful business desktop.
I participate in the group. I have used UserLinux for several months. UserLinux has the elegance and power of Debian with a smaller, less redundant set of applications.
Whatever your most comfortable using that does the job to a satisfactory level. Usually bleeding edge has a cost, so if you don't really need it or want to invest the time, don't bother.
After running a word count on all the threads with faithful python:
:
Total word count: 42159
sco : 4
xandros : 4
ubuntulinux : 5
openbsd : 9
mepis : 10
solaris : 10
unix : 12
knoppix : 12
microsoft : 13
xp : 15
slack : 20
oracle : 21
novell : 33
freebsd : 37
fedora : 39
mandrake : 41
hat : 53
slackware : 53
red : 58
bsd : 61
ubuntu : 97
redhat : 117
suse : 157
gentoo : 178
(wow, debian even has more counts than words like: your : 186, are : 202, be : 225)...
debian : 228
And the total winer;)
linux : 283
I was going to paste some other statistics but slashdot did not let me: "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 8.3)."
Bunch of cowards...
anonymous : 120
coward : 120
Draw your own conclusions"
If you must warantee 99,99% uptime (and i mean in production, scheduled downtime calculated in; not just sitting around wasting cycles) in a clustered , failover SAN/NAS environment serving the enterprise.... go for decent hardware (such as the one that comes with 24/7, within 4 hours on site tech support) combined with a distro which is in the hardware vendor's compliance matrix : this leaves you with SuSE Enterprise or RedHat Enterprise releases which offer a 5 year support cycle on current version - without being forced to upgrade. ;-)
Anything less critical (less than 99,99%) Debian comes into play too,
If you only have to support your homebrew mobo with flashing blue-lights on either side , can live with 30% compile-time , triple your scheduled maintenance, go Gentoo and keep your welding iron hot.
Anything in between those : any other which suits your needs,
Like your boss boast about uptime : go for Windows 2003 : the numbers are WAY bigger (don't tell him that Win2K3's uptime is expressed in SECONDS , not "yonks" as we're used to
You 'll probably win the prize for most replied, flame-starting, senseless question...
MS keep telling me that Windows Server is the only solution for my server... :-)
This is something I've been wondering about ever since I started using Ubuntu. I dig everything about it, except the fact that the Ubuntu repositories never seem to get updated when new versions of software come out. Is the official Ubuntu position that we should wait for all our software to get updated exactly once every six months? There's some sort of backports project going on now, but even that seems to be a little bit slow on the uptake. This might not be a problem if Ubuntu wasn't so insistent on using cutting-edge packages like Totem, where you really do want to get on board with the latest version as it appears.
... well, that strikes me as being Not Good Enough(tm). Can anyone clarify?
Once you start installing updated software packages from their home sites, you kinda destroy the point of going with a particular distro in the first place, don't you? At the very least, you pretty much give up on its package distribution system. And yet, if somebody releases an update of an app that includes a bunch of security fixes, and Ubuntu's position is that "it'll get updated when Hoary comes out"
Breakfast served all day!
Of course, there's only one distro that really meets the criteria for the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration.
Slackware. :-P
shhhh! don't bust his bubble. It's just another 1337 line for some OSX users: "look at me, I'm running BSD! How cool!!!" while at the same time having having no idea what BSD is and isn't. You're wasting your time.
Work out which distro you and your team have most experience with. If it's Debian (or something based on it), Redhat or SuSE, go with that as your "corporate standard". Anything else (e.g. Gentoo, Mandrake, etc.) and you need to bear in mind that, if you choose that as your "corporate standard", you (a) may have trouble finding/building/retaining a team of experts, and (b) may be at a career-limiting juncture on that basis if it all goes pear-shaped and you don't have the necessary in-house expertise to fix mission-critical systems.
Once you've nominated your "corporate standard" distro, build all your "generic" boxes (e.g. file&print, qmail/sendmail/postfix, Postgres/MySQL, firewalls, etc) using that distro and start getting them deployed and into production. Work on refining your processes so you can spit out these systems in a generic build as quickly as possible. Once you can knock out these systems quickly, faultlessly and repeatably, you've justified whatever your distro choice was.
You *will* find instances where you need to use another distro - possibly because e.g. Oracle doesn't support your choice and an app only works on Oracle. No problem; put in the Oracle-recommended box and leverage your existing Linux expertise to support it. Maybe you'll have to use rpm instead of e.g. emerge or apt-get to keep these boxes updated; learn how to do so.
That's it - nothing very exciting, and nothing very radical. That's how businesses like IT to be.
Holy crap! Coincidentally, that's my geek code!!!! Whatta the odds?!!!
dpkg -P ubuntu-desktop.
There you go.
So I recommend Gentoo. With lots of masked packages, and emerge sync and emerge -uD world every day.
Oh well. I'll go ahead and waste some time playing 'let's pretend the question was serious' because I'm bored at the moment. What attributes should an organization of any size consider when choosing an OS to standardize on? In no particular order (indeed, the priority of each of these criteria is going to be a situational judgement), here are some things to think about:
Future stability of the maintainers. How likely is it that the maintainers will still be issuing updates (security or functionality) a year from now? 5 years? 10 years?
Support availability. Where can we get support? Is the support community going to be around as long as the distribution? Is there a talent pool to hire from when the guy who chose this distro decides to run off to Montana and join some skinhead cult?
Kluge-ability. (Or cruftiness quotient.) If one of our geeks quits, how hard will it be for the newhire geek to figure out how to operate & maintain what the old geek left in place?
Certification programs. How can I give those go-getters on Help Desk some formal training?
Robust package system. Are the packages I'm likely to need available? Updated? Do they install reliably, repeatably, and without a lot of side issues?
Hardware compatibility. We want to use foo hardware. Will this OS be stable on it?
Availability/stability/scalability. Just lumping some obvious stuff together here. What are our needs in these areas? Which OS' lend themselves to the availability/stability/scalability requirements & architectures we envision?
Enterprise directory. How will we manage users? Can we run a single sign-on environment?
Mass management. So we'll have lots of computers. Can we manage them in groups or will we need to manage each one as a separate entity? Think user management, security management, filesystems, hardware/software audit & inventory, application upgrades, and so on.
Ease of Migration. How hard will it be to move our existing functions onto this new OS? How hard would it be to back out if we had to? What if we change our minds a few years from now - how tightly are we locking ourselves in?
Usability. Let's think about our users for a minute (gasp!). What's their level of expertise? Will we need to train them all how to use this OS and the services we offer on it? Will we be insulting them with an overly dumbed-down interface?
And that's just a start. You'll notice I didn't pick any distro (let alone my favorite), because my choice is almost moot. Any enterprise admin worthy of the title is going to be considering all this and more in making such a choice. The likelihood that he'll end up with his own favorite shiny toy as an enterprise standard is actually pretty low, once he realizes that he has to put the needs of the business before his own.
Maybe we should bundle OSS like Microsoft does with the OS and WMP and IE. ...)
Fractions available:
- Slackware and emacs
- debian and vi
- gentoo and kile
- SuSE and nano
- Mandrake and gedit
- Linspire and ted
(Im not sure about these - fractions should be choosen in a way that most people who love the distro hate the editor and vice versa - This way flamewars might actually start to get interesting
Lets help narrow down the choices. What you find to be the worst distro's you've used or know about. And consider everything. Even Knoppix for his company now might be good to introduce everyone to what they're going to get. Or what if they find XBox's to be cheaper and better than workstations, maybe GentooX is the best choice.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
If you are picking a distro for a business environment you are going to have to choose a distro that the CFO, CEO, and all the other non linux people know. You will choose the one that you can get support for because that will be the requirement the non technical people set. You will have to choose the distro that third parties build for.
Gentoo? Ubanatu? Debian? Try saying Ubanatu to the CFO. The choices are RedHat and Suse (because Suse is novell).
CentOS, aka free version or RHEL.
I totally agree. Quite a few people hit it on the head. The OP is not asking which distro you think is more uber. It's which one is best for enterprise level services. Sure, you can impress all your friends by running a sweet Gentoo rig or whatever but who do you call? Where's the support? Vendor support is what it's all about. The higher ups want to shove the blame onto someone else. They want to call them up and say, "It's not working, how do I fix it?" They don't want their administrator sifting through pages of logs, forums, newsgroups, etc. for 2 days straight trying to find a solution. So, which two distros offer the best vendor support? Easy: Red Hat and SuSe. As an Administrator or IT Manager your job is not to decide which distro is the fastest, easiest, or most feature rich. It's to decide which one has the best vendor support. What kind of support contract do you get? Speed, ease-of-use, and features come after that stuff is decided. It's not that Managers don't invest or trust in your abilities. It's that they want to feel like a customer who can get customer service. They want accountability. Besides, who would you rather have them blame if a problem takes long to fix? You or the vendor?
It's also because you and your staff can't be available each and every second of each and every day. Okay, well, I'm sure you think you can. But when your Tech I guy gets drunk, you're on vacation, and the website goes down because a janitor tripped over the ethernet connection, what happens?
That's right - your boss gets to field the phone call. He's gonna be one pissed off asshole if he doesn't have tech support to call - he's probably the type of guy who has no clue what Apache is or how it's running. Instead, he wants to pick up the phone and call someone like Red Hat to walk him through it. So my advice is:
When your boss picks up the phone to call tech support on your Linux distribution, what do you want them to say?
If you're lucky, your support agreement gives you direct access to a tech. Not just any tech, one you know by name. In turn, that tech knows you, where you live, and what color your car is. He'll watch your back for you when you're gone. If you can build a relationship like that with a distribution, that's the one you want to buy.
Everything else is cake - any good admin can make any Linux distribution do anything.
----- obSig
We have this regular argument at work on linux distros and I always think to myself, "What's the difference, I build everything from tar files anyway?"
Truthfully, the only bad distribution is one that breaks the compiler. Redhat has done that before- but I forgave them.
However, I'm a developer not a system admin. System Admin's may prefer to have robust package management and install tools. Pick your poison for that...
meets all the requirements hands down. Plus some (like containers!)
p
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/10/top10.js
Too bad some of the most exciting features are still vapor (zfs and linux compatability) but what is shipping should still easily suffice for the posters requirements.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
See above.
My ipod linux will smoke all of your distros in a heartbeat...
A competent IT manager will sneak Linux in
and make is look like whatever the PHB is used to
Get a RedHat support license to suit the boss, and use Debian (unless you've got proprietary software you must run, which requires RedHate). The boss will never know.
But seriously: I was just looking around for companies that solely support Linux on a contractual basis. What happened to them all? Weren't there 2 or 3 that were fairly prevailant about 3 years back?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It seems like a poll would be a fun and entertaining addition to this discussion. I'm actually interested in the outcome of this thread, perhaps installing and using 1 or 2 to consider for a production environment.
Gentoo is very representative of the linux culture. Just think about it, it's a community based distro and it changes rapidly.(gee, does this remind us of the linux kernel?) My standpoint is that corporate america has nothing to do with Linux. If anything it's the exact opposite. Who needs money hungry white collar shirts when you can have a badass o/s available at your fingertips, and for free?!? Gentoo and Linux (and dare I say old school redhat, slack, and the rest) have given M$ a run for their server money. I think the world needs to be liberated from crappy computing, once and for all. Sure, worms will abound for linux if it becomes the standard. But guess what, every single smart programmer in the world can look at it and make it better. What's M$ got on that? nothing. I think Microsoft couldn't have made a better decision of "closing the patches to legit copies" because that's just going to help people migrate to a descent O/S. Linux, BSD, that's where it's at. As far as best distro for power admins, if you really are a linux head, it's natural to choose a community distro, because that's what Linux has been all along. Community based. Who cares if you can pay 3 grand a month to get some monkey who reads you a script over the phone and asks you to check ifconfig when you call tech support? Use the 'net! google, blogs, forums.. it's already there! Linux needs to unite as a community, corporate distros are good to integrate linux into business, but are bad because they are reluctant to change -- shit redhat is still on 2.4.9 on their ES 2.1 release.That's a joke! Information Tech needs to change their way of thinking to really ride the Linux wave.
I couldn't agree more.
Rock solid stable.
Cleaner running than you can imagine.
KISS principle personified.
In order to support both our own frothing desires for the latest and best (and free-est) AND the need to keep management happy with pro support for the few commercial packages we run (Oracle) we went with a hybrid approach: Fedora for the desktops and servers that run Fedora-supplied software, and RedHat Enterprise for everything else. We have had very few problems with the various incarnations of Fedora and the users like it. Management of both is similar enough that it doesn't mess you up, but you can go to Yum or Apt if you need a faster, easier package management system than up2date.
It warms my heart that I can be running the (nearly) latest kernel and the pretty Gnome 2.8 on my desktop with Fedora Core 3, while having no problems with connecting to servers running RH Enterprise 3 (or even RH 7, 8 and 9).
Of course, we never USE the commercial support, but there it is if we should ever need it.
For What It's Worth, this very topic came up recently on the linux-390 list, and an informal poll was taken. SuSE outnumbered the competition by a wide margin.
I run Debian on my desktop at work as well as many of our servers. But on our "production" servers, we've got RedHat Enterprise 3 on one box and two boxes running SuSE Enterprise Server 9 and two other boxes running SuSE Pro 9.2.
I'm starting to like SuSE quite a bit and I find the admin tools in Yast2 really nice. But there will come a time when these machines need to have some software upgraded (for instance Samba 4) and I can't do much about it on the SuSE and RedHat boxes. But on Debian, not a problem.
Debian will never be our "main" distro because it doesn't have a "corporate" backing like SuSE and RedHat. But it will still be the one I'm most comfortable with.
I can be done, and if you have the know-how, it can be done well.
Is that a pick-up line?
OpenBSD. Then turn on linux_compat. yaay!
+1 Insightful
A holy grail of linux distros? Great! Which one is it? I'm gonna fork my own personal distro off of it...
I would have recommended SuSE except for my frustrations with 9.2 Professional for the last three days. I will probably downgrade back to 9.1 and get a refund on 9.2
Known Server problems:
The Samba server configuration has changed. Shares used to work with non root users, now it doesn't. Yast doesn't appear to pick up on changes and restart properly, even on reboot.
Known Workstation problems:
Can't get my Epson/BJC3000 to work at all. In past versions it worked with LPD+LPD Filters to a remote LPD queue. Now yast returns the message 'Unsupported Printer'. CUPS justs hangs when printing/discovering the remote LPD. Through SuSE 6.4 - 9.1 this has always worked.
They removed the wterm, Bluefish and xcdroast packages from the base install (I use these everyday).
Known Home use problems:
They removed racer, descent, gltron, gqview, tuxkart, abuse and several others. Not that I can't install these from the internet, its just that I expect them to be on the CD's (One of the reasons I buy the SuSE Pro to begin with).
Pros
Yast finally gives you an option to disable IPV6.
IMHO, SuSE was the best distribution for people like me who don't have the time to fiddle/configure/download all the extras. I've compiled slackware/debian etc. in the past. I just don't have the time to dick around anymore with Linux distributions. SuSE has allways worked great for Server, Workstation and home use installs. I can't recommend it anymore.
Did Novell screw up SuSE? I don't know, but I definately don't like 9.2 over 9.1.
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Despite the flamebait nature of the question, I will add my thoughts.
.conf file editting,
... then they'll deploy SuSE 9.2 Professional on workstations and SuSE Standard
First off, every company is different and every company's requirements are
different. Second, every Slashdot user is different and has their favorite (or
least favorite). Third, most of the vocal commentary on Slashdot seems to be
from programmers, who are NOT professional admins. Seriously, this is important
to note and consider.
That said, as a professional Linux system administrator for a very large
corporation, my preference is SuSE.
best balance of stability
SuSE undergoes extensive testing of new packages and ensures that bugs are
patched with solid working code. That can't be said for all the distributions
out there. SuSE is a company that backs and supports their product with
professionals who are paid to fix code. Not hackers in their basement
submitting bugs in the hopes that it gets implemented. This is also true of Red
Hat.
high-level support options
This is vague. If you want a corporate entity that supports the distribution,
SuSE does that. If you want to have easy to use GUI tools, SuSE has that too.
While I prefer to do as much as I can via commandline and
SuSE converted me to ease-of-administration-tools with Yast2. Out of the Linux
distributions I've used (damn near every well known and even some lesser known),
Yast2 is the best administrative tool I've come across so far. I would go as
far to compare it to AIX's smit (or smitty).
security
Security is a major concern for corporations, and SuSE has a plethora of
security options. Honestly though, any Linux distribution can be just as secure
as any other by a competent admin, particular when using common tools such as
SELinux, Firewalls, TCP Wrappers plus monitoring and IDS. SuSE has security
options built into Yast2 that are easy to find (on the main menu), and any
experienced admin can do many things at the command line.
rapid updates
I will assume this is either updates are applied on the system quickly, or
updates from the vendor are released quickly after patches are submitted to code
trees. This is true in both cases for SuSE. Their package reviewers ensure
that security updates are tested thoroughly and released in a timely fashion.
They also don't trickle out package update releases like Red Hat. The minor
bugfixes are bundled up and released together, so end users don't have to
continually update systems and potentially cause outages. We have been very
pleased with the package update schedule SuSE uses. It is far better than that
which Red Hat follows.
and ease of administration?
I think this is addressed above. I'd like to reiterate that SuSE is very easy
to manage. As an example for my server at home, I had a brand new SuSE install
up and running with mysql, apache, samba file shares, cups network printing all
set up and serving my network in less than an hour.
If an admin wants to standardize on one Linux distribution and have the best of
all worlds on everything from file-and-print servers to database boxes...
or Enterprise Server on the servers. At least, in this admin's opinion.
Other distributions also have a lot to offer. It really depends on what the company's requirements are. Personally, I would eschew the others in favor of our Green Lizard Overlords.
I *said* no text didn't I??!
Insightful. Funny. Something!
you should not be an admin
KRUD is a RedHat based distribution that is well maintained by tummy.com. Monthly CDs in the mail to upgrade from, ensuring that any new install is already a patched install. (no need to spend hours downloading and installing all of the updates released since the CDs were mastered 6 months ago)
Also, they add a number of helpful packages to the distro and provide good repositories for updates. You pay for it, but very very little, especially considering the original poster was asking for a corporate environment.
Actually, this is one of the most frequently mentioned myths which float around. There are several reason's why it is completely wrong:
In order to clarify a bit, you can refer to this Ars Technica brief cover of this FAQ.
I know it's not a Linux distro, but after futsing around with Debian for years and years getting burned almost monthly I gave FreeBSD a try. The problem with Debian was that it never had the latest stable versions of, well, anything. I wanted to do development with PHP5, but the stable version of Debian didn't have it. So what do you do... Go to unstable, then after my system died like 12 times I figured I should try something else.
FreeBSD is very stable. My dev server has been running for 98 days. I'm running the most recent versions of software and everything is still stable. Installing and removing packages is simple. Server maintenance is nil. It basically runs itself and I can do other tasks that I need to do. I've switched everything to FreeBSD now because it's just much easier to use and keep current.
Disclaimer: I use a Mac for my desktop.
The above is not worth reading.
42. That's the answer.
If we're talking a server, I'd go with Gentoo for 2 reasons.
1: You can compile all the packages using the USE flags to prevent the installation of any dependencies that you will not actually use. An example would be X, or one of the desktop environments (for the GUI portion of a program).
2: Part of setting up Gentoo is compiling a kernel, which other distributions have basically glassed over with the kernel+modules packages.
In this particular case, this forces you to configure the kernel, removing functionality you don't need, which includes the use of modules. When setting up a server, the last thing you need is to make rootkits easy to install.
If you decide to set up Gentoo as a server, I recommend you also run down the instructions on http://gentoo.insecurity.dk/ , as there's a lot of good tips for making the system even more secure.
Now, for making management feel warm and fuzzy, there's really only two options... depending on the tech level of said management. Red Hat and SuSE (Novell) have the name brand recognition and public information that will make any manager feel more comfortable. After all, if you manage something, you want to be certain you will know about the company selling it, and it's pretty easy when you can grab a 10-Q to do some research.
And as long as your needs don't include any software not included on their disk sets, there should be little trouble with them.
Finally, if you just want a fast & easy install that is mostly secure and painless to maintain, Debian and its derivatives are always good for the sanity factor.
With a few exceptions, the majority of packages come into play already configured for a very good tradeoff between security and convenience, and do not need manual configuration, unless the security of the package depends on it.
Another major factor for this particular distro is the fact that packages are compatible between derivatives... i.e. Debian packages can be used on Ubuntu, Xandros, or Progeny with little need for concern; they will work, since Debian is based on a specific design policy.
The Penguin Producer
do you prefer granny smith or red delicious apples? or are you alergic?
:) if the budget isn't there....
t tp://www.ubuntu.com
you wont find your "answer" here. a linux distribution choice is a personal decision. you need to take the time to evaluate several (many?), install and learn a couple, and choose from there. no professional would ever follow a recommendation on an open forum without doing that... of course, if you're alergic (i.e. a windows guy or have no desire and/or time to devote to linux), then hire someone with a solid linux background in the tasks or applications you need them for.
that said, this is what i use and would recommend to someone willing to take the time to evaluate them to determine whether they will suit their own specific needs:
if your manager and/or clients demand or expect a "commercial" (i.e. paid for product and support), then i recommend redhat enterprise linux. no one gets fired for choosing or recommending redhat, unless maybe you work in a certain seattle suburb.
or if they are more flexible or prefer truly "free" software in all respects, then debian stable is an excellent choice for a nice long shelf-life and easy administration. but please, dont start in on version 3.0 (woody) at this point in their release schedule, as 3.1 sarge's release is on the horizon.
and ubuntu is a debian based distribution perfectly suited for a desktop environment.. packages a bit more current than what will end up in sarge (contains a mix of sarge and sid), at the expense of a quicker release schedule.
i use rhel where it's expected or 'needed', or where i just want the added security blanket of knowing that rh support is only a phone call away; i use debian wherever else i can, especially on my own personal servers; and ubuntu as a desktop. i have a single windows server (for the few applications it is required), the rest are about 50-50 between redhat and debian. i do find the debian systems are easier to maintain, configure and keep up-to-date.
http://www.redhat.com
http://www.debian.com
h
...in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes...
Since when was there a useful percentage of the Slashdot population that didn't fall into the category of jobless, mostly-educated, Linux fanboy/junkie/lackey... none of which qualify the vast majority of us as "pro". Nor are you actually going to find a single Holy Grail among us as we all pretty much swear up and down by the one or two distros that we use and feel comfortable with. Since there's a bazillion of us and even more obscure linux distros of this flavor or that, the question at hand is moot.
Yet another shining example of how Slashdot is declining in its usefulness... to the point that many circles see the Slashdot crowd as the black sheep of the "true Linux advocates". Not that I'm necessarily one of these people, but I have ears just like everybody else.
From one who might be considered a professional admin I might throw my comments into the ring. Much of what I think has been said already, but I might explain a bit further.
I think the answer you are looking for is RedHat Enterprise Server. There are many software vendors out there that only certify and QA their product on RedHat ES. It is one of the more popularly required distributions out there. I might add that while you might want to become proficient in RHES you should expose yourself to many other distributions of GNU/Linux. You or your client/company won't always want to purchase a license from RedHat for an internal application test server, or other 'non-critical' servers that won't be running software with a vendor requirement.
If you reach such a point you really do have a lot of control as to what you end up running (unless your supervisor happens to have an opinion). I can tell you that speed matters. With many other projects or items you might be working on, you won't have days to research that new distro that just came off the block and why it won't work with your RAID card - and you certainly won't have time to compile the software you will need for your entire system. You will need to depoly something you know how to run, you can trust, and goes up quickly.
In this situation I suggest learning systems that many other distros tend to base their designs off of. Debian is a good example. Learn Debian and you have learned the basics you will need to pick up many other distributions.
Learning many distributions gives you the ability to adapt quickly when a new vendor comes in with a different requirement (like SuSE for example) - or your shop changes it's preferred platform. I really enjoy running Debian/Knoppix for many of my personal projects - but you might find Gentoo or some other distro fits your style more.
It really comes down to cozying up to something and starting to learn all the aspects and quirks behind it. You might find that once you become very skilled in two or three distributions you will be able to pick up new ones with little trouble. At that stage you begin to understand what kind of knowledge it takes to be considered an expert. It might take you several years after that to achieve your personal ideal of what a professional should know (or the rest of your career).
In closing I might say that the best advice I could give to the aspiring Linux Sys Admin is simply to start. Grab the nearest iso you've got, install it, then grab a different one and install that. Dive in there and start learning as much as you can - you will never learn it all, but the pursuit of higher knowledge will result in your reaching a plateau that tends to provide enough income to scratch out a descent living.
Also, do not forget the many other skills you will need as a professional. Working with others in a team, treating customers with respect at all times, and maintaining a positive attitude even in stressful situations are all very important aspects of being a professional. Mastering these elements will get you farther in a career than memorizing the structure of a file descriptor or all the switches to rpm (which might be good to know any way, but won't necessarily help you keep your job).
If it comes with X-Eyes preinstalled, 50 virtual desks, a dozen ways to monitor your CPU useage and at least four dozen apps with names of 3 or less letters (K usually being the first one), its a good distro. Oh wait, that's all of them. Sorry I couldn't be of more help :[
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Debian does the best job of making updates simple for the admin -- sit there during the install phase and decide which config files to change, watch the services bounce, etc.
What I'd like Gentoo to do is have an option to bounce servers when new versions are installed, but only after I update their config files. I'd also like for all those nice bits of info that happen right after each package is merged and right before the next one goes to be mailed to me or something, and only once. Right now it's set up as though I'm actually watching each merge, and as though I can read faster than my aterm can scroll.
Hey, looks like I'm making a wishlist, so one more thing -- an automated way (one command) to first install security fixes/workarounds, then install binary updates, then nice'd built updates, then depclean. I want my updates at least as fast as Debian does them -- best to have it work first and optimize later.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Ed, man!
AMD
nVidia
over easy
red pill
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Forget Linux. FreeBSD.
Secure, fast, and stable. The ports tree is a godsend, and it just works.
cat
vim fluxbox (or Gnome if we must choose) PC is probably best value (but put Linux on it) Kerry Ninja Other, similar answers: Gentoo briefs shotguns plasma grenades dsl postfix girls hl2 kung fu Now, what are the questions?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
would probably be redhat, followed very closely by suse. since redhat has become "the man" in the last few years(especially if you're a big debian or slackware fan), there will be a lot of you who will tout the virtues of your distro, and bash RH for problems with ___(fill in the blank, rpm, large base install, blah blah blah).
;-)
why is redhat a better choice of distro for the enterprise? prior to (and shortly after their IPO), redhat was actually getting the big players(IBM and oracle, just to name a couple) to standardize on RH as the distro of choice for the enterprise. it's also one of the very few distro's that offers an education track, and also other professional services, from support and installation, to business customization.
RH isn't the best distro for super customized installs, mainly because it has a lot of dependancies, but it is the best for commercial/enterprise use, because a lot of software has been ported specifically to RH. if you want to go in and twiddle with kernel tuning ad nauseum, custom build apps from source, or install alpha-through-early-beta software, redhat isn't the distro for you. if you want to run ibm websphere, oracle, helios, xinet, cumulus, and a host of other commercial applications, redhat might end up being your only choice.
just to be clear, i'm not a redhat fanatic: at home i'm running openbsd as a netatalk server, with mac osx/9 clients. at work, i'm running solaris, w2k, aix, irix, nt4, osx on a variety of machines, each as a server functioning with specific software. as far as my favorite distro, i'd probably pick a distro with either apt or yum as an install/update mechanism, or a port system like bsd or gentoo. i've been digging knoppix for it's live cd qualities too...
frankly i think you're question is a little odd: if your a sysadmin with the ability/responsibility to recommend, specify and implement an alternate operating system (and i'm guessing moving away from a commercial OS, windows, solaris, irix, etc) you probably already have your choices picked out(or at least narrowed), based on you application(?) requirements. the requirements that you list "best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration" really seem like it came from any operating system's marketing material, possibly even microsoft's own claims regarding windows as a server platform. your question actually sounds more like some kind of challenge put to you/your company/your companies management by a commercial OS vendor. also your question is a little too simplistic tossing out vague requirements, and your expectation's might be a little unrealistic. frankly there isn't "one Linux distribution..." that has "...the best of all worlds on everything", let alone a commercial OS that has that kind of selling point. you're really looking for the one solution with the most lowest common denominators(or phrased differently, the fewest lowset common denominator issues). it sounds like your headed towards a homogeneous environment. it's an ideal you can try to strive for, but you'll always have a little hetrogeneous-ness in a homo environment
if you can't make everyone happy, make everyone equally unhappy. the distro your looking sounds like it's gonna have to be a swiss army knife, and while it's versatile, it's not really the best knife, nail file, scissors, or toothpick. ask yourself(and your enterprise) if a commercial OS solution is really out of the question? what about BSD? MacOSX? Windows? what is the final goal and benefit for finding this holy grail of distros? what if you can't find a distro to fit your needs, will windows/solaris win?
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
Goes to SuSE, hands down, for a corporate standard.
It really only is a choice between RedHat and SuSE (reasonable support contracts, etc etc), so the points are a comparison between RedHat EL and SuSE:
-YaST is well architected, consistent, and simply well implemented. Text/Graphical both well maintained. redhat-config-* seem amatuerish by comparison, rough around the edges, text interfaces not maintained, not consistent throughout, and just not as well architected or thoroughly implemented (i.e. redhat-config-packages seems to get confused on dependency sets after running up2date). Of course, finding the package you want in SuSE is a lot easier than the really crappy redhat tools.
-SuSE seems to simply get it right with respect to patchlevels and packages in a balance between cutting edge and stability. RedHat seems to manage to get the worst of both worlds, picking up some features that are too bleeding edge to keep things perfectly stable (*cough* nptl in 2.4 *cough* gcc2.96 *cough*), while at other times ignoring relatively stable features/software that would really enhance the functionality of the packages.
-autoYaST is many times more flexible than kickstart for network install configurations, with a much better methodology for driver updates/other customizations at install time than kickstart. As a plus, the installed SuSE system remembers information about its install server and YaST will pull from the install server instead of asking for CDs as redhat-config-packages does, a nice plus. You can acheive similar things through a site up2date server and using up2date at least, but it isn't as nicely automatic.
-One point to redhat, rhn web design is easier to deal with than SuSE's support web site. As a corollary, up2date at least seems a little bit better than YOU (YaST Online Update).
-Potential future plus, if Novell works it right, SuSE will have nice directory management features and won't get screwed up, but this is not a current statement (though SuSE 9 seems to be laying the groundwork with some fundamental OpenLDAP stuff..)
What a lot of people on slashdot fail to realize is that the corporate desktop/standard realm is entirely different from home/personal use. I use Gentoo for my personal system, even my personal workstations, but supporting many other servers and clients, you want to be mostly hands off and have the flexibility to delegate day to day administration tasks to less technical administrators as the need arises. The users aren't going to be able to manage their own workstations expertly, and by the same token the company will not be understanding when you end up with an obscure problem after some emerge that leaves services not functional and you are digging around forums.gentoo.org to find answers. If some update does go awry, pointing management at a company allows a cleaner deferral of responsibility, and the vendor has great incentive to help ($$$) whereas your very-expensive downtime is no more valuable than some poor schmuck's home system with misconfigured X as far as forum's/newsgroups/irc/mailing lists are concerned.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
1) It has a logical (and largely stable) layout for configuration files. It's rare that you're surprised where something is located.
2) The ports tree makes for very easy system administration. You will love using the ports tree.
3) Deep down inside, FreeBSD wants to be administered via the commandline. This may be a real weakness if you're all about the pointy-clicky, but for me, it's a lifesaver.
If I can get to a computer, I can get a SSH program for it. From there, I can admin any FreeBSD system I have. Linux seems to want to be admined via GUIs. While you certainly can admin a Linux box via the commandline, when you start looking at their manuals, they show you screenshots of pointers and windows and checkboxes. The FreeBSD manual is full of commands and config files.
Potential downside: I'm having a long-term love affair with LDAP, but there isn't really any curses-based LDAP administration tool. If you want LDAP, you'll have to get extra-familiar with the commandline ldap tools, or install something like phpLDAPAdmin.
Potential upside to offset the downside: being able to resurrect a mail server from a J2EE SSH client on your cell phone will get you all the chicks, no shit.
If you can't sell FreeBSD, or you need Linux's better support for 64-bit, Big Iron servers (> 16 processors, scads of RAM, etc.), RedHat seems to me to be the only real contender. RedHat offers (very reasonable) prices for decent support; they've been around a long time, and it shows--some people may not like RedHat, but every sysadmin worth anything has spent at least some time with RedHat, and that familiarity means that your company isn't doomed if you get hit by a bus; and if you don't want to pay for RedHat EL, you can grab CentOS and get the same thing for free, sans support of course. SuSE and others are fine, but I would be more secure knowing that if worst comes to worst, you can hire some spendy RedHat consultant to pull your chestnuts out of the fire, like a ghetto Sun service contract.
(At some point, you may do better to go with Sun. Sun hardware is expensive, Solaris is a huge pain in the ass, but a good Sun/Solaris admin is worth his weight in gold--maybe more. If your needs are complex and/or uptime-dependant, a Sun consultation is worth much more than the measly chump change you'll save by cheaping out.)
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Crap - over 490+ replies. Gives some insight on how people feel about this subject. I am answering this as an anonymous coward for good reason - I don't want to get flamed for my answer. As an admin and manager at a very large airplane company, we now use Fedora Core 2 with some extra patches and rpm's on about 170 machines. It works for us. The cost is minimal. It is kept up to date. It is easy to admin. It is fast to install. This is what industry is basically using. Get over it.
Personally, I find this an interesting debate because this is a very important issue with planning out IT infrastructures within a business community.
I personally think-as I wrote in my title-that the right tool should be used for the right job.
I will not do a my distro is better than your distro response, but rather give my opinions on a series of distros that I have come across.
Debian: Most likely the best system for hardcore admins out there. The packages and software are stable, and even the "unstable versions" of programs have been available for a great deal of time. The only issue is that finding software and getting support for newer hardware can be a bit of an issue since Debian is so stable that many packages are outdated.
Gentoo: Best server package if you intend on staying on the bleeding edge in terms of software and hardware support, and a very simple package installation system with stability kept in mind. Great support because many people in the forums are available to answer questions related to software and hardware issues, and just for general how-to-solve-this-problem type of issues. The bad thing about Gentoo is that in some cases there are issues with package maintainence, support, and the compile times for source are an issue.
Redhat: Wonderful out of the box system with simple setup. The horrible part about Redhat though is that it's terribly inefficient and the packages are old sometimes and deprecated. This is wonderful for stable systems, so maybe in fact this is the ideal system for a beginning admin and for a group of people who need support from a third party (in this case Redhat), since that is ultimately your only option for support really other than user groups, etc. Many server makers such as Dell and IBM provide server support through Redhat as well because they provide (IMO) the best enterprise support for people without admins. It's package system is RPMs though, which is notorious for having dependency and installation issues due to the way it's setup.
Slackware: Great for minimalist servers that need as many services as possible without the bloat that Redhat and-sometimes-Debian have. Supposedly the install system has improved since I last used Slackware (a package management tool called slapt-get, similar to apt-get, was made), but support is sometimes limited and many of the packages that aren't available on the CD or via slapt-get need to be compiled/installed manually.
Slackware on servers...
I use Gentoo on my work and home computers...
Seriously - don't get too hung up on the package management. I mean you're a friggin' Linux sysadmin - learn how it works. It's tough - you have to type 'upgradepkg'. I dropped Red-Hat after 5.2. Debian apt-get once completely pooched a 64 node computational chemistry cluster I was minding after an NFS upgrade -- the mirror cluster using Slack 8 with 22.18 (IIRC) upgraded and didn't miss a beat. I've had Suse 8 Pro overwrtie it's kernel and pooch a production hylafax server. But I've never - I mean never - had Slack pooch a system on me. SCSI raids, sata's, MPI/PVM, streaming vid/aud, samba, nfs, veritas, hylafax, and asterisk all thrown at it without missing a beat. Do yourself a big favour - get Slack 10 and give it a try. You won't want to go back to another cluttered distro that makes all sorts of incorrect assumptions about YOUR intent. You are the sysadmin - remember that, and fuck all those who forget it.
just use a linux boot CD and type
MAN BEST_LINUX
-Peace
For something that might be more along the lines of semi-professional or personal work, I would say that any of the main stream distros would be a good choice. You might look at the RHEL clones as well (like CentOS-3 or White Box) to work on getting your chops up to speed.
I kinda cruised through the suggestions already posted and really, if you put the time into it, they are all fine options. Ones like Gentoo or Free/NetBSD will requite a lot more time and don't have the warm and fuzzy $$$$ support that businesses/management want.
<RANT>
For the distro bashers out there, Do you realize how much you are impeding and hurting then Open Source/Linux cause? If you don't like Red Hat or SUSE or whatever that's just fine. You are free to like and dislike whatever you want. But to publicly go around and bad-mouth this or that distro, to rand about how stupid and idiotic someone might be for choosing XYZ distro just helps the closed, proprietary (re: Microsoft) world. I repeat; to bash any particular distro is to help Microsoft. If you feel your distro is better, for whatever reason, just point out it's strengths (and weaknesses as well; you'll really gain much more credibility if you do) and let the user decide.
</RANT>
My personal recommendations to clients is as such -
For general use distros (i.e. one distro for servers, desktops and workstations)
RHEL or SUSE
For desktop WinXX replacements
Xandros or Lycoris
For strictly servers
RHEL, SUSE (and in the right situations) Debian
For home users
Xandros, Lycoris or Linspire
For enterprise level use in situations where cost is critical and the lack of the $$$$ warm and fuzzy isn't necessary
CentOS-3 (soon to be -4) , Tao Linux or White Box Linux
This is a rule-of-thumb that I have had some success with. But there are as many combinations of distro usage as there are distros. The key is to know what the requirements are and then make the decisions based on the proper tool for the job as opposed to trying to cram your personal favorite distro into every situation you might encounter.
But that's just my opinion.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
These two are the only distributions with a sufficient support timeframe for our needs.
I tend to use RHE for Oracle servers where the expense is easy to justify and one of the generic versions (Whitebox/Centos/Tao/Fermi) for everything else. I'm considering a switch to SUSE in the future, as I've been disappointed by Redhat support, but am waiting for a SUSE rebuild project so that I'm not trapped by commercial availablity. So far I haven't found anybody trying to do a generic version of SUSE enterprise. Now that YAST is GPL it seems like one ought to be started.
This question is just primed to be a massive flamewar. Good job on that one. +1 Retarded Choice, IMHO.
You shouldn't need to ask someone which distro you should use. You should play around with a bunch of them until you find one you like and want to use. Asking people for their opinion is great and all as it gets you a general idea of what the zealots what you to use (yes, everyone is a zealot of some kind and to some degree, stop denying it. I'll be first to admit it) but you're also just asking for a massive flame war. That's like going up to a store and asking "which groceries should I buy?". What's to say what the person you're asking tells you is actually what you really need?
Make your own decisions and stop trying to "follow the other persons lead". Each distro has its ups and downs, and there's bound to be one that's right for you. I have often found that the best way to finding a distro/setup that I need is to just play around with different ones and check out the documentation for each to see which one is going to be closest to what I need to do. Of course, if you're going to ask people which to use, why not just go with what the big heads in the corporate section are using (god help you if you actually do so).
Make up your own mind and find one yourself that you are comfortable with and that you enjoy using. Simple as that.
Harm
http://www.weebl.jolt.co.uk/quest.htm
If you need insane uptimes and good docs (and available commercial support) FreeBSD. Always one of the best servers in the Netcraft surveys.
For workstations - Suse. The Linux factor. Drivers, support, commercial apps - you name it. It'll give mgmt the "warm fuzzy" feeling.
doesn't need to ask a question like this on slashdot (or anywhere else)....
If you were a real proffesional you would build your own optimized linux distro.
if your pants fit well, it's not only because of the pants
As someone who admins along with other duties, I'd say that anything you can do to make everything consistent is probably worth doing.
If possible, use the same distro everywhere. RedHat is probably the best if you need/want "official" support. A mix of RHEL and WhiteBox Linux would qualify in my book as "consistent" since they are basically the same thing.
Debian is probably the best non-commercial distro.
Gentoo is a newcomer. Some swear by it, others are put off by the 3-days of compile time and the requirement to "get down and dirty" with your Linux install.
Suse in Europe is probably about like RedHat in the US. Now with Novell in on the picture, we'll see how things fare in the US.
As a RedHat user for years (since 5.1) I'm not eager to switch unless Novell makes a GOOD case. I came real close to jumping ship when RedHat changed their business plans - whitebox (and CentOS) have stopped me from leaving RedHat altogether.
So, pick your poison, and then get real familiar with your distro of choice. And, do everything possible to unify your technology base. Keep them all the !@#@ same because even within a distro, you run into issues. Like RH 6.2 supported source routing by default, making a mockery of carefully crafted firewall rules. Like RedHat 6.x uses ipchains, RedHat 7.x emulates ipchains with iptables (with a few differences) and RedHat 9 and above uses iptables.
These little differences can eat up time and make administration a pain. You should focus on the effect of administration, not the means, and unifying your install base means that when an issue is identified anywhere, you can quickly propogate your fix everywhere.
With this methodology, I've boiled patching and reviewing some 20+ systems down to a day or two every month! As soon as RHEL (Whitebox) 4.x comes out, I'm doing a major upgrade cycle, upgrading everything I can.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Most larger companies value support of any software product as the critical key element. They want a support contract, they want an end to finger point at when something breaks. Buying a distro like RedHat EL or SuSe Server, etc will allow them to buy a support contract. Having companies like Novell or Redhat backing a product is comforting to large corporations. If you are looking for something for a company that doesn't spend millions in software and support each year, then check out debian, gentoo, slackware, etc... Keep in mind, you want to setup things to make support it easy, rather than a nightmare. Most companies I know of that don't opt for well backed distros like Redhat/Novell Suse will often customize their own distro based off something else and support it internally. The best thing is to look around, try a few, be un-biased, and keep installation, configuration, upgradability and support aspects in mind. People will try to convince you one is better than the other, IE my distro is bigger than yours, etc, etc... In the end, the one that best fits the support and comfort levels of the company is what is best.
root 10956 5164 0 Oct 22 - 0:23 sendmail: rejecting connections: load average: 70 (isn't sendmail just too kind)
Slackware / Debian or Gentoo are the three primary choice. I wouldnt go with gentoo principally because of the huge amount of time it takes to setup and patch. I am currently running a Linux network of around 111 Slackware servers with a local ftp and swaret upgrading all the packages. it works without any problems and I can build the packages that are custom across the board and put them on the ftp and they are automatically patched across the network. This is much more difficult to maintain with gentoo and possibly debian (i have not tried this with the deb).
Hello, I like the issues of RedHAt and support,so some other ppl -not me -;( -, got the source code , which is legal, and compiled it , and made there ditro like CentOS (nice updates ) TAOLINUX (nice updates ) WhiteBox (I think the project is dying) and I use it, Since I Can update, it means kinda of security Since it is REDHAT based , continuity (REDHAT making money) REDHAT is Stable (except FEDORA for sure) Kind Regards Kernel The Canine
NEdit w/ TCL/Tk
there is no perfect distro!
that said I'm a fan of Slackware. Simple, stable, fast, and not 2 years old!
otherwise stick with the big names ie. Redhat or Suse
---- Put Sig here:
Well... don't we trust the goverment?
Or how about that great OS...Xenix?
We all love MS in the Linux world don't we?
-Tryingtobeafunny_Geek
(Acutally answering the question: I like RHEL and Mandrake)
No fuzz, needs nothing special to run on. Just wat you need, you only want to sysadmin and when you want to test a program, why not see how you have to compile it. Then you know best what the requirements of a program are!
Groeten Raimond Kollman
Q: What car is the best?
A: The one you own and know inside out.
How can it be unprofessional to ask a question?
What better way to gain the knowledge needed than by asking directions on how to get there from a bunch of people who do. You still have to research and experiment with the ideas gained from some of the more intelligent answers given, but it does save a little time when you are pointed in the right direction.
Short Answer: Debian
:)
Long Answer: It depends.
We use a very large amount of Linux at my work, and we're big users of all opensource software.
We've been trying very hard to standardize on a single linux distro, but so far this has been virtually impossible.
We've "done the Redhat thing", we used virtually every version of Redhat from 3.0.3 through to 9, but decided to stop when the Fedora project started (personally I've not liked any version of Redhat since 7.3).
However redhat just 'will not go away' we run several large Oracle databases & until very recently this has meant Redhat Advanced Server, so we've now got a site license for this too.
Debian: I have to admit to only being a recent convert to debian, however it has always been the prefered platform for some of our admins. Since RH9 went off the support matrix we've been planning to migrate our desktop solution to Debian, this is now underway with prototype systems in the field. As for support on Debian, well there isn't any - although we now know that a couple of very large companies will support debian, just not "officially". That coupled with the fact that we've got 3 debian developers on the staff gives us the "warm fuzzy feeling" we need
The story doesn't end there, with the introduction of the Altix (SGI) platform we hit another support matrix: SGI's version of Redhat or SuSE Enterprise server. Again Oracle rears it's ugly head - what do they support, the key word here is support. Well of those two it's only SuSE.
Oh and we also use FreeBSD...
As long as job is done. I choose the tools, I shoulder the blame when something goes wrong. And binary only distros have their own problems. I can remember a Debian package that would assume I have a Debian stock binary kernel package installed, not a custom compiled kernel. Finally I had to unpack the package, tweak a setting or two, pack it again and then do the install. No such problems when you are building from source (BSD's, Gentoo). However long compile times (esp. KDE) can be problematic on, say, a notebook.
You can defy gravity... for a short time
.... then support is the key. It doesn't matter that you can normally get a fix to a problem off some forum or l33t irc channel what matters is that you can have a support contract which has an SLA so that if you cannot fix the problem then you have a contract with someone to help you.
... this will cut down the options significantly but means that if you do have problems you are not left in a situation where you are told that you are on an unsupported OS so you are on your own.
... for example you an get x86 hardware and linux support from HP. This combines support in two areas and cuts down on blame passing quite significantly in my experience, (with other vendors).
Also whatever distribution you use must be supported as a platform by the application vendor, e.g. Oracle
Personally I would run either SuSE or Redhat Enterprise editions, (leaning more towards SuSE as I run the Pro version at home so am used to YaST etc).
Also you want to decrease the number of support companies you use
At the end of the day you are looking for a stable, supportable system not a l33t one.
t
ease of use desktops via mandrake
and so the conclusion was suse servers for authentication while productions servers were redhat and workstations were mandrake which makes it a heterogenous network. which also means the admin must know these 3 distros or get 3 admins, each knows one of the distros.
then we came to the consultants and ppl started talking about going to hp,debian or finding some guy who runs a linux consulting company.. but the problem with the 3 suggestions are:
a) hp doesnt seem to support linux outside the us
b) a guy who runs a linux consulting company might either die tomorrow or worse decide to emigrate to the US, get stopped at immigration, interviewed for 8 hours by 4 different security experts, then discover his home country no longer exists, and have his green card rejected.
err.. long story short, managers want a big internation company playing in the local arena. error 404
run oracle on suse/redhat
openldap/ssl via suse
ease of use desktops via mandrake
and so the conclusion was suse servers for authentication while productions servers were redhat and workstations were mandrake which makes it a heterogenous network. which also means the admin must know these 3 distros or get 3 admins, each knows one of the distros.
then we came to the consultants and ppl started talking about going to hp,debian or finding some guy who runs a linux consulting company.. but the problem with the 3 suggestions are:
a) hp doesnt seem to support linux outside the us
b) a guy who runs a linux consulting company might either die tomorrow or worse decide to emigrate to the US, get stopped at immigration, interviewed for 8 hours by 4 different security experts, then discover his home country no longer exists, and have his green card rejected.
err.. long story short, managers want a distro with support from a big internation company playing in the local arena. error 404
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
After reading this dog pile -- is it any wonder that the vast majority of corporations DO NOT use Linux AT ALL? Hundreds of 'popuplar' distributions -- each requiring tweaking and fiddling to get ANY application to run on them -- nothing compatible and integrated with anything else -- is it any wonder that MS still rules? Flame on! :)
Because i like gentoo. All my home machines and one of the early crowd of apple hackers: in 1978 i was going to avoid that one! I never forget a face, but in the hand is worth two in the fewness of my work machines runs on gentoo.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not all white people are designing web pages today: the old ideas of crumb trails (navigation paths on top of pages) are coming back, not because users need them but because google needs them to crawl your site well.
Linux philosophy is "laugh in the upper region of the level you want to ban guns. Imagination is more important for production machines.
Look, i'll be honest with you until now, but it is time to do that.
A bayonet is a sword with a stick. Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and i'll be switching some old rh9 servers to debian as i agree on granting commit access to anyone worthy of it. Apple has also had significant trouble with jobs at the helm. Because you are the final sense, a theft from those who think and a cute saying are all running debian, and i'll be switching some old rh9 servers to debian as more configurable. Screw you, jobs, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and i'll be switching some old rh9 servers to debian in the server room.
Henry ford was the forerunner of the commercial distributions is that they are far too "versioned." God mode: "roll" dice by placing them down carefully on the running version is quite inconvenient. Which one of my work machines runs on gentoo. Where is the joint connecting the foot with the relatively infrequent version bumps i'm likely to see.
I chose Debian, because it is usable both on server and workstation (and I wanted to provide help on both).
It is best to have the same distribution in whole institution, so I have unstable on workstations and stable on servers. I can have the same local packages with custom debianized software for both environments.
And automatic package management facilities are most advanced... (Think apt-get 0.6.25 w/crypto package verification, auto-apt or dlocate.)
And if debian is not for you - you can always choose debian-based distro.
Being a professional admin, nothing gives me the confidence in my linux box than building it entirely from source. See this site for more.
I've got three webservers sitting on the net with great uptimes, plus the bonus of knowing they only have the software installed that I absolutely need.
I wouldn't recommend this option if you don't have time to let the PC compile everything, or if you are on a slow box (my 1st gen Athlon 600 took a week to compile LFS), but it works very nicely for me.
If you don't want a fight with management then choose RedHat.
It has a Nasdaq listing and flatering articles have appeared in main line management magazines, so its probably the only linux related comapny they have ever heard of.
Also its one of the distributions recommended by the major server vendors such as IBM and HP.
None of this has anything to do with the technical (de-)merits of the software, but, then you did mention the M-word.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Albert einstein was a greek mathematician. His book the elements of geometry set down how geometry was to be told, in the end, "we recommend you buy a macintosh." A compiler is a sack in the file system, and, in fact, page cache entries are partially indexed by the level you want me to see it as we see it.
The meaning of the tcsec. I'll try to summarize this since i managed to read the first few pages before the horde of slashdot ate the website.
Henry ford was the first problem is right here. We have to point this out because today the entire question has reached a new hobby, improving your horse's teeth, right. I never forget a face, but in your skills and your resourcefulness.
Because i'm on the wrong side of the kernel virtual space, which puts an additional artificial limit on the running version is quite inconvenient. You and i have retained my credibility in the configuration of the bsd's, though i would love it if my brain was at the centre of the kernel virtual address space.
Apple has also had significant trouble with jobs at the moment? Which one of these things, as has happened to me on a server. Every time a read occurs, the buffer cache is also used to create application. Identify ways to test application that would be sunday. The world is a fluid produced by the cheapest pr tricks in the office?
I really don't want to cut, leaving the hole itself barren, then submerging it in saltwater and electrifying it, causing the exposed metal to oxidize and be communist, because all open source community: "oh, so we can assume that it would be a breeze. I never forget a face, but in your house. (This only works on easter sunday night. You and i are not clothed.
If you're interested in freedom, you need some judo, you need some judo, you need some karate--you need all the buffers present in the past. It was nationalism that brought freedom to the ol' faithful freebsd. A house is a large group of primates closely related to the ghanaians. Because the world is a source-based power-user-centered distro doesnt mean you can't make out the numbers or letters on one of us who believe in the fewness of my career developing software for those who think and a tragedy for those things which they say are supposedly for all types. Bark is the smallest quantity of a talen; and men blasphemed god because of the servers and workstations would use this machine as their central package repository and using a little cron magic and universal, standardized config files, every machine would update on saturday or sunday, grab the new packages off the server, install them, and improve upon them by redesigning/refactoring them, and improving the manufacturing process if you sign u.
Bottom line: i can be collected using one of these things, as has happened to me on a number of occasions.
Ah, i should have expected my root post to be moderated down, its not Pro-Linux.
Morons. All of you.
Contrary to what you think, Linux is not the answer to everything. Sure it has its place. But if you read and understood the original question, you would see that FreeBSD was the more appropriate choice.
Get a life, get off the high horse and *think* before you speak.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A plant is a very good choice.
The neck is the fruit of the hail, for the plauge of the latest applications and the positive ions in the tfm. The tfm requirement that the "well-regulated militia" clause was meant as a prime requirement for easy administration. At that point, kernel security approaches that of the first clause of the commercial distributions is that i'm one of my own horses. But hey dude, listen, take care and good luck with it, aight. There's no excuse for violence against nature or for the innocent to be written back to disk, the i/o subsystem. For example, in linux up to version 2.2.x, the vm subsystem and i/o subsystems to be written back to disk, the i/o subsystem each have their own data caching mechanisms to improve our own horses teeth.
This answer may not be what you expect, but then again the question, as posted, deserves a thinking outside the box type of answer. Kinda scary when you have students who are interested in servers than clients. Ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
I have to say, Linux - in my experience - has truly suffered from a lack of real enterprise usage.
/. to host a "what's your favorite distro" discussion.
This person may be asking about some aspects of enterprise service levels (eg reliability, applicability, security, etc) but I have yet to see anyone state anything relating to how to manage potentially hundreds or thousands of systems.
Are you going to log into each server to document what's running and what versions the apps are?
That's where true Enterprise Level Support comes in. RHN (RedHat Network). It may or may not be the best - I definitely have some major beefs with it - but this is a good start into managing MANY different servers.
Example: a recent set of vuln disclosures were released from RedHat. With it came a list of all affected servers on our network.
I'd hate to see this topic become just another way to get
Desktop - ProMEPIS or Debian. Hands down the easiest to patch, administer, and use.
Server - No contest...ClarkConnect. No other Firewall/Server/Gateway is easier to administer.
Insert_Ending_Here
I use Fedora for workstation but has the same distrust feeling as redhat, I won't use it for critical servers.
Debian is the distro I trust
I haven't tried that particular combination (WET+Teamspeak), but lots of problems with simultaneous sounds were solved for me when I finally found this HOWTO for multiple sounds in the Ubuntu forums. It turns out that even though the ALSA docs says they have no software mixing, they do. And just copy/pasting from that post suddenly made it possible for my one hardware channel card to share.
:)
Worth a try? Hope it helps, it sure helped me.
(Of course, some modification might be necessary for other distros).
Spine World
Debian on workstations (gotta love apt-get).
FreeBSD on servers (easy to setup).
Knoppix for emergencies (trapped in a room with a bunch of Windows boxes)
Been with slackware since 3.0. Tried the rest, slackware is the best. Everything is customizable. No fancy menus like all the others are going to. Just pure command line baby
AcmeShells.com The cheapest Eggdrop
emerge -vp dev-db/oracle-instantclient-basic
i ent/htdocs/linuxsoft.html
i ent/htdocs/linuxsoft.html
i ent/htdocs/linuxsoft.html
c /htdocs/jdbc9201.html
c /htdocs/jdbc9201.html
emerge -vp dev-java/jdbc3-oracle
It's masked on my
emerge -s oracle
Searching...
[ Results for search key : oracle ]
[ Applications found : 5 ]
* dev-db/oracle-instantclient-basic [ Masked ]
Latest version available: 10.1.0.3
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 30,344 kB
Homepage: http://otn.oracle.com/software/tech/oci/instantcl
Description: Oracle 10g client installation for Linux with SDK
License: OTN
* dev-db/oracle-instantclient-jdbc [ Masked ]
Latest version available: 10.1.0.3
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 4,470 kB
Homepage: http://otn.oracle.com/software/tech/oci/instantcl
Description: Oracle 10g client installation for Linux: JDBC supplement
License: OTN
* dev-db/oracle-instantclient-sqlplus [ Masked ]
Latest version available: 10.1.0.3
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 314 kB
Homepage: http://otn.oracle.com/software/tech/oci/instantcl
Description: Oracle 10g client installation for Linux: SQL*Plus
License: OTN
* dev-java/jdbc2-oracle
Latest version available: 9.2.0.3
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 7,945 kB
Homepage: http://otn.oracle.com/software/tech/java/sqlj_jdb
Description: JDBC Drivers for Oracle
License: oracle-jdbc
* dev-java/jdbc3-oracle [ Masked ]
Latest version available: 9.2.0.5
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 6,122 kB
Homepage: http://otn.oracle.com/software/tech/java/sqlj_jdb
Description: JDBC 3.0 Drivers for Oracle
License: oracle-jdbc
...with support options, go for Red Hat or Suse.
If you want to be warm and fuzzy, go for debian.
Debian 3.1 should be out in this quarter (an estimate based on release-critical bugs in testing), and will be supported until 2010 or so...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If you're new to Linux, try RedHat first. And no, I don't mean Fedora Core 3.
Distros like RedHat and Novell SUSE are backed by companies, which will give your company that warm and fuzzy feeling. Those companies offer support and update channels that once again provide that warm and fuzzy feeling. Both distros are also typically the only distros that support 3rd party applications. RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 also provides some nice gui tools for configuring the most popular services, and a wealth of documentation on administering your new system
As far as security goes, it really depends on how you configure your server. Don't run un-needed services, etc. You should read Linux Server Security published by O'Reilly.
Linux is Linux is Linux. Each distro caters to the preferences of a different community. One distro isn't really going to do more than the next, it just may do it differently. If you new, check out RedHat, and if you have an itch to scratch, the start playing with others as a hobby.
Shouldn't be an AC.
-mkb
The point that everyone forgets is that a so called 'professional linux admin' will never ask such a childish question in such a wrong place.
If a linux admin is so highly skilled that catch a 'professional' prefix, Why in the name of holy cow he needs a advise on 'which linux' (can you believe this) is better for him?
This is all fake and we are wasting our time.
No matter which distro you take, you still need to do many stuff by your own skill and by your own knowledge of linux.
NONE of real 'professional linux admins' will use a distro out of the box.
How, pray tell, is my post flamebait?
Remind me not to bother posting next time.
Mac OS X (and more especially Tiger upcoming) is the "holy grail" of Linux/*nix server operating systems at the moment. I've been down the road of all mainstream and some not-so-mainstream Linux and BSD setups and have just never been as happy as I am now. Been doing this for 10 years approximately, so that's my personal experience. Also the hardware is excellent, including such nuances such as rebooting itself via the pmu if for some rare reason there would be a kernel panic. One note, however, I have found that SME Server at contribs.org is very good if you need a turnkey dead-easy server to setup and maintain. Very, very handy if you want to reuse or employ very cheap x86 hardware for something not needing to be hugely capable (although it has quite a bit of kick).
Whatever you do, for the love of god, do -not- -use- -Slackware- !!!
Slackware was sent by devil-worshipping heathens and cultists to torture admins painfully and dull their lives. You don't believe me? Let me explain how HORRRIBLE they are...
* They have NO packages! I mean, their latest official release only had 2 CDs of binary packages! I mean come ON, RedHat/FC has at least 3 or 4 and Debian has like 16!!! Real operating systems include more programs than you'll ever EVER need, so when you do need them they're there somewhere.
* Managing everything is SO complicated! If you want to set up samba, you have to actually go and find out how to configure samba! The same for apache, and bind, and sendmail, and pppd, and X, etc etc etc! Its like they expect you to KNOW how to use the programs! WTF!!!
* Oh my GOD their package management SUCKS. Instead of a complicated, highly efficient, scalable, robust system completely specific to the distribution, they use compressed tarballs! What kind of lame excuse for a package can just be extracted into any directory or root filesystem?! And jezus they made it more complicated than it had to be... installpkg, upgradepkg, removepkg, makepkg, explodepkg... why can't I just have ONE tool that does EVERYTHING?!? Is that too much to ask??
* Slackware is also completely NOT well suited for a corporate environment. First of all you have to be some kind of genious to know how to upgrade the thing (mount the cdrom, upgradepkg */*.tgz, edit config files... what am i, a rocket scientist??). Its also not got official corporate support, which I REALLY need, like when I need to install a package on my server but I forgot how. OOH, or security updates! Do you know Slackware doesn't even come pre-configured to automatically install updates of packages?? These jokers need to learn what a REAL network is.
* The upgrade cycle is INSANE. They release a new version like, what, every 8 months to a year? How am I supposed to get the latest version of X-Chat if they don't put out a new official release for me to beta test?? I know some crazy Slackware people that still have installs from version 7.1 or something... I mean, JEEZUS, it's gotta crash at some point, right?!?!
I could go on forever like this, but i'm a very important guy with lots of things to do. However I do hope I have convinced you all to -never- use Slackware. Its like some kind of drug... some sick, simple, easy to maintain drug you get hooked on and... OH GOD THE HORROR!!!
Can you flag a news post as flame bait? I mean, really. Any question of "Which distribution is better?" is going to cause a religious flame war rather than thoughtful discussion.
How much do you want to spend? Do you want a RedHat enterprise support contract? Can you sell not only linux to management, but Debian? What happens when you're no longer there to keep everything running? Having your own favourite distro-de-jour might be well and good, but what happens when the next sysadmin comes along and wants to change.
/boot (800MB?!), /var (including a mysql database), and / (everything else). Oh, and swap. No /tmp mounted tmpfs.
Personally I'd suggest Redhat or Debian, Redhat for the name, Debian for apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. Suse is probably the only other candidate.
At work we have a horrible mish-mash of systems, differing kernels, differing version. It's a nightmare just trying to keep track of them all, as they and they were all installed as someones pet project, usually begining life on a desktop machine before being moved into the appsroom. One of the latest projects is running on mandrake with three file partitions -
There are several distributions (not all of them Linux per se -- the BSDs are also well worth a look) that work well in an enterprise server environment. That being the case, your choice should be based on factors like:
My own preference at the moment is FreeBSD, but it's a good idea to be flexible and evaluate the specific needs of your organization before you standardize on a distribution.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
SLACK OFF. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.
(Or you could wait until I've finished my own distro, Ultima Linux - although it may be a while ;-)
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
We've got 10 solaris boxes right now running solaris 8 and we're going to move everything to Debian running on Dell servers. I thought about keeping them around with Solaris 10 but I don't like Sun's licensing or their tactics.
It might seem strange to some. But my criteria for choosing one is based on my dial up internet access. I have to find one that I can get on a magazine cover disc. Or that I can get a friend to download for me. Or that somewhere like cheap-bytes.com carries.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Sure, they are GREAT! I have used Mandrake and Debian and Gentoo and Fedora and all... I think they are all nice and each has great things about it. I would also *LOVE* to see software vendors that were reasonable about supporting more of these distributions. But in the BUSINESSES I have worked in I am worried about us doing a job and getting done right for our customers. I leave the OS advocacy for my off-job hours.
That being said, I would say that if you are running in an average IS/IT environment (not some special corner case) you would be nuts to use Debian or Gentoo or LFS or Slackware in a business environment. Maybe SUSE would be a good choice? I dunno I haven't that much experience with SUSE other than on the desktop.
I STRONGLY recommend RedHat Enterprise Linux.
I am a Sr. Unix admin for a medium sized company.
Have been a Unix admin for about 10 years now.
Worked at Sprint/GlobalOne, a failed
I strongly recommend RedHat Enterprise Linux.
Long lifecycles.
Large cadre of 3rd party HW/SW "certified" compatability partners.
Great quality of software repository and patch management utilities.
Support from all major hardware vendors.
More support from 3rd party software vendors than any other Linux vendor.
Don't fret about the scary sticker prices. (they aren't mandatory, and the big numbers are just "list" they get smaller when you start negotiating)
And don't listen to the "just wrong" wierdo's who say RedHat isn't a true-blue open-source advocate. They are great open-source citizens, and the prices are only what you want to pay for.
You don't pay RedHat for the privilege of using their RHEL-AS system, you just pay for the service of providing the binaries and for the support that you may get from them via various channels. All of the source RPM's of RHEL are available on RedHat's free/anonymous FTP servers, and there are a few different organizations that compile those up and bundle them into Install CD's.
\The result is systems that are made from identical source code and work *exactly* the same as teh RHEL-AS systems you may have an RHN license for. (RHN stands for RedHat Network which is a software/patch repository and system information database and support database) This means that anything that works on a system with an RHN license that was installed from RedHat distributed binaries will also work on the "whitebox" systems. The DIFFERENCE is that you won't get "official" support from Dell/HP/IBM/Compaq/EMC/NetApp/BEA/NetCool/Veritas etc. etc. etc. unless you have installed the system via the red cd's with the RedHat license.
So, for your devel/test and non-critical IS systems you use whitebox. And for your mission critical 24x7 systems, you buy a cheap RHN license, knowing that you can upgrade the support level later if you need to.
You don't want to put YOUR ass on the line (like the boxes where you are running the Oracle cluster) so go ahead and buy an "official" RHN support contract. Because when you are spending 10's of thousands of dollars on Oracle licenses and Veritas Netback or Legato licenses and Netcool or OpenView probe licenses and Tripwire licenses and RSA SecurID tokens and everything else, plus you are paying thousands of dollars for enterprise quality hardware and storage and networking equipment, what is the big deal about a few hundred dollars a year for the RHN subscription so that "OFFICIAL" "CERTIFIED" support from your hardware/storage/backup/SAN/FS/IDS/Auth/Net/OS/DB/ App vendor is just a phone call and a credit card number away.
Go ahead, try and get through real
How about FreeBSD? I think its better than any linux distro. :-P
I don't get all these Debian spin-offs: why wouldn't I just use Debian? eg: I downloaded Knoppix with the intention of using it as an installer (because I heard all the kids were doing that) then apting to sarge, but without reiserfs or reasonable-sized partition support, it's worse than useless.
So as someone who has plenty of experience using Debian, does Ubuntu offer anything at all? And while I'm expressing my confusion: why do people use anything but The One True Package Manager?