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?"

Comments

Gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

This answer was specifically optimized for your question.

Re:Gentoo

[sigaar]

I believed the question was about administration, not what your fav fanboy-itch-scratchin' distro was.

By the time you start compiling your kernel before you even boot gentoo the first time, I'll have my users working on a file/print/mail server already.

Re:Gentoo

[Talrias]

Yes, I personally like Gentoo, but I really think this is something you have to test for yourself, like buying a new house or car. You can be recommended, surely, but the best way to choose a new product you want is to test it yourself. Wikipedia's overview/comparison of Linux distros will give you a guide and allow you to make your own choice.

Now onto my advice. :) The most important aspect of a Linux distro, in my opinion, is the package management system. Ideally you want a system which makes it easy to upgrade, doesn't screw up configuration files, is easy to use, and has a great number of packages available.

For the record, I use Gentoo on my home computer, and Debian on my server (as well as a Windows XP box for gaming).

Chris

Re:Gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but if you had half a brain you would make an iso image of a complete install so you can install in 30 seconds.

Re:Gentoo

[sbennett]

-1 Missed the point.

Re:Gentoo

[kernel_dan]

For someone who doesn't seem to have much experience with the distributions, Gentoo may not be the best thing to use for immediate use. Gentoo is great but it takes a while to get things tweaked to take full advantage of your system. Everything is an adventure with Gentoo (your first time) and probably isn't good for the faint of hearted sysadmin in a production environment.

My suggestion: start with Debian (or anything quick and stable) then experiment with Gentoo until you think you've got it down. Once you're ready, make an iso and you're good to go for any level of deployment.

Re:Gentoo

[Sweetshark]

This answer was specifically optimized for your question.
... and was installed on all systems from a once-precompiled customized .tbz.

Seriously, gentoo could make sense in a enviroment with many equally equipped systems. But otherwise I think debian or RH/FC is the way to go for larger deployments.

Re:Gentoo

[SharpFang]

stability

Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.

high-level support options

None?

security

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

rapid updates

No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid.
apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.
emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour.

and ease of administration?

Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".

Don't get me wrong. Typing this from a Gentoo box, and I like my Gentoo. But that's a zealot/fanboy distro. Not a pro admin distro. I keep it because I like it, I can fiddle with it, learn. I can do cool stuff with it. If I was to manage a farm of 200 different of these I'd easily go crazy.

Re:Gentoo

[jspectre]

if you're new to any operating system, WTF are you doing installing it in a production environment?

new to gentoo or debian or redhat or windows. if you don't know the OS you shouldn't be pushing it in production. if you know the product enough to be hired as an administrator in it, then you should have no problems with it in a production environment.

debian isn't any easier to learn than gentoo just because you can apt-get a package vs emerge some source to compile. both distros can install a successfully working package in one line (or bork a system in one other line)

Re:Gentoo

[somethinghollow]

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

You can always get hardened gentoo if you need that extra level of security...

Re:Gentoo

[Sweetshark]

stability: Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.
Only true for ~arch.

high-level support options: None?
yes there is noone to blame if it brakes - this is a serious point. But the forum and the IRC channels are pretty good if you filter out the 37337 d00dz ...

security: Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.
true. But with the exception of BSD, I cant think of a distro that is more secure in the default setup (because there are not many differences anyway in the default). And hopefully portage will run on BSD this year (its planned at least) ...

rapid updates: No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid. apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system. emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour. This argument is wrong - the .deb package also needs half an hour of compile time on the maintainers box. apt and portage are both rapid and easy to upgrade.

ease of administration: Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".
so true. there are some good tools in portage (webmin for example), but that is by far not the same as YaST.

[...] If I was to manage a farm of 200 different of these I'd easily go crazy.
True, if the systems are really different. If they are clones (for example a serverfarm), gentoo might be an option - as are debian and RH/FC ...

Re:Gentoo

[sp0rk173]

Nice job missing the joke, Einstein. However, just to counter you with a bit of reason, and not dogma..

stability:
If you use their standard package set, meaning not keyed for your specific architecture, stability will not be bleeding edge. You'll be building programs with configurations that are well-tested, generally since the inception of portage.

high-level support options:
Yeah, you're right here. But as far as I'm concerned, if the bosses hired you, they should have confidence in your skills and your resourcefulness.

security:
Right here, too. Also - to me - any security in linux is standard, unless you're running an older (read: 2.4.x) kernel that doesn't have much new feature influx. At that point, kernel security approaches that of the BSD's, though I would argue that base system and system services security is still rather low due to lack of development cohesion.

rapid updates:
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. So wrong. For gentoo to be considered for a corporate environment, you would definitely set up a centralized build server, possibly with distcc installed on all of the workstations to mitigate the load, distribute it across the network and speed up compilation times. This build server would also act as a weekly package checkpoint. All 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 be done with it. There would be no office-drone typing emerge -u world, then going on an extremely long coffee break. If you were to set up a network of 200+ gentoo machines without making your own, custom stage three tarball, you ARE crazy.

and ease of administration:
See above. After you got the initial infrastructure in place, it would be a breeze. Assuming everything works out right. But hey, they hired you to admin the systems, right? That's what you're there for.

Now, personally i'm past my gentoo phase. Goin' back to the ol' faithful FreeBSD. But, just because Gentoo is a source-based power-user-centered distro doesnt mean you can't cook up your own in-house solution while taking advantage of the awesome tools gentoo provides. The only reason apt is faster than emerge is because emerge uses source by default, while apt-get uses binary packages by default. However, portage can use binary packages and apt-get can indeed install from source. In their default forms you're comparing apples to oranges.
Bottom Line: I can be done, and if you have the know-how, it can be done well.

Re:Gentoo

[DRWeasle]

Although this post is ment to be funny and I did laugh, it is also very relivent to your decision.

By stating that "If an admin wants to standardize on one Linux distribution" I am going to assume your question is in reguards to a production environment. With that in mind I would not reccommend Gentoo. I use Gentoo at home, and would use nothing else.

But in a production environment where you may be taking care of more than one server and one user you will need a distro that will allow you to have a standard install set reguardless of the number of unique computers you have. Using something like Suse Enterprise will be more time beneficial to you than the bragging rights of having a pure Gentoo organization.

Think about this, which would you rather tell your boss at the end of an 8 hour day?

1. I built and installed Suse on 5 boxes, set up the systems for their users, and then I install a web server (apache) with PHP and MySQL.

or

2. I spent the day tweeking out 2 systems so they run 10% faster.

The other advange of going with a distro like Suse is you will have all the management tools included in the packaged set. You will also be able to purchase support if that is the type of environment you work in.

These comments are also applicable to Red Hat, I just prefere Suse.

If you are talking about a very small production environment (you can define small) the Gentoo will work fine for you I'm sure. I just would not tell my boss how much time I spent tweaking the systems. Just do a basic install and keep them as close to standard as possible.

Re:Gentoo

[slashdot_commentator]

Gentoo does not protect you from inadequate levels of competency. Other distributions are more incompetent friendly. You should not discount the possibility that other administrators of unequal experience or talent need to do their jobs on those machines.

My problem with Gentoo is that with genius comes inordinate hubris and laziness. I am required to do less when I use other distributions.

(To the humor impaired: yes, this is a sardonic post.)

Re:Gentoo

[SharpFang]

programs with configurations that are well-tested, generally since the inception of portage.

Certainly the Portage team can't test the program better than the developers. And developers don't usually release programs with known bugs. Though they often release Beta - programs with a lot of UNKNOWN bugs. These land in Portage tree, after testing that they compile cleanly, then start up okay and perform some basic functionality. Nobody in the Portage team can find and correct all the uncaught beta stage bugs.
Unstable doesn't mean "crashes every time" or "doesn't compile". It means frequent errors just a bit off the way, where alpha tests didn't catch them.

if the bosses hired you, they should have confidence in your skills and your resourcefulness.
THEY may be. After all, they don't have to be tech savvy. What about you yourself? Sure you can work out a lot of problems. Sure given enough time you will learn everything. But if things go wrong and you need them fixed NOW, there's no time to learn. You just call and ask someone who KNOWS.

you would definitely set up a centralized build server, possibly with distcc installed on all of the workstations to mitigate the load, distribute it across the network and speed up compilation times. This build server would also act as a weekly package checkpoint.

Sounds like a lot of work. Sure you CAN make it rapid. But don't you see some difference between doing the above and i.e. apt-getting a binary? Like, cost and workload? KISS and the chance for failure is much lower too. You can make EVERY system to update rapidly. You can make Windows 95 secure. But at what cost?

After you got the initial infrastructure in place, it would be a breeze. Assuming everything works out right.

Wrong assumption. The problem is the system is not designed not to break on update. After successful emerge you get "n files in /etc need updating". And until you update them, some essential services will be down. If you run it from cron, this is bound to end with a disaster. The problem with Gentoo is that each upgrade requires cautious inspection and post-upgrade maintenance. That's the normal way, different from elephantine structures in distros like Redhat, that practically clone all the config to distro-native files, from which it's copied, regenerating "standard" configs on each upgrade. Ugly, heavy, obfuscated, but It Works(tm). Gentoo's way is clean and straightforward. With standard amount of problems attached to it. Nothing serious. Just enough to drive every admin of a really big net crazy.

Re:Gentoo

[cbr2702]

By the time you start compiling your kernel before you even boot gentoo the first time, I'll have my users working on a file/print/mail server already.

In setting up a server to be used by large numbers of people over long periods of time, installation speed really doesn't matter much. It's the ongoing administration, the efficiency for the admin of the configuration and upgrading process that matters most.

Re:Gentoo

[stanleypane]

Good point indeed, but I think you are missing the grand scheme of things. A sys admin may get fed up with their current operating system of choice, Windows to be exact, or they may be intrigued by Linux' low (almost non-existant) entry costs and want an alternative. Why spend 6 months trying every distro known to man just to make a key decision: Which distro do I want to spend my time learning thoroughly?

If a new user to Linux can't find those types of answer, or at least key comparisons of various distro's, then Linux doesn't stand a chance. You will inevitably have folks that try one particular distro, become completely disatisfied with it and never touch Linux again.

Foresight into any operating system is a must if you expect people to translate years of WIndows experience to a new platform.

While I appreciate your wit, I am disappointed in your ability to think your opinion through.

Re:Gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, point the rest of us without half a brain to instructions on doing so.

Re:Gentoo

[Dan Ost]

The problem is the system is not designed not to break on update.

There's no need to run etc-update on all 200 machines. Determine the desired
changes (if any) on the test machine and script them. Then when you're ready
to roll out software updates, running the script is sufficient to configure
them all instantly.

After successful emerge you get "n files in /etc need updating". And until you update them, some essential services will be down.

That's just wrong. Those services are in the same state they were before you
updated the software. New changes won't take effect until you edit the config
files and restart the services dependent on them.

Re:Gentoo

[sloanster]

For the record, I use Gentoo on my home computer, and Debian on my server (as well as a Windows XP box for gaming).

Interesting. For the record, I use suse pro 9.2 on my desktop, and suse 9.2 pro on my servers. (and a suse 9.2 pro box for gaming - personally, I don't see the point of bothering with microsoft issues just to play ut2004, doom3 or quake 3 arena when those games run quite nicely on linux)

But more to point of the original discussion, my employer's requirements are different from mine, and so they are running suse enterprise linux, aka SLES 9. They need the extra support and feel-good indemnification clauses that come with the enterprise version, but otherwise, it's actually pretty hard to tell the difference between suse pro and suse enterprise.

When it comes to smaller businesses, I've set up linux servers (yes, suse pro) for several of them. They all seem quite happy with it, since it tends to be a set-up and forget it proposition. It's cheaper, but no indemnification. Then again, they just want something that works, and there's usually no money lying around for sco extortion insurance anyway.

Re:Gentoo

[DaveAtFraud]

...
high-level support options:
Yeah, you're right here. But as far as I'm concerned, if the bosses hired you, they should have confidence in your skills and your resourcefulness.
...
and ease of administration:
See above. After you got the initial infrastructure in place, it would be a breeze. Assuming everything works out right. But hey, they hired you to admin the systems, right? That's what you're there for.
...

For your consideration: most IT types never compile a line of code. They are busy doing other things like taking care of user needs, trouble-shooting problems (system and/or network), etc. You seem to think the guy asking the question sits around all day with nothing to do. So, besides a lot of additional work, what does this guy get by using the standard Gentoo package set? Besides no high-level support and nominal Linux security that is? At most a couple of percent more through-put on his systems because he compiled for the specific processor in each box?

The one positive I can see is some real job security since no one else would be able to take over a customized gentoo compile farm and update scheme like you propose.

Re:Gentoo

[mabinogi]

what on earth makes you think someone's going to have 200 machines with identical requirements?

We're not talking about clusters here, we're talking about a corporate network.

Machine 1. DNS Server
Machine 2. Email server
Machine 3. File Server
Machine 4. Intranet web server
Machine 5. Development server
Machine 6. Production server for internal software 1
Machine 7. Production server for internal software 2
Machine 8. Database server
Machine 9. Public web site
...
...

It's highly unlikely that all, or even most of the machines will have the same purpose, the same software, the same SLA requirements or even the same hardware.
So you want a distribution that is least likely to beak stuff, requires the least amount of babying and provides the most amount of central management.
You also want one that is certified to work with your third party commercial software - Oracle, Legato, DB2, etc...

You're probably going to end up looking at either RedHat Enterprise Linux or SuSE, or maybe Debian - although that will probably fail the certified by 3rd party commercial vendors requirement.

Being able to get commercial support is probably beneficial too. But that's probably not as important, as apart from the possibility of priority bug fixes OS support is usually pretty worthless. Better to spend that money on better / more admins and better hardware support.

Re:Gentoo

[sp0rk173]

Every point you made is moot, assuming the Admin is competent. IF I were the admin, I would make sure that:

1) All the program VERSIONS were considered stable (in the case of server software, like apache, postfix, samba, etc) or atleast usable (in the case of Desktop environments and browers - which in the open source community are generally used at Beta quality). Again, you can tell portage to do all of this. When you don't have it keyworded to your arch, you DO NOT INSTALL BETA SOFTWARE.

2) Have the system tested out and known to work before it's deployed. This is just being a good admin. You don't put stuff into use that might or might not work as expected.

3) As for the configuration updates, that's fairly simple to get around. On major system releases, you update your admin system first, then merge the config changes, then deploy them the night after the farm updates (in this case i would plan it on saturday, so you have sunday to mitigate any problems). Basically the same thing the RH/SuSE updates do.

4) Speaking of farm - Zoophilia? Jesus you sick fuck.

Like i said, if you do everything right, the system will work. If you don't do everything right, you get fired.

Re:Gentoo

[Sweetshark]

Certainly the Portage team can't test the program better than the developers.
Right, the gentoo devs cant do that. But the ~arch users can. And do.

But if things go wrong and you need them fixed NOW, there's no time to learn. You just call and ask someone who KNOWS.
The fastest way to ask someone to know is *not* the telephone - it online forums and IRC.

But don't you see some difference between doing the above and i.e. apt-getting a binary?
Sure. apt-get is easier to setup. portage is more fexible. For example, if there is a security update available and it is not yet in the apt and in the portage tree (for example because it doesnt work with 2.4 kernels), but is know to work on your system (because you have a 2.6 kernel) you could copy the old ebuild to your OVERLAY, rename it to the new version, and be safe ...

After successful emerge you get "n files in /etc need updating". And until you update them, some essential services will be down.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Most services will keep running during the upgrade. So these are the "old" versions running. And most services wont reload config files anyway (even if they change).

That's the normal way, different from elephantine structures in distros like Redhat, that practically clone all the config to distro-native files, from which it's copied, regenerating "standard" configs on each upgrade. Ugly, heavy, obfuscated, but It Works(tm). ... until it fucks up one day royally and the admin has no idea whatsoever where it went wrong and how to fix it. He cant even tell his boss how long it will take till stuff works again - it cant get worse.

BTW, with CONFIG_PROTECT and vimdiff etc-update is really straightforward ....

Re:Gentoo

[Nailer]

The most important aspect of a Linux distro, in my opinion, is the package management system. Ideally you want a system which makes it easy to upgrade, doesn't screw up configuration files, is easy to use, and has a great number of packages available.

Er, are there any distros around that don't have this?

Re:Gentoo

[gullevek]

stability: Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.
Only true for ~arch.

HAHAHA. Seriously, I am running a gentoo desktop system for more than a year and I run it (except thunderbird and gaim) all from stable and this is far from stable. Every unstable debian box is more stable.

And after such a long time, you ask yourself, WTF! why do I compile each package? It doesn't get faster, it just needs enormous time.

This was my last gentoo box, after it is moved out of production (eg I get my new box) there will be no gentoo in my life anymore. It's just too much hazzel.

Re:Gentoo

[ozbird]

Gentoo works for larger deployments, too. Just because you can optimise the bejesus out of it, doesn't mean you have to - if you have a mixed environment, you can make a generic x86 architecture build and deploy that.

While everyone jokes about Gentoo being for optimisation fetishists, what it really is is a meta-distribution that lets you build a Linux system to suit your requirements from the compile-time options upwards. (Gentoo also provides binary packaging for those who don't want to roll their own, and also to cater for build once, deploy many situations.)

Re:Gentoo

[sp0rk173]

For your consideration: most IT types never compile a line of code.

After the initial setup, the admin of this system wouldn't compile a line of code. The package building box would do all of that for him or her. The beauty of this system is that it's 90 - 99% automated, but not dependent on RH/Novel/Debian fuckups or incompatibilities that might slip down the pipe. Any fuckups are the responsibility of the admin. They have no scape goat. They have to be on the ball and perform 100% or they will be fired.

So, besides a lot of additional work, what does this guy get by using the standard Gentoo package set?

First, the additional work would be in designing and implementing the system. Otherwise he'll probably have the same workload as any other admin. Also, he won't be using the standard Gentoo package set. He'll be using packages custom built on a compilation machine for the specific needs of the site, then deployed based on machine group need (ie, render farm, workstation, mail/DNS/samba server). What would he get? He would have an intimiate working knowledge of the entire system that he designed and implemented himself, allowing for quicker response, shorter trouble shooting times, and increased job security. Generally be a more efficient worker overall because he knows more than the average sysadmin about his system.

The one positive I can see is some real job security since no one else would be able to take over a customized gentoo compile farm and update scheme like you propose

Yeah, well, you gotta do something to set yourself apart from the hordes of redhat/debian/suse zombies out there with no real job skills other than ability to walk from desk to snack machine 10+ times a day, and press buttons. This is by no means a solution for your standard corporate entity, it's more a flexible, inhouse system for a company that needs it.

Re:Gentoo

[sicrow]

shit. is this just a post turning into a battle of preference? "I love this and that sucks", "i prefer this", "and only think that is ok..." blah blah blah. It all beats windows...!

Re:Gentoo

[sp0rk173]

Errr...i fucked up. You will be using the standard package set...and what'd you get from that is programs that are known to work stably on any system architecture. It was just in response to him implying that portage only contains beta-quality programs in the tree, which is only true if you key it for your particular arch.

Re:Gentoo

[iriles]

That wikipedia link was pretty helpful, thanks.

I've been using redhat mostly, just because that's what most of my clients use. But I hate using rpm, it never seems to handle dependances very well. Does anyone know if yum works much better? Can you just start using it with your existing apps or do you have to use it from the beginning?

If I can have a decent package manager then I'd be 90% golden with linux. Portage works great... if it handled binary installations as well then I'd think it was perfect. I like the compile everything idea in theory but it's just not practicle all the time. Plus as I said for work most of the time I don't have control over the OS that I'm using.

I haven't had much experience with apt.

Ishmael

Re:Gentoo

[Sweetshark]

Does that include chumps who can't spell "breaks?"
Depends on the number of languages in which they can spell correct. Or if they can at least set their quotation marks right ...

No, you're completely wrong. Think about it - they're discussing how long it takes to upgrade their server, which, on Gentoo, includes compile time.

8:00 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures publishes a security problem
9:00 A patch is available
9:30 The affected project lead confirms the patch to be valid
-> Distros kick in
9:31 debian: Maintainer start building the patched version
9:31 gentoo: Updated ebuild commited in portage
9:35 gentoo: User synced and started building patched version
10:01 debian: Maintainer finished build and commits it
10:05 debian: User installed patched version
10:05 gentoo: User finished build and installed patched version

How long something takes to install in Debian does not include compile time, because it's installing, not compiling because, you know, it's already compiled.
Yeah, I guess debian maintainers have a tooth fairy doing magical 0-time compiles ....

And if you tell me now that the compile time is not so important, since validating the patch and regression testing might take much longer, you are right - and destroy the base for the argument of the original poster ...

Re:Gentoo

[Sweetshark]

<RANT>

HAHAHA. Seriously, I am running a gentoo desktop system for more than a year and I run it (except thunderbird and gaim) all from stable and this is far from stable. Every unstable debian box is more stable.
Well, Im running gentoo since Nov 2002. Only a few minor hickups on the way - nothing serious.

And after such a long time, you ask yourself, WTF! why do I compile each package? It doesn't get faster, it just needs enormous time.
Brilliant - it took you a year to realize that? I guess you are not the fastest ...
You can use KDE in gentoo, but you should know what you are up to. If you like KDE be prepared for long compile times - Gosh, it doesnt take a genius to realize that.
Back on topic: There are much fewer things to compile for a server, especially no bloated almost-monolitic C++ desktop enviroments ...

So for the guys, who are thinking about trying gentoo: If you like KDE, be aware that it is a monster to compile. If you prefer *box/XCFE/fvwm/other lean WM go ahead (you might still end up prefering debian,Slack,FC, though).
But please dont bitch about gentoo because you needed a year to realize that KDE is a huge fucker.

</RANT>

Re:Gentoo

[jspectre]

let me get this straight. you're going to spend probably 6 minutes reading "which linux distro is the best" then you're going to spend 6 months learning it and then put it into production thinking you're an expert on it?

please, don't send me your resume.

if you've spent years learning windows. then stay a windows administrator. leave unix to the people who have spent years on that platform.

Re:Gentoo

[FxChiP]

Cross-compilation?

Re:Gentoo

[Pharmboy]

Er, are there any distros around that don't have this?

Perhaps the whole up2date versus yum versus yast versus apt-get debate. Easy to upgrade depends as well, since Fedora is easy to upgrade but they drop support so damn quick that you better upgrade, unless you are using software that borks unless you use a specific distro (Ensim for instance)

Personally, I see a great deal of difference in SuSe (my new fav) and debian and redhat (my first distro). In package management, configuration setup and number of preconfigured packages (although I don't really mind compiling my own sources).

Me, I use SuSe on the desktop and was using Redhat on the server, although that is getting migrated to SuSe as well. (if they weren't that different, I wouldn't need to migrate now, would I?)

Re:Gentoo

[mjtg]

apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.

This is a bit pedantic, but...

On a Debian system, "apt-get upgrade apache" will upgrade every package on your system (If you can do that in 15 seconds, I'd like to see what kind of hardware and network connection you've got !!!).

Actually, "apt-get upgrade" is what gets run when you type that command. apt-get seems to ignore anything after the "upgrade" keyword, which IMHO ought to give a syntax error.

The command you really mean is "apt-get --reinstall install apache".

Re:Gentoo

[smithtodda]

I suspect the humor-impaired won't know the meaning of sardonic, but I could be wrong.

Re:Gentoo

[magarity]

before you even boot gentoo the first time, I'll have my users working

Umm, maybe not... I've re-read your post a couple of times to make sure but you don't seem to have a distro picked out.

Re:Gentoo

[halltk1983]

Try reading the man page for portage, I use gentoo on my home box and server, and portage handles binaries as well as cross-compliation.

Just a suggestion...

Travis

Re:Gentoo

[Mercury2k]

"If I was to manage a farm of 200 different of these I'd easily go crazy."

But if you had 200 machines to use in a compile farm, wouldnt gentoo make more sense?

Re:Gentoo

[Gigs]

stability

Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.

Wrong, its only as bleeding edge as you make it. /etc/portage/package.mask is your friend here.

high-level support options

None?

Ya the windows guys I work with try this excuse all the time with me, but if you can't read you shouldn't be doing what your doing. Sitting on hold for two hours is not support. I can find most resolutions on the forums in under two minutes. Of course if its that critical you should be running a dual server setup with failover so that you have a backup when things go wrong and they you have time to fix them. Besides you can take all the money your saving from not having expensive support contracts and buy that second server :-)

security

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

Most security issues are caused by bad configs and failure to deal with security updates in a timely manner. Understand your software, watch the security lists for issues, and have a test server to install updates on for testing before loading on a production server.

rapid updates

No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid.
apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.
emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour.

Create a build host
HOWTO Download Cache for LAN-Http-Replicator
HOWTO Distcc server on Windows
Using a shared portage via NFS
Share Directories Using SHFS (cause NFS doesn't have the most secure history)

and ease of administration?

Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".

Very few if any distros have a centralized manager thats worth the cost of the keyboard you access them with. If you are working on many boxes setup the same you need something like CFEngine and a copy of Automating Unix and Linux Administration

But hey what do I know I just admin 27 gentoo linux boxes :-)

Re:Gentoo

[IdleTime]

As a Gentoo users, it would be nice to agree, but alas....

The answer depends on the application. If you for instance intend to run an Oracle RDBMS, you have only 2 options, RedHat Enterprise Server and SuSE Enterprise Server. Anything else, and you can kiss any form of support from Oracle goodbye.

Re:Gentoo

[ArsonSmith]

Me: Hi, Oracle, I am having problems getting Oracle 9i to install on my Gentoo server.
Oracle: We don't support Gentoo

Me: Hi, Veritas, I am trying to set up VCS on my Gentoo cluster.
Veritas: We don't support Gentoo

Don't think Gentoo is going on any of my servers. We standardized on Suse do to the huge support structure that has been put in place with them being purchased by Novell. When you are a single admin over 112 servers you need to be sure that each one you log in to is exacly the same. Automation is key. Good vendor support is a requirement.

Re:Gentoo

[Penguin Follower]

You do know that you can do a stage 3 install & use prebuilt packages these days, don't you? You only have to compile the kernel. Later when you update/upgrade the system you can compile the components being upgraded/updated. Let's face it: even though many of us linux geeks like to compile stuff from scratch (stage 1 baby!) Portage is really damn cool. You've got a huge repository of packages from which to choose. All of which are just an emerge away! ;) Pretty painless management as I've experienced it.

Oh and while I'm on it, Gentoo is already working on a GUI frontend for installation. That will make the stage 3 w/ prebuilt packages install quite painless.

Re:Gentoo

[aurb]

In case it's an i686 and you don't want to waste your time compiling allmost everything, archlinux is your distribution. It's simple, has powerful package management and a fairly large set of allways fresh i686-optimized packages.

Re:Gentoo

[Mintee]

slack?

Re:Gentoo

[redog]

"If I was to manage a farm of 200 different of these I'd easily go crazy."

If you were a real *nix admin you would know that if you had to manage a farm of 200 of these you would find an easier way. For instance when your farm is the same hardware why compile from src for all of them? You simply setup your own rsync use the same make.conf and have a pkg server. Use distcc on all of them and your package server can have a binary pkg built in a hurry.

If everything continues the way its going portage will turn into a network package manager.
I can easly see 100 distcc servers createing all my test pkg's and the only real problem I have is keeping up with kernel bugs. I love /proc/config.gz !

SO to all you who think gentoo is nothing more than a glorified fan boy OS, kiss it, because you just don't know how to use the tools.

Re:Gentoo

[j-pimp]

In the "real world this is not the case. Most server software can be compiled against libriaries several generations behind. This is partially due to the magic of automake/autoconf and partly due to things not changing all that much. Also alot of the apps that get work done tend to not have anythign on the system dependant on them. For example PHP. At my previous job we setup Redhat Enterprise servers. However we needed php5 and decided to compile it from the tarball. The only thing that depended on php was our code and this was for new apps so php wouldnt break anything.
Same could be applied to qmail or samba. And once an OS becomes EOLed you can just keep patching the kernel and the end user app.

Re:Gentoo

[sigaar]

You are obviously ver inexperienced or spoiled by gentoo's portage system.

Real sysadmins can avoid dependancy hell, even in old Red Hat betas

Re:Gentoo

[Taladar]

So in this "Real World" you speak of there are no security holes in libraries?

Re:Gentoo

[Taladar]

I would not say switching is not an option but you should get comfortable using Linux at home a few years before you do anything important with it at work or even pretend to be a professional Linux Admin when you apply for a job.

Re:Gentoo

[sigaar]

Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, damn, even Mandrake if I have to. A lot of the times at work I have no say over what distro gets loaded (and yes, I've done gentoo before), so I work with a wide variety.

And don't tell my you tan make a tarball or iso of your existing installation - I can do that with any distro too.

Installing isn't the issue here, administration is. And I would dare say setting up your services on an existing (fresh install or not) would count as part of administration.

How quickly can you setup file/print/mail/dns/dhcp/ect. services on Gentoo?

I'm not dissing Gentoo, but I have yet see some administration tools that match for example YaST2.

Just yesterday morning, setup a domain controller, with mail, print, file, fax, dhcp, dns, services, without touching a config file. After a fresh install, this took me all of 20 minutes.

That's administration tools for you.

Re:Gentoo

[vandrad]

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...

...which is a factor any competant boss will weigh when blessing an OS for use. What's best for IT ain't necessarily what's best for the company.

Re:Gentoo

[Allnighterking]

And if you had a whole brain ... you'd just grab a mepis disk and be done with it. No need to compile or dd. *Evile grin intended to raise the ire of the PTB.*

Seriously though. I got enough of this in the early days. (as in pre-Yigdrasil) nope sorry. I'll bootstrap later. Right now. My favorite distribution is the one that my customer is paying me to like.

Re:Gentoo

[th3w4y]

well if in 8 hours you can install 5 SuSE's but only 2 Gentoo's than either you are "looking at the compilation" or you are still reading the Gentoo Handbook in parallel to installing those.... in 8 hours... you can install more the 5 Gentoo's a lot more...

Re:Gentoo

[dilvish_the_damned]

I have a similar question comming up with regard to which distro to use in a product we have yet to build. If I cant argue against your points then I am basically screwed. It not personal.
Oh, english excapes me, so please forgive. It is sometimes broken.

stability

Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.

Beta does not denote lack of stability, at least in the OSI world. It is supposed to, yes. But it does not.
Instead what it tends to mean is "I have this new extravagant change set and I am not quite confortable releasing it as the replacement for the last stable", all the while, as many times as not, the last stable revision exhibits lesser stability characteristics.
By default, Gentoo releases into the tree (as being default) what is deemed to be stable, its up to the package manager to make this determination. If it happens to be beta code, then so be it. I specifically deny that this is in itself an indication of instability.
If "released for quite a while" == stability to you, then go play with debian, they have very old code; it should prove stable for you. We have some machines here, the debian machines run for a long time, just like the gentoo boxes, the redhat boxes are envious that we have flipped the uptime counter (due to minor/known bug in linux) and the redhat boxes do not tend to live so long. I just dont find this statement to have merit, and worse, I find it to be misleading.

Out of context:
If I was to manage a farm of 200 different of these I'd easily go crazy.

No, no crazy here,you would adapt, and you would likely be hapier for it, as apposed to the alternatives.
How many test debian machines do you have?

Re:Gentoo

[vginders]

If you need Oracle or Veritas on every of your servers, then you don't need Linux.

Re:Gentoo

[uchian]

Gentoo falls down on the upgrading process since compiling the upgrades will greatly affect the performance of the box (compiling is very heavy on resources, dontcha know!), which is not something you want in an always-on situation such as you describe. Much better to go with a pre-compiled solution so that the server is only running at a reduced performance for a couple of minutes at most.

Re:Gentoo

[nzhavok]

...personally, I don't see the point of bothering with microsoft issues just to play ut2004, doom3 or quake 3 arena when those games run quite nicely on linux...

I'm unable to run Wolfenstein ET (Quake 3 engine) and Teamspeak together because they both want to monopolise the sound card (it's a laptop with an intel 8x0 chipset with only one hardware channel). Windows has done mixing in software for quite some time. Shame it actually requires 2 computers for me to play some games under linux.

My point was that although the games might run on linux for you, for me they are not a replacement for the wondows versions.

Re:Gentoo

[dkguru]

Debian GNU/Linux.

So far I have been using Debian ever since they started and has yet to see them fail ( Apart from that terrible libc incident a few years back :) ). Some say their stable version is "behind" - not so. They just take stability serious.

Debian GNU/Linux has always made our life easier and has a proven long-term record of stable 100% uptime - something management like...

Re:Gentoo

[essreenim]

My favorite distribution is the one that my customer is paying me to like.

Oh, you mean windows?

Re:Gentoo

[afd8856]

You both speak like a bunch of newbs. Really. Shame on you.
Deb is Debian's equivalent of rpm, binary package. It doesn't and shouldn't have any intrinsec dependencies, or you're going the windows way. You're comparing apples with oranges.
Automated dependency that works with rpm are both apt and yum, just as well as portage is for gentoo, apt is for debs and urpmi is for mandrake's rpms, swaret for slack's pkgs, etc.

Stop waisting people's time with your pseudo-knowledge of your pseudo linux administration skills.

Re:Gentoo

[NoMercy]

I love debian, but I'd go with Redhat or Suse for pretty much the same reason, why do gentoo fans seem to think there disto is the solution to all the worlds problems, why can't they make it the ultimate power-user system and be happy with that.

Re:Gentoo

[ntr0py]

Off-topic, but. . .

This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.

Are you serious?

Re:Gentoo

[SharpFang]

1) Really. How many people are there in the team? How many programs are checked in every day? How much time can they sacrifice to each of the programs? How well do they know them all?
Of course they WILL be finding bugs. After all, the programs are beta, bugs pop up in different configs. But not once I had emerge world dying on some compile time error (they certainly can't test all the sets of the USE flags) and I don't want to think how many bugs lurk in my system.

2) Of course, your own repository... neat idea and all, but still it must be kept up-to-date and it lasts. Say, you need some program NOW. You didn't need it before. apt-get install gnuplot. Downloading from nearest mirror, installing, done. If it's not in your Gentoo repository though, your system has to compile it first. It lasts. Time flows.
Keeping ALL the portage tree binaries up-to-date isn't quite possible. Sooner or later you hit one you don't have and need NOW.

3) So why so many "Do not edit this file. It's generated automatically on boot."?

Re:Gentoo

[SharpFang]

Actually what you suggest is a neat idea, but...

What you're suggesting is CREATING a new distro, based off Gentoo, with its own package system, common administrative interface, automated update server and so on. You break a large part of the Gentoo philosophy, enough to stop calling it Gentoo.
Sure, it's a nice distro. Great for such large networks. Admin-friendly. Fast. Easily customizable. With a nice task separation between machines. Very neat idea. But NOT Gentoo anymore.

Re:Gentoo

[SharpFang]

Beta does not denote lack of stability, at least in the OSI world. It is supposed to, yes. But it does not.

Sorry, it's wishful thinking.
Sure a lot of Beta is quite high quality.
Final shouldn't mean "doesn't crash and no visible bugs". It must mean "tested to and through, under all circumstances". I don't want to find some set of options not working if my job depends on this. Stable is not "released in quite a while" but "no bugs found in quite a while".
Of course some of the commercial software gets released as "final" in such a state that every OS programmer would wear a paper bag over his head for releasing such junk as "alpha". But that's a completely different matter.

Re:Gentoo

[ArsonSmith]

Right now I have about 15 Oracle servers and two Veritas Clusters. I am personally a Debian fan and would put Debian on any system other than these that need real vendor support, but I don't want to screw the next guy and complicate our environment more than need be. I have a standard Suse 8 and 9 install that is fully documented for all applications I have to support (about 50 diffrent ones) and it helps to keep the suprises to a minimum when you log into that old server that has been up and running for over a year without sysadmin interferance.

Re:Gentoo

[ravee]

But a study says that more than 70% of the production servers are running Redhat. It may be because it is easier to install, has a 24x7 technical support (atleast for the paid enterprise and advanced server), got GUI's for almost all system and network administration tasks and is easier for newbies comming from different OS environments (read Windows) to adapt quickly to.

I nearly missed out their RHCE certification exam which is a fully hands-on (no studying by rote) 5 1/2 hours exam - All of which makes embracing Redhat a worthwhile exercise.

PS: I haven't used Gentoo yet. And I have nothing at all against Debian.

ravee
--
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com

Re:Gentoo

[andrewscraig]

That's what 'nice' is for!
I run my emerge --update using nice, and this then allows the rest of the system to run normally, while updates operate on a low priority thread. This minimizes the affect on the box.

Re:Gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

www.distrowatch.com gives a very quick description of all the distros. you can get a good feel for the flavor of different ones in no time

Re:Gentoo

[jspectre]

heh. and 99% of the masses are running windows and think they're using the "best" operating system in the world. sheer numbers doesn't mean the best product, redhat or otherwise.

as for RHCE, i lump that in the same category as all the other certifications. worth about as much as the paper they are printed on. ok. your class teaches you how to install redhat on a box with some obscure nic. it's not going to teach you how to deal with the day-to-day life of running unix servers. the same pretty much applies to mse/cne/etc.

Re:Gentoo

[uchian]

Nicing a process does not allow the system to run normally, if your process takes up lots of memory (and compiling does), you still get the hit of disk swapping whenever the nice'd process starts and stops running. Unless you have a machine with several gig of memory (which is possible)

Re:Gentoo

[sconeu]

I have a MDK box at home, and a RH box at work.

Personally, I find up2date to be a pain in the ass, partly because the RHN servers always seem to be hammered, while urpmi lets me select a less loaded mirror.

urpmi also seems to be a bit easier to use, but that may be because I used it before I used up2date.

Re:Gentoo

[hellings]

Interesting that you should bring this up. We have a number of servers with different hardware, although they are all Intel machines. I have built a copy of Gentoo for each of the basic processors that we have (Pentium2, Pentium3, SMP, etc). Then, all I have to do is boot a new server with any LiveCD (bummer I can't get cpqarray support with the normal Gentoo LiveCD's, but it is fortunate that the FC2 CDs have support for it) that can partition the hard drive and has tar/bz2. I tar up a build of the architechture once it has reached its basic level of what we have/need/use/like and then unzip it. It is just like a Gentoo-stage3 install, but fully customized. Every month or two I make a new tarball that has the most recent and up-to-date installs on it so that the install never gets too stale. In less time than it takes to install FC or RedHat or Mandrake I can have a Gentoo server built just the way I like it. The only exception is the few times when I have had to rebuild the kernel because the hardware in one of the servers had a strange SCSI card or something else, other than that the kernel can have the basic hardware that we use compiled as modules and run rather well. On the other side, since I don't like my install even being one or two months stale, I recently wrote a basic shell script that sets up the chroot environment for Gentoo, downloads the stage1 and portage snapshot from our local mirror, and runs through the install of Gentoo right up until the time to choose kernel options with no need to interact other than to edit the make.conf at the beginning of the build...fully automated for our hardware and the way we like it. Once you've used Linux/Gentoo for some time, it becomes easy to set-up and install any of the secure daemons etc that you need. I know this is not a "favorite distro" rant, and Gentoo probably isn't my favorite to run for home applications, but as a server I have had a hard time beating it. If you use the hardened profile and only install what you want/need, it is pretty easy. And if you're going to administer a number of servers, it is best to set-up a local mirror to update portage from regularly and to download your source files once, the rest of the machines can fetch from that local mirror (in our case partial mirror, since we don't have a large enough Linux server to be a full source mirror). That severly cuts down on the time you need to do things like making tarballs of your install, etc. If you honestly want instructions on doing any of what I have mentioned, just email me and ask, I'll be more than happy to share with you my ways. For over-all performance we have been able to cut out a few high-powered Windows servers and replace them with light-weight to medium-weight Linux boxes to do most of the same functions. Some things Microsoft obviously does better for the end-user (Exchange 2003 is loved around here) but some things OSS does better for the admins (basically stuff that's transparent to our clients).

Re:Gentoo

[Nutria]

end up with a system with ONLY what I need on it. It's easy to maintain

Sounds like Debian to me...

Re:Gentoo

[stanleypane]

Read the comment: "6 months trying every distro" I think the word thoroughly works just fine. It's a shame you can't read let alone acuse someone of not being ready for a sys admin position. Just how much time do you spend glazing over documentation before putting it into production? eh?

Linux? Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hurd. Master of OS's.

Re:Linux? Bah.

[Entouchable]

I Hurd Dat!

Re:Linux? Bah.

[brilinux]

That is "GNU/Hurd", you insensitive clod.

Re:Linux? Bah.

[rahard]

But, of course. All you have to do is partition your drive into gazillion partitions :)
Find a good entropy
And ... understand translator

Re:Linux? Bah.

[slickwillie]

I haven't Hird anything about it in years. How's it going?

Re:Linux? Bah.

[emandres]

Yes. Master of OS's, unless you want to do anything useful.

Goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be fun to watch.

Re:Goodness

[tha_mink]

Yeah really. Asking Slashdot users which Linux to use will produce more results than asking google.

At least google won't make fun of you while you ask.

C'mon Cliff. Why post this kinda thing? What good will come from this.

[your distro] sucks...use [my distro]...

Killme now.

Re:Goodness

[ciroknight]

This should've been a poll topic, and probably has been a bajillion times before, but at least as a poll, it would get close.

Then there are all of the "MISSING OPTION" threads, where people are like "well, Debian is on the list, but I feel the need to mention Ubunto/UserLinux because I'm a douche". And then on top of that you get the "HAHAHA, I USE BSD" posts that we're already getting, which are specifically out of realm of the question.

SIGH. I just wish /. had better filters for this garbage.

Re:Goodness

[Entouchable]

Perfect timing for me though, i have my lunch in front of me and this should provide some lunchtime entertainment.

Re:Goodness

[u-235-sentinel]

C'mon Cliff. Why post this kinda thing? What good will come from this.

He's waiting for the traditional "All Your Distro's are belong to Us" comment :-)

Re:Goodness

[incom]

If you search google for: best linux , the first distro website is gentoo.org, so I guess we all know which is best ;)

Re:Goodness

[rlandrum]

Yeah really. Asking Slashdot users which Linux to use will produce more results than asking google.

Maybe not. Re-read the question again, and what he's really asking is what makes managers feel warm and fuzzy.

Nothing makes my managers cream in their jeans more than the words "vendor support". That alone is what drives people toward other Operating Systems (Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, Windows).

If my business was just switching to Linux, and they wanted the best, my immediate suggestion would be Redhat. It's been around for years. It's a publically traded company (which says something about it's stability), and it puts together a widely supported and recognized operating system (AS 2.1 and RHEL 3.0). In addition, it's going to run most of the proprietary database software (including Oracle and Sybase), and just about every piece of open source software you might need for running a business is included on the distro CDs.

I've been a Redhat user since 1998. I love RH 7.2, but think every free distribution since then has sucked. Which is why I have begun switching to Gentoo for my desktop. It takes awhile to compile everything, but it seems like it's gotten around dependancy hell.

In general, Redhat for business and critical systems, Gentoo for SA workstations.

Re:Goodness

[Leo McGarry]

What good will come from this?

This article has produced thousands of page views, which directly translate into advertising revenue. Consequently, the people who operate the parent company that operates the parent company of the company that owns the "Slashdot" brand and that pays the staff's salaries will get to sleep on slightly bigger piles of money.

If you don't think that making fat cats even fatter is good, then the terrorists have already won.

Re:Goodness

[slashdot_commentator]

Using your rationalizations, I'd go Suse. Owned by a major corporation (Novell), provides support contracts, and once linux is the standard platform for their Netware services, you'll have better management software for your enterprise networks.

Re:Goodness

[tha_mink]

This article has produced thousands of page views, which directly translate into advertising revenue. Consequently, the people who operate the parent company that operates the parent company of the company that owns the "Slashdot" brand and that pays the staff's salaries will get to sleep on slightly bigger piles of money. If you don't think that making fat cats even fatter is good, then the terrorists have already won. Oh...right. I keep forgetting that Slashdot is a business.

Re:Goodness

[pjt33]

Iliad captures it pretty well.

Re:Goodness

[Adams4President]

Last time I checked, Microsoft was a publically traded company

Unless Microsoft has jumped into the Linux market, read it again:

If my business was just switching to Linux, and they wanted the best, my immediate suggestion would be Redhat ... It's a publically traded company

Debian

[corrosive_nf]

I say debian. Choose stable and use apt-get for updating. Yup Debian

Re:Debian

[Teppich]

Without trying to flame against Debian - I admire the work of the thousands of volunteers which are investing time into that distibution, but:

Why the heck is Debian one of the few (the only) distribution which replaces the kernel when updating it? RH/FC/SuSE do install the kernel side by side to have the possibility to boot the old one in case something goes wrong. Also its possible to still load modules of the kernel running...

Re:Debian

[HexRei]

Unstable has newer packages available.
And if you don't mind compiling and installing yourself, you can still use basically any linux software that isn't already included.

Re:Debian

[straybullets]

I agree with Debian. I see what happens in the big phat corp i work at. The linux systems are a teritory for numerous corp wars with mainly three gangs :

"home distributions" are a bunch of hardcore linux fans , for some reason they choose to make their own custom kernel , supposedly tuned to the corp's specific needs. It's never up to date, there is not enough people on the team to make this a reality. Sad.

"Red hatter" are the marketing linux kind with "enterprise class support" and "certified hardware". They are pathetic for two reason :
1) if we want certified hardware we go for solaris, ibm or hp.
2) The european representation of red hat is wayyyy behind any other unix vendor and their offers make them look like clowns.

Debian : no non-sense, real open source, well defined option.

Now if the "home distribution" staff would just admit that they cannot keep on with their ego driven distribution and accept plain debian... To be honest I have to say that higher management is quite opposed to debian ( no one owns it, no one in charge ...) and that maybe the real reason for this "home distribution" (it's debian based) .

In the end it doesn't really matter since for important projects the ppl in charge always end up with important kernel patching & linux tuning anyway ...

Re:Debian

[ayn0r]

Three weeks ago I would've agreed with you. I've been running debian stable on a very (VERY) remote box of mine, putting up with 4 year old versions of programs because, well, it's stable and I don't have to worry about the box crashing on me. I really wouldn't want that because the box is located roughly 800km from me.

...but then, about three weeks ago I was just doing the regular apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade and the box just suddenly stops responding. I can still ping it and everything but all services are just gone. Since it crashed while installing a new glibc I guess that must've messed things up. And I'm so mad because it's not SUPPOSED to do that. It's debian STABLE damnit. I could've accepted it if I would have been messing around with non-standard stuff on the box but I haven't.

So well, I dunno what's supposed to be the Right Distro(tm) to use - it's still a question about what suits one best. There isn't just one distro that's "best". I agree with the guy saying whole story should be marked as flamebait.

Re:Debian

[Nailer]

The APT system makes security and package upgrades (and downgrades) considerably easier than any RPM system ever was.

In other new, I find driving with my Ford to be superior than your driving with an axel.

Re:Debian

[Kadmos]

"I have always found Debian to be well-thought out and reliable, even for a Windows guy like me"

That's it. I'm switching...

Re:Debian

[808140]

You do realize that there are three distinct flavours of Debian -- well, four, actually -- with varying policies on updates?

Debian stable is enterprise grade. Bugs and security fixes are backported, very slow upgrade cycle (typically 2 to 3 years), extensive testing. It is, in my experience, the only truly stable (in the tradition of Solaris and BSD) Linux distribution. It's great in an enterprise environment because you don't need to upgrade it frequently, and the Debian security team provides security patches that don't screw your system up -- you can configure apt to download and install security updates immediately in the background. Debian stable is the server you put in the corner and forget about. It'll run forever.

Then, there's Debian testing, which will eventually become the next stable. For most people who don't need the very latest software (especially GUI environments) but who do want more frequent updates, testing is ideal. It's not much less stable than Debian stable, much more up to date, but not so bleeding edge that it breaks constantly (like Gentoo).

Debian unstable, despite its name, is actually quite stable -- I rarely have any problems with it. It's good for a desktop machine when you want the latest and the greatest, and are willing to spend some time updating the machine (because you'll need to do it frequently).

Those are the big three that people run. There is a fourth: Debian experimental. This contains packages that haven't made it into unstable yet, usually because they have bugs or other problems. I don't know anyone (other than clueless noobs) that would try to run experimental -- what's much more typical is to run unstable and pick occasional experimental packages out by hand.

People that talk about how far behind Debian is usually only use stable, which is the default install -- but upgrading to testing or unstable is trivial (ie, one command). Understand that for enterprise servers, new is not the same as good. Take a look at Solaris and see how old a lot of the included software is -- that's because you're supposed to configure Solaris (and most servers) to do what you want and forget about them. Debian follows this model. Stable is amazingly stable.

The only real issue (as some other posters pointed out) is that many commercial vendors only support stuff like RHEL and SuSE, which ties your hands sometimes. But in other situations, Debian Stable beats the pants off of both of those offerings in terms of stability -- they never fail (well, almost -- x86 hardware is flaky, after all, but that's not Debian's fault).

Re:Debian

[AhBeeDoi]

"home distributions" are a bunch of hardcore linux fans , for some reason they choose to make their own custom kernel , supposedly tuned to the corp's specific needs. It's never up to date, there is not enough people on the team to make this a reality. Sad.

The ability to make a custom kernel is one of the attractions of Linux. While an ordinary desktop workstation with a stock build will suffice for most, developers and security sensitive users may prefer a custom compiled kernel. For any public access server, I strongly recommend building a kernel without loadable kernel modules.

"Red hatter" are the marketing linux kind with "enterprise class support" and "certified hardware". They are pathetic for two reason : 1) if we want certified hardware we go for solaris, ibm or hp. 2) The european representation of red hat is wayyyy behind any other unix vendor and their offers make them look like clowns.

One of the most compelling reasons to use Linux is to take advantage of the favorable x86 performance per dollar ratio and stay away from proprietary hardware solutions. At a local community college, the CS department would like to upgrade from Oracle 9i to 10g on their HP server. However, that would require a kernel upgrade which would blowout the funds needed for the 10g upgrade. Solution? Do nothing. True Sadness.

Debian : no non-sense, real open source, well defined option.

Fortunately, one of many viable options.

Re:Debian

[Louis Guerin]

I've seen debian stable dist-upgraded (security updates only) hundreds of times and have never once seen it doe from a libc undate. I expect you've got some backports, a bad repository and/or some bad hardware to blame.

L

Re:Debian

[Kirth]

We tried out several distros a few years back, and chose Debian. It's just perfect for the lazy sysadmin and when it comes to managing some four dozens of machines (mostly servers, but workstations at well).

I can't really tell whether SuSE or Fedora would be up to the job now, could be, but they certainly weren't at that time. Nice for home-users, okay for a few systems, a nightmare for 20 systems. And we had that nightmare with SuSE back then.

Re:Debian

[a24061]

Debian unstable, despite its name, is actually quite stable -- I rarely have any problems with it. It's good for a desktop machine when you want the latest and the greatest, and are willing to spend some time updating the machine (because you'll need to do it frequently).

You can get even more stability from "unstable" by using the apt-listbugs package. This checks the bug reports as part of the apt-get upgrade and install commands and lets you pin packages on your system (instead of installing a newer but bugged version) until a subsequent version fixes the bugs.

Ubuntu

[dieman]

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. :)

Re:Ubuntu

[yamla]

I agree, though I still prefer Debian itself for servers which will not run any GUI at all. But then, I tend to be fairly conservative in my distributions for servers.

I tried FreeBSD but gave it up. The main problem was that it does not run the 4.x versions of VMWare, unfortunately still a requirement for me. However, I also found that Debian did a better job managing configuration files.

Re:Ubuntu

[ciroknight]

Well, Ubuntu is (Desktop)BusinessDebian (like UserLinux, only much further ahead), and I'm still a little shaky on it, I think there's some "Monkey Magic" that it performs that's a little weird and the use of their own apt-get servers isn't the best either. Good at limiting their distro, bad for general debian-to-ubuntu compatibility.

Re:Ubuntu

[Eberlin]

I run ubuntu on an older desktop machine (400mhz PII, 128MB RAM) and it runs fairly well. Updates are easy with apt, support from the community is great and they also offer for-pay support from Canonical if you need to go that route.

Apt is nice and if you want GUI, synaptic works just fine. You pretty much get the standard debian list of packages and in case those don't fit your purpose, you can even use alien on RPMs to get them running.

Best thing with it is that they offer a liveCD -- fire it up, give it a shot, and see if you'll have any HW issues before you commit to it.

My laptop runs mandrake 10CE and because of a long-ago "tragedy" trying to upgrade a RH machine, I've tried to leave the distro alone unless I absolutely have to upgrade. I do the mandrakeupdate thing but since they've moved on to higher versions, it was getting tougher and tougher to find mirrors for patching the older version.

If not for my loyalty to KDE (and the fact that the Warty cds won't boot on my Inspiron 5100) I may have actually gone Ubuntu on that laptop, too.

Re:Ubuntu

[sp0rk173]

For a server/generic business desktop, it provides what's needed for work to get done.

Re:Ubuntu

[poofyhairguy82]

If not for my loyalty to KDE (and the fact that the Warty cds won't boot on my Inspiron 5100) I may have actually gone Ubuntu on that laptop, too.

First of all, Ubuntu's KDE isn't that bad. Secondly, have you ever tried MEPIS?

Re:Ubuntu

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

And names like "Warty Warthog" and "Hoary Hedgehog" always sound good in business meetings. :)

Seriously, if they'd just support KDE I might try it. It does sound cool.

Re:Ubuntu

[Seumas]

My vote is for Debian, too. Out of personal experience and preference. But I would also nominate Slackware.

Outside of those two distros, I've only used RedHat and Caldera. Hope that puts things in scope. As far as UNIX, I've used pretty much everything out there. Still prefer Debian. ;)

Re:Ubuntu

[syousef]

we're going to see a new release every six months until they run out of cash.

Oh yeah, that's the sort of thing I want to read when I decide to use an OS enterprise wide: "...until they run out of cash".

Re:Ubuntu

[thephotoman]

Er...not anymore. Haven't been since that PR disaster that was Ubuntu 4.10 pre-release.

Re:Ubuntu

[ebyte]

I have to agree here. I've been using Ubuntu now on my notebook for several weeks (Averatec 3150H) and absolutely love it, of course I'm posting from my XP partition. But I'm getting close to wiping XP off the drive completely.

I've used Redhat and Gentoo extensively in the past, with only a little bit of debian experience, but w/ Ubuntu now debian looks even more appealing to me.

Erik

Re:Ubuntu

[misleb]

Umm, isn't Ubuntu primarily a desktop distribution? Debian proper would be a much better choice for servers.

-matthew

Re:Ubuntu

[natrius]

Kubuntu. Hoary should be a bit more KDE friendly than Warty was.

Re:Ubuntu

[natrius]

It's a common misconception. Ubuntu has all the packages that Debian does, just with more recent versions. The assurance that people get from Debian stable is that the packages won't change. Ubuntu releases are the same way, except they don't take three years. Each release is supported for 18 months, which is terribly long, but upgrading once every 18 months isn't too often for most people.

Re:Ubuntu

[misleb]

18 months of support is not good enough. I have servers that sit around for years which need to be up to date with all current security patches. Although apt-get dist-upgrade is not difficult to do, it is not practical to do every 18 months or so.

What about security releases? Is Ubuntu as good about security as Debian? You know, there is a reason Debian takes so long to release stable. It is very well tested. Ubuntu is a little too bleeding edge for most serious server environments. In my experience, the latest greatest packages are not generally necessary on servers. I'd stick with Debian, personally.

-matthew

Re:Ubuntu

[drinkypoo]

Maybe if ubuntu had actually successfully booted on any of the three very standard PCs I tried it on (including one with intel EVERYTHING) or even booted in my vmware I would agree with you. As I commented in another thread, now I have ten sets of ubuntu linux CDs I can't recommend to anyone.

Better off just recommending actual debian. Personally I think if you can't make this decision for yourself, you're not a professional admin anyway.

Re:Ubuntu

[NeoChaosX]

It's still included, just not selected by default. You just need to change the GDM theme in order to see it.

Re:Ubuntu

[WaxParadigm]

I still prefer Debian itself for servers which will not run any GUI at all.

You can have "base" Ubuntu install, much like a base Debian installation. Simply type "custom" at the install/boot prompt when booting from the install CD.

From the Ubuntu web site:

A "base" system is not expected to be useful for any particular purpose. It's simply the minimal working system that we will support. It should be a platform that one can quickly get working, and on top of which one can construct a useful collection of services. Typically, servers would start out life as a "base" system, and the system administrator would then add specific services and packages as needed.

Re:Ubuntu

[niteice]

Or...how about Debian on servers, and Ubuntu on clients? They can be maintained the same way (apt) and are, at the base elvel, still Debian.

Re:Ubuntu

[Quattro Vezina]

I've have to agree with this. Ubuntu doesn't seem to like older hardware. A friend of mine was trying Linux, and Ubuntu wouldn't run on his P3/800.

It's a shame, because I've heard some very good things about it, but if it can't run on semi-older hardware, it's useless for a production environment.

Re:Ubuntu

[misleb]

I haven't gotten to the point where I am actually installing Linux on other people's desktops, but I'll consider Ubuntu when I do. ;-)

-matthew

Re:Ubuntu

[Bald Wookie]

Might want to stay away from Sun then.

No, I'm not really serious. Yet.

Re:Ubuntu

[TravisWatkins]

Seeing how it's backed by this guy I don't think that'll happen anytime soon.

Re:Ubuntu

[vandan]

Gentoo? You're joking, right? Different binaries per system?

You don't have to have different binaries per system. You can build packages that are similar to Slackware's tgz packages, but with a more intelligent dependancy system ( ie one that exists ) behind it. So make packages on your development system, and keep the others in sync via packages.

Also keep in mind that a binary-based distro will only last until the distributor keeps updating packages. After the end of the products' life cycle, you're on your own ... and that means re-installing. Gentoo can stay permanently current.

Also Gentoo is always among the first distros to have security updates.

I think it's well suited to professionals admins, but even more so for programmers.

Re:Ubuntu

[�berhund]

18 months of support is not good enough.

"In addition to the regular six-monthly releases, the Ubuntu team may make an Enterprise Release (based on an existing time-based release) that has received additional stabilisation, polish and translation work. These Enterprise Releases will be supported for a longer period than the standard 18 month support of the time based releases. Upgrades will be supported from enteprise release to enterprise release."

Re:Ubuntu

[�berhund]

You know, there is a reason Debian takes so long to release stable. It is very well tested.

I get the opposite feeling on an old Debian stable install. I start to feel like it can't possibly be secure, because the developers aren't even looking at this version of the code anymore. There have been new major releases of too many packages.

Like running ssh v1 *long* after everyone else has been running v2, and the world has learned about the inherent vulnerabilities of ssh v1.

And they certainly aren't perfect on fixing security issues. Like having the apache process owner also own the apache config files? Dunno how that made it into stable in the first place (very basic config error), but even after a bug was filed, it stayed there for ages, probably til the next version became Stable.

Personally, the feeling I get is that the Debian folks would love to release more often, but they just aren't organized enough to pull the trigger.

Re:Ubuntu

[misleb]

Great, so now they are reinventing the Debian project itself? Why not just run Debian stable? It already has all the proposed features of Ubuntu Enterprise.

-matthew

Re:Ubuntu

[dhasenan]

I'd do that for anyone who's looking for a Windows alternative and doesn't mind a bit of work. My girlfriend, though--she's using Windows, for a cause; she has to use software that's unstable enough in Windows and would be worse with an emulator. But when she's able, she'll switch to Linux, and the only way I'd put Ubuntu on her machine is so she has a nice graphical front-end for installing Gentoo. Hey, that's what I'm doing.

Ubuntu has a great feature: it works. It has a great drawback: though you can massage it to have everything you need, it doesn't come with a sane build environment. I wish the documentation had mentioned that in the first place; it was annoying to find out the hard way.

That's a great feature for clients. On the other hand, unless I'm planning to do a Gentoid bootstrap, I'd prefer workstations to come with a C compiler. Omitting it only serves to increase dependence on the package manager.

Easy..

[tewmten]

Slackware of course.
KISS all the way :-)

Re:Easy..

[Psychofreak]

I am running Slackware on my own machine. I am not a guru administrator. I have found that the documentation for software installation and upgrades use a different structure than Slackware uses. This causes much confusion on my part.

I tried SuSE and Red Hat in College, but was not impressed by the limitations that the installation software created. I like booting to a command line, even though my first command is usually "startx".

I have not had the opportunity to try *BSD. While I feel that wiping my computer is a normal thing, I enjoy it much less than I used to. In fact I have been actively trying to learn how to fix problems without resorting to a format.

I want to be able to administer my own machine reliably, but probably will not have privileges on machines I do not own. Where (or what) are good sources of reference to learn from?

I purchased O'Reilly's Linux in a Nutshell a few months ago and have found it helpful, but assuming too much knowhow from the start. I am no longer a helpdesk employee, so I have limited resources to draw assistance from.

I do not find ANY distro I have used to be KISS, but have had the best success with Slackware. I still have problems with LILO so I haven't upgraded the kernel because the 2.6 kernel will not boot from a floppy.

I require dual boot with Windows because some software I run for work are windows only. Also the support center won't talk to me unless I am in windows.(happily I don't talk to them much) I find that the web applications run better in Konquer spoofing Explorer 5.5 than in Windows running Explorer!

Phil

Re:Easy..

[wed128]

I've been running Slack since 9.0 was released, and have loved it ever since, in fact i'm typing on my slack machine now...

It is incredibly versitile...vanilla install for a server, and dropline gnome is an EXTREMELY polished desktop.

For managing a server farm or some such mass of computers, which i have no experience with mind you, would seem easy with simple config file migrations. And BSD style init scripts are so much simpler!

Re:Easy..

[Penguinshit]

I once asked Gene Simmons about a problem I was having integrating a sound card. He didn't know shit, and then started trying to tell how many women he boned at one time.

Re:Easy..

[burySCO]

Slackware is my favourite too, since it seems to be well suited to just about anything and it's got the right mix between new/stable. But I think the PHB's would be unhappy with just the slackware handbook.

Re:Easy..

[sk8_slacker]

ACK. Slackware is really nice and it comes with BSD-Style init scripts. I tested a lot of the Linux distributions but I always came back to Slackware. At home I run Slackware and an LFS box. I also used Gentoo for a while but it never really convinced me! I prefere LFS when it comes to source based distributions.

Re:Easy..

[schon]

The moment you need [...] pam you're screwed

This statement is true even without Slackware.

To put it short

[A beautiful mind]

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".

Re:To put it short

[drakethegreat]

True. The BSD people swear by it and the certain linux loves love their specific distro for a certain reason. Picking the BEST is not a real practical approach. That is the joy of Open Source OSes in that you can pick your flavor and make it what you want it to be.

Re:To put it short

[DeckardJK]

I beg to differ... the best distribution is clearly the one with the cutest logo at any given time.

Re:To put it short

[eln]

Wrong! My distribution of choice is superior in every way to your pathetic distribution of choice. You are the lowest form of loser to think that your worthless distribution could hold a candle to the God-like superiority of my distribution.

My distribution's superiority is clearly demonstrated by it's magnificent out-of-the box handling of my obscure feature of choice. Your pathetic distribution doesn't even support my obscure feature of choice without a course of action so complex that it's madness to even contemplate it.

Clearly, my distribution of choice will utterly destroy your distribution of choice. This is so certain it is pointless for you to resist it.

Re:To put it short

[BerntB]

It's the administrator, not the distribution that matters the most.

I see... something like this old saw?

Gun's don't kill people, I kill people.

Re:To put it short

[aztektum]

And answers like this (I'm not arguing the point, I think it's valid) are why Linux has made few inroads on corporate desktops. PHB's want one answer to all of their IT problems. Not "Well it depends, we could use Distro A, but Joe likes Distro B better. Although Distro C has better support..." then they end up with Windows XP because there is no "It just works." answer for Linux.

Re:To put it short

[Lisandro]

You're right. In fact, that's how i chose my desktop enviroment. Sqeeeeeeeee!

Re:To put it short

[gbjbaanb]

Your pathetic distribution doesn't even support my obscure feature of choice without a course of action so complex that it's madness to even contemplate it.

*sigh*. OK, WindowsXP it is then.

Re:To put it short

[ScuzzMonkey]

There sure are "it just works" answers for Linux... the problem is that most of the advocates for it aren't content to just name one, but instead like to listen to themselves blather on and show off their technical knowledge of the differences.

The Windows crowd, on the other hand, simply don't have enough technical knowledge to blather about and so Windows wins out. PHBs don't like to be confused.

A competent IT manager will evaluate and present the recommendation best suited for the environment, not try to hold a pointless debate in front of PHBs who don't care and won't get it.

Re:To put it short

[Vegard]

Well. Then, they are not ready for Linux yet. It's true. There is a different requirement for a desktop Linux, a simple webserver-Linux, a mail-server-Linux and high-end top-notch database server-Linux. All of them *can* be solved with most any Linux-distribution out there, but if I were to run an Oracle-database on it, I'd make damned sure Oracle would support it. That limits my option in that regards.

For a simple web-server, or a mail-server, run entirely in-house, it would all depend on the skills and preferences of the people who's going to design and set it up. Because you WILL need people with skills, no matter what OS you will run services on.

For my personal use, I prefer Debian, but for the one Linux-server I've set up at my current work (we're using commercial Unix, mainly), I went with our more-or-less-standard, SuSE Linux - because I want more people than me being able to maintain it.

The idea of choice, and that there are more than one good answer to a question, might be hard to understand and accept.

We could of course all together agree that SuSE Linux is the *best* Linux, today, but I seriously believe that without competition between the distributions itself, we would not see the innovation we see today. So in the end, I think having more than one distribution benefits us all. Whether or not we use them all or stick with the one we have learnt to love, does not matter that much.

But, there is security to know that if your Linux vendor lets you down, and doesn't give you the level of support that you feel you need, you have the option of switching to a different vendor without *too* much hassle, and gradually.

The reason there exists that many Linux distributions, is because it's relatively easy to do it. And part of the freedom in the GNU license, is that you can do *exactly* that - take something, build on it, and redistribute and even make money on it. Take away that freedom, and much of the innovation would stop.

Re:To put it short

[misleb]

The question is: Why are you, a supposed IT expert, asking a PHB to make a technical decision? A good manager wants the *right* answer to all IT problems... not just one answer.

-matthew

Re:To put it short

[freemacmini]

If company A has a PHP who makes decisions based on silly things like "why can't one thing do eveything" and company B has a PHP that can understand complexity then company A will get it's butt kicked by company B.

If you work for company A I suggest you try and get a job at company B. If you own stock in company A then I suggest you sell that stock.

Companies run by idiots tend not to be pleasant places to work and tend to have stocks that suffer.

Re:To put it short

[Pop69]

"God-like superiority of my distribution"

You must be a Slackware user then ?

Re:To put it short

[GryphonTech]

All your Linux are belong to us......

Re:To put it short

[Penguinshit]

Netcraft confirms it...

Re:To put it short

[ajs]

And answers like this [...] are why Linux has made few inroads on corporate desktops

No, vendor lock-in is why Linux has made so few inroads.

That said, you're in the wrong place to be pushing this opinion. Reading the article, we see that the question was about ADMINISTRATORS, and not your average user. For such users, it is quite reasonable to discuss the mertis of administrative-competence over distribution quirks.

If the question had been, "What is the best distribution for clueless users," I think the answer would have been much different. I know that my answer would have been: well, Mandrake is a good option, but really you're going to want to select a hardware vendor that supports a Linux distribution, NOT a Linux distribution. That is, you could go to IBM or HP and say, "I want a Linux laptop/desktop/whatever," and they will tell you what your options (if any) are.

These options are the supported distribution for their hardware, and that means you don't have to do integration (e.g. "how do I get this Neato2000 graphics card to work under x.org's server?"), which end-users should not have to know how to do.

What's more, you're looking at Linux all wrong. Linux distributions are not flavors, they are competing products. If you think in this way, the percieved confusion melts away, and you are left looking at a market just like any other with Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Desktop, MacOS, SuSE, etc. End-users do not need to think about the fact that Debian and Mandrake have the same kernel any more than they have to think about the parts that a Tarus and Jaguar share in common. They choose between those two cars based on a set of criteria that have nothing at all to do with those parts, and everything to do with how well the final product suits their needs.

Now, Debian and Red Hat may not be competitors in the strictest sense, but to an end-user, there is no need to make that kind of distinction.

Re:To put it short

[the_truk_stop]

Ah, good, a fellow Gentoo ricer.

Re:To put it short

[nsasch]

s/distribution/operating system/

Re:To put it short

[Eternally optimistic]

Very true. A good administrator will be able to pick one of a number of good distros.

Often, non-technical issues are more important,
such as management's personal preferences, political persuasion, cultural and/or racial and/or religious prejudices, and pick a distro that is politically correct for those circumstances.

Product marketing for laundry detergent works like that, why not operating systems?

Re:To put it short

[orin]

The Windows crowd, on the other hand, simply don't have enough technical knowledge to blather about and so Windows wins out. PHBs don't like to be confused.

It would be silly to assume that all Windows administrators aren't technically knowledgable, just like it would be silly to assume that all Linux administrators are.

Re:To put it short

[rizzo420]

there are updates to older versions of windows. they all just work out of the box. now i'm sure most slashdotters will come and say windows sucks, linux rules, but the fact of the matter is, if you want an easy to use system out of the box, windows is the answer hands down (with the only exception being apple).

Re:To put it short

[ScuzzMonkey]

Strictly tongue in cheek; although, as a companion observation, I would be willing to say that most people who are TRULY technically knowledgeable are not easily categorized as either Linux or Windows people... they understand the place and utility of both and are capable of managing either competently.

Re:To put it short

[Karora]

Of course corporate environments have to essentially build their own Windows distribution for a consistent desktop across the enterprise.

The tools to do this for Linux distributions aren't as immature as you think. I have designed a custom Linux installation for a smaller corporate desktop release (~140 desktops) and I doubt if it was really much more work than a Windows rollout would have been.

Once we had the release out there though I think that the tools for managing upgrades and provisioning case-by-case variations within that environment were a lot easier.

Of course that could just be a reflection of my greater experience with linux, or perhaps that's the way an unbiased observer would see it too.

If the difference is arguable though it probably really does come down to personal preferences.

Re:To put it short

[VdG]

A choice of vendors could actually be a positive for Linux. My employer is always keen to get competitive quotes for any large purchase. Going with Windows makes that impossible. Choosing Linux means that we can actually look at two or more options, which would tend to keep the bean counters happy.

Flamebait -1

[Emugamer]

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

Re:Flamebait -1

[bonch]

What about BSD?

Re:Flamebait -1

[losinggeneration]

They asked about Linux, not BSD's. For what the person asked I'd guess either FreeBSD or NetBSD (I don't know much about DragonflyBSD.) Though fbsd and nbsd both have similar features to what is being asked for, not all software works perfect with the BSD's. Their Linux emulation layer isn't bad, but from what I've seen it's not perfect. The one thing they don't have would probably be the "high-level support options." On a side note, I like NetBSD and Slackware.

SuSE

[zogulus]

SuSE, SuSE, SuSE...

Simple & Easy - more than you could ask...

Re:SuSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep preaching, Faithful!

SuSE

- great administrative tools to support large networks

- rolling out new servers / workstation with auto-yast with pre-installed configuration/software

- YaST - Best configuration tool under the sun for Linux.

- 10+ years experience + now Novell.

Re:SuSE

[gandy909]

"+ Novell"? I actually count that as a strike AGAINST Suse.
No .iso's to download? Another strike. Ya, I'm a free beer kinda guy.

Don't get me wrong, I got a hold of a set of Suse91 Pro CD's and I really did like it. Unfortunately, I think that will come to have been their best version...

Re:SuSE

[MrResistor]

Agreed. SuSE has really done a fantastic job of keeping things easy for the admin, plus they're now part of Novell, which should help give the PHBs the Warm Fuzzies you're looking for.

That said, Linux is Linux. Use what you know, as long as it's not totally inappropriate for the task (like running a server on tomsrtbt), and stict to good Admin practices, and the background image of the login screen is largely irrelevant.

Re:SuSE

[tzanger]

No .iso's to download? Another strike. Ya, I'm a free beer kinda guy.

Acutally I downloaded the SuSE 9.2 pro .iso the other day and installed it. I'm a slackware user myself, but SuSE is *nice*.

Re:SuSE

[fitten]

Yup, I like SuSE as well. I use it on both x86 and AMD64 machines.

Re:SuSE

[kikta]

I had the same concern as you. But, I had already been so impressed with 9.1 that I had promised myself that I was going to get 9.2 no matter what (if for no other reason than to see how badly Novell fucked it up).

I have been nothing short of amazed. SuSE 9.2 fixed almost all of my gripes with 9.1 and added lots of new goodies. I highly recommend it.

Re:SuSE

[ahillen]

No .iso's to download? Another strike. Ya, I'm a free beer kinda guy.

So I guess that this is news for you...

Re:SuSE

[gandy909]

From that link,

unknown SUSE-Linux-9.2-FTP-DVD.iso 2147 Mbytes Fri 22/Oct/2004 14:33 file

its a 2.1g dvd iso. That seems a tad light. 9.1 was 5 full cds, so I would think that the iso ought to be at least 3.2g, assuming they didn't add anything at all in the new version.

Also, from the Novell press release,
snip-
...This free offering will enable Linux users to trial the latest open source desktop, server and application functionality...
-snip
Trial? What's that mean?

I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I've been wrong before, and I'll be wrong again, but it just doesn't 'feel' right to me, in the way getting a Debian or Fedora set of iso's does...

Survey says

[dzo]

Gentoo All the way. nuff said

doesnt exist

[Anonymous Coward]

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*

Re:doesnt exist

[vettemph]

I work for a $20B Corporation that has 40 Suse servers and keeps adding more. Just tell the boss it's "Novell". Your not exactly lying. How the hell would a PHB ever know the difference. All "Command Prompts" look the same, right? :)

Just replace /root/.icewm/toolbar/linux.png
with /root/.icewm/toolbar/red-N.png

all done. :)

Management

[wombatmobile]

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.

Re:Management

[winkydink]

Tell your boss to shave his butt. :)

Re:Management

[lithandie]

I don't know. My management just feels fuzzy.

And why exactly are you feeling your management? hmmm?

Re:First troll post!

[delire]

i'm sure compiling X.org for 4 days would impress the manager..

Personally...

[B00yah]

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.

Re:Personally...

[opkool]

Yes, Mandrake is pretty good:
* Mandrake is Linux, as it is as stable as all other Linux distros
* includes recent versions of software
* easy administration: point-and-click interfaces (with text versions using ncurses) plus the classic ssh + vi + /etc
* company commited to GPL Mandrake golden rules
* LSB-compliant (Linux Standard Base)
* The company is making money (the company will be here for a long time)
* 2 main versions
- regular version (including gratis download edition)
- corporate edition (including support 24x7 and all that jazz)
And, oh, yeah, Mandrake has a native apt-get like tool called urpmi, with both GUI and text interfaces.
Peace

Re:Personally...

[fire-eyes]

"RPM" says it all: Shit.

Re:Personally...

[codemachine]

Though others have given their reasons for Mandrake, I'll chime in anyhow. There are two big reasons why I'd standardize on Mandrake Linux across an entire operation:

Package Management and configuration:

- urpmi is a great package management tool, with a good GUI available, but also a very powerful command line version (which is what I use)
- updates available for at least 18 months, longer for the Enterprise Server
- due to using RPM, 3rd party packages are easier to find (although urpmi contains most everything you'd need, reducing the depedancy on 3rd party packages)
- most of their GUI utilities also work on the command line, due to their use of a perl library that can render to GTK or console

Flexibility:

Mandrake's main download edition, as well as the PowerPacks, can be configured on a wide array of hardware and for a wide range of uses. If you want it as a Desktop, specific-use Workstation, or a Server, you can do it. If you want something more specialized, you have these options:
- MandrakeMove: LiveCD Desktop oriented version of Mandrake
- Discovery: beginner Desktop oriented version
- Enterprise Server: similar to RHEL
- Multi-Network Firewall: firewall, VPN, router, etc
- PowerPack: the works, including commercial packages like Java, and some server GUI wizards if you want that convenience
- Download Edition: only OSS software, free to download and use
- Clustering: I think this is obvious
- versions for i586 and AMD64 for many of the above (PPC versions are sometimes available for the download edition)

These different options give you great flexibility. Here we have a site license, so I put PowerPack on everything from laptops to servers, and have the Clustering edition for the cluster. People who wish to use the same software at home as they do at work can either go with the free download edition, or the fairly cheap and more newbie friendly Discovery or MandrakeMove editions. If you don't have a site license, it is quite possible to put the Download edition on any machines that do not require the commercial software or huge amounts of support. A Club membership an be bought to deal with some support issues if you are only deploying the download edition. A site license will often include a certain number of club memberships, so if you had a few home users running it, they could get some support as well.

They are quite good for support if you ever need it, since they aren't so big a company that they'd ignore their smaller customers (and are small enough that they really pay attention to the big site licenses). But they are also large enough to be profitable as a company, and to have fairly wide usage and support throughout the community.

Everyone thinks of Mandrake as a desktop distro, but it does just as well on the server as Red Hat or Suse in my opinion. Other distros may offer better pure desktop systems (Lindows and Xandros perhaps?), and Debian or the BSDs may be better for some server usage, but I can't think of any Linux or BSD that does many tasks as well as Mandrake does. This is what makes Mandrake so ideal for company/department wide standardization.

They also provide a fair bit more for the power user than most people realize. The easy GUI stuff is there, but there is a lot underneath it for those who don't like point and click. The assumption that you have to graduate to something else less newbie oriented is quite false.

Re:Personally...

[fastduke]

They also provide a fair bit more for the power user than most people realize. The easy GUI stuff is there, but there is a lot underneath it for those who don't like point and click. The assumption that you have to graduate to something else less newbie oriented is quite false.

LOL

I use Mandrake most... Still good old gentoo,fedora,suse, debian... users will find me and I fix there broke box. "My var partition is Full!" um logrotate goof.

Re:Personally...

[AutoTheme]

Ummm... I love Mandrake and use it at work and at home. But "* The company is making money (the company will be here for a long time)". Didn't they just nearly escape bunkruptcy? Something happened. IT was bad. They just made it out alive. -Shawn

Re:Personally...

[opkool]

In year 1999 MandrakeSoft was profitable and making money. Then, some investors (read: banks) decided that Mandrake needed a new set of bosses. So they hired a "team" of guys who were "experts" in "high tech business". That team started burning cash like crazy, signed pre-dot-bomb contracts with dobious companies, decided taht Linux was not the business direction (and tried to go to the e-learning route) and over-sized the number of MandrakeSoft workers.

In a few time, things were going very bad (loosing money, very expensive contracts, e-learning was a flop... and they were sacked by the original Mandrake founders.

They asked "bankrupcy protection" (which is different from "bankrupcy") and in a little over a year, they turned down the company, putting it back into the Linux business, firing all those "Experts" and unnecesary personnel, terminated those expensive contracts... and MandrakeSoft went back to normal, that is, Linux and making money.

MandrakeSoft exited "bankrupcy protection" in less time than expected (only 14 months, in the middle of a bad economical cycle) and went straight into positive cashflow. Then, MandrakeSoft started to be publicily traded. And all is good.

See the figures yourself.

So you see, your opinion was not complete nor well informed. And Mandrake, as it did when it started, can generate money no problem.

Peace

FreeBSD

[Safrax]

FreeBSD is scalable, dependable, and very high performance. It's also easy to maintain since people didn't make the distribution without a plan.

Re:FreeBSD

[Predius]

Nah, he wants a OS that runs linux binaries, FreeBSD does, and in some instances FASTER than on a native Linux kernel.

Get the rock solid base of FreeBSD 4.x, and the whole crazy range of linux binaries, how could not like that option?

Re:FreeBSD

[kosmosik]

mhhm OpenBSD?

nope just flaming. :P

Re:FreeBSD

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

My webhosting company runs FreeBSD and brags about it and we're moving to a Linux hosting company. Never seen such incompetence.

Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

There are naked people!!!11

Slackware!

[kaltree]

Long live slackware!!!

Re:Slackware!

[eSoul]

w00t!

Re:Slackware!

[w1r3sp33d]

Hail to the king baby.

Re:Slackware!

[Anthem1937]

-Stability
-Security
-Management feeling warm and fuzzy

I only got to pick two, so I Slacked 'em. Managerial cuddly-ness will just have to wait!

Re:Slackware!

[MrCobaltBlue]

w00t! I use slackware and I love it. Have a slackware firewall and web server. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy and I get cuddles from the management. I like Red Hat as well but the hardest question they ask you is what language you speak.

Re:Slackware!

[Rooktoven]

and the best of all...Simplicity!

I never have to worry about RPMS or any crap like that with Slack. Either pat or th eLinuxPackages guys usually have what I need, and if I need to compile it's not going to Bork anything else up.

Long Live the King.

(and if you use it, throw Pat a subscription or cough up for a CD, mm kay?)

Re:Slackware!

[Vulture101]

tried almost all other distros but in the end its always slack that stays

Re:Slackware!

[tzanger]

tried almost all other distros but in the end its always slack that stays

Amen. Amen, amen, amen!

I too have tried practically every other distro out there and even a few BSDs but I always come back to Slack. It's strange, but all the other's package managers ever seem to do is piss me off by thinking they know best, or by installing a bazillion things that I don't need because the dumbass maintainer doesn't have a -full and -lite version of a package. Same with the "helpful" configuration interfaces... gimme Slack with a SysV init (yeah I am balking the trend there a little but it's *so* much nicer than editing a script whenever I want to alter the order or install new software) and one of the new package updaters like Swaret or slapt-get and I'm quite happy.

Speaking of swaret -- everyone in freenode's #slackware says it'll eat my children eventually -- odd, but it seems to just work for me... is this just old prejudices or what?

Re:Slackware!

[essreenim]

amen brother.

Re:Slackware!

[vandrad]

Don't laugh ! - my organisation ported 90 users to this, against my will, and leading to my eventual resignation...

...and you would've preferred they used?

Define professional

[pronobozo]

If you are a professional admin, shouldn't you already know what's best?

Re:Define professional

[b17bmbr]

hey, i paid good money for my mcse cert., damnit. i'm a professional. it says so right here on this piece of paper. i was recommended to ask slashdot due to its reputation of honest and informed discourse.

Re:Define professional

[isorox]

All professional means if you get paid for doing what amatuers do for free.

Obvious

[pjf(at)gna.org]

> which Linux delivers the best balance of
> stability, high-level support options, security,
> rapid updates, and ease of administration

2.4

Re:Obvious

[sigaar]

Rapid updates? To 2.4? Yeah, and they update 2.2 even more often...

this is easy

[Triumph The Insult C]

http://www.openbsd.org

Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[PornMaster]

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.

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[k.ellsworth]

that's right, even i like many linux distros, redhat and SuSE are the only supported by HP for their proliant servers, if we are talking serious about being the sysadmin of a whole datacenter redhat Or SuSE.

besides, the proliants without the software agents makes a LOT of noise

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[snookerdoodle]

Just a "me, too" agreement here on redhat or suse...

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[SuperQ]

Yep.. I love Ubuntu (go dieman) and Debian for all of my home stuff.. but I have to say.. for all of our servers and workstations, doing just about every task we need from desktop PC's, to HPC clusters, to single machines with 16+ processors, Redhat wins hands down as the mmost stable, easy to make work, and supported by all the stupid commercial software vendors OS we have. With systems like IRIX falling by the way-side, Redhat is my fav for "on the job" stuff.

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[plj]

"Nobody got fired for buying IBM"

Oh, but you could still use that for your advantage. I bet the folks at IBM would love to sell you that Novell or RH setup -- naturally along with their own services & support contract -- and voilà, what was bought was from IBM, you got Linux, and nobody got fired. Assuming that that old rule still applies, of course...

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[i2878]

And if you've already made a hardware vendor commitment such as Dell - they are now selling boxes with your choice of SuSE or RedHat.

...just another "me too too"...uh, well, nevermind...

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[Darth_Burrito]

We use Red Hat and I like it quite a bit. However, if we didn't get an academic service agreement ($50/yr), it would be bloody murder.

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[techguy911]

People on this thread have been hammering Redhat and Suse like these companies own Linux. Yes, Debian and Gentoo aren't huge companes with hundreds of programmers sitting at the edge of their seats ready to help you and instantly fix security bugs, but neither are the big guys. Redhat and Suse/Novell are Linux "Packagers". They put together a bunch of open source software written by everyone from paid full time programmers to 15 years olds in their basement. -- Whether you use Debian or Redhat, you are still depending on the open source community to fix problems, and the released patches will be filtered to you no matter what distro you use. Yes, maybe with RH or NV, you have someone you can call and scream at and get promises that it will be fixed, but the ACTUAL fix will get to you about as fast as if you were using a community distro. -- The only other argument for using a big commercial distro is basic installation/configuration support. People will have different opinions on that, but I just want to point out that you get no such support with Microsoft products. Just try calling MSFT after you tried installing Oracle and they'll kick you back to Oracle support. Noone is going to hold your hand for configuration and setup of your systems.

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[Mojo Trolljo]

Thank-you. An insightful post in a sea of regular slashdot stupidity.

Red Hat and Suse (and I mean the non-cheap Enterprise Editions) are your only option if you want to run anything halfway useful: BEA, Oracle, DB2, Websphere, SAP, etc.

Your database server corrupted your data? Oh, you running it on Slackware? Piss off! Call us back when you reproduce the problem on SLES 9.

Seriously, like 95% of the people on here must be running "servers" out of their basement or something...

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[FatherOfONe]

I agree to a point. However, if you are running RedHat 3.x on supported hardware and the only "major" software you are running on it is Oracle DB, they will fully support both the DB and the server. I have never had them send my back to RedHat for a question or a new/old RPM. Oracle provides it. In this example open source kinda rocks.

Granted you may be talking to someone in India who can't speak english to save his/her life, but they will support you.

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. Probably Red Hat or SUSE (I prefer SUSE for best CYA and least pain). List your server hardware vendors (like HP, IBM, etc) and your app software vendors (like Oracle, BEA, etc).

Uncover which distro they will all support/certify. That's the one - so when there's a problem and you've got them all in the room together, you've got them with a prior commitment (real SLA's with $$$ attached) to make it work.

This, of course, has almost nothing to do with the Linux distro, but what the hardware and application vendors are willing to commit to. This could reflect their technical investement or just whatever the current partnership status (marketing $$$) is between them all. Doesn't matter.

(Just for grins, what they publically support may not even be what they use to develop with internally - usually Debian).

Then you can run whatever suits your taste on the desktop and admin from there with whatever you want.

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[Sevn]

Sure. Until I want to run PowerPath software from EMC. Oh? Not supported by Gentoo or Debian? Ok, how about Polyserve Matrix? Oh? Not supported by Gentoo or Debian? Ok, how about Plesk. Oh? Not supported by Gentoo or Debian?

See where this is leading? Sometimes it's a hell of a lot cheaper to just buy a solution instead of developing one in house. For those situations, you want RHEL, or SuSe. So sorry. Thank you for playing.

Re:Well, SuSE or RedHat, obviously.

[scheme]

People on this thread have been hammering Redhat and Suse like these companies own Linux. Yes, Debian and Gentoo aren't huge companes with hundreds of programmers sitting at the edge of their seats ready to help you and instantly fix security bugs, but neither are the big guys. Redhat and Suse/Novell are Linux "Packagers". They put together a bunch of open source software written by everyone from paid full time programmers to 15 years olds in their basement.

That might have been true a few years back but it's no longer true. Redhat employs Alan Cox, Ulrich Drepper (glibc), Tom Lane (postgresql) and quite a few other glibc, kernel, gcc, and application developers to write code. They help get the code ready and apply/develop any patches necessary to get software stable and bug free. Suse/Novell employs similar big names (Miguel de Icaza, etc.) to help in developing and fixing their releases.

With Suse or Redhat if you have a problem after installing Oracle, I'm sure they will work with you and Oracle to get the problem fixed. And less that may involve the developers on staff at Redhat or Suse to work on it and come up with fixes.

Let's just use BSD

[NaijaGuy]

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?

Re:Let's just use BSD

[devphaeton]

There's DebianBSD for that ;)

Otherwise, for linux it's Debian.

For BSD it's Free and Net!

Re:Let's just use BSD

[0racle]

There is already a BSD like that. Its called FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD or DragonflyBSD.

Re:Let's just use BSD

[NaijaGuy]

Short and sweet: with so many distributions of BSD to choose from, and so many of them good to excellent, which BSD 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 BSDs- - the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?

Re:Let's just use BSD

[0racle]

Personally, and obiously this whole ask slashdot is personal experiences, when I first tried a BSD I tried Open and Free on different machines at the same time, and I still run both, along side XP, 2000, ArchLinux, Slackware and Debian and eventually Solaris. For firewalls I would never choose anything other then OpenBSD (Carp is very interesting), but if I were to choose one to standardize everything on, it would be FreeBSD since I feel it is the more balenced of the ones I have tried.

Re:Let's just use BSD

[quantum bit]

Definitely FreeBSD. It has the largest user base, the most professional support options, the most ported software, and (IMO) is the easiest to administer.

OpenBSD may be crazy about security audits but their user base is fairly small and they tend to concentrate on a few niche areas (firewalls, routers, DNS server, etc). Plus FreeBSD has a tendency to port over the good stuff from Open after a while anyway.

NetBSD is really well written and is starting to rival Free in the benchmarks. However, where it tends to lack is in the ease-of-administration area. FreeBSD has lots of really slick scripts and tools that make life easier (e.g. portupgrade).

There's a lot of really cool development going on in Dragonfly right now, but at its heart it's still an experiment. Definitely worth a look if you're into programming but I wouldn't run a production server on it.

Best Distro

[Jheaden]

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.

Re:Debian of course

[gcain]

You mean there are *other* distros?
I thought that was just an myth...

Mandrake Of Course :-)

[horsebutt]

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.

Depends on the higher-ups.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Is there really a best?

[tu_holmes]

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.

SuSe all the way baby

[BristolCream]

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.

In my experience...

[DeckardJK]

"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.

Hahah, replies should be funny

[chris09876]

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.

Re:Debian of course

[jgaynor]

I was about to say the same thing - although AFAIK we're missing one of the points hes looking for:

stability - Check
security - Check
rapid updates - Check
ease of administration - Check
high-level support options - No check

I don't consider google and usenet high level support options. Im sure someone knows of a commercial outfit that will do pay-for-play deb support - so please, chime in . . .

Otherwise go debian!

Not just for slackers

[uberjoe]

Slackware with slapt-get or swaret for dependency checking, which slackware's pkgtool does not do.

Re:Not just for slackers

[daijo78]

I use a Slackware base + darwinports. Pkgsrc would work to I guess but since I use Mac OS X as well it feels nice to get my apps from one source. Only just beginning to explore this but it feels good so far.

Please, flame away

[Raunch]

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.

Re:Please, flame away

[Stevyn]

I like portage.
apt-get sucks and so does your mom. ;)

Re:Please, flame away

[Xerp]

My mom sucks better than your mom.

Obvious

[cavemanf16]

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?

Try A BSD

[devphaeton]

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.

Mod Topic -1 Flamebait

[IcEMaN252]

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.

Re:Mod Topic -1 Flamebait

[KiloByte]

And especially, don't forget that both vi and Emacs suck. Use jstar.

Re:Mod Topic -1 Flamebait

[legirons]

"Isn't this more of a religious question than a technical one?"

Surely more of an ideological question than a religious one?

But some people will still try to claim non-Debian systems as the answer.

Re:Mod Topic -1 Flamebait

[mbrewthx]

Maybe religious.... Linux : we are all Gods OS/x : Steve Jobs is God Win: Didn't Gates buyout God and stop calling him Shirley!!!!!!

Re:Mod Topic -1 Flamebait

[SamSim]

Where can I get this Distro T? It sounds pretty good. Heaven knows I use x and z all the time.

Re:Mod Topic -1 Flamebait

[starrsoft]

Yeah, you're the tenth person to say that. The value in this thread is not in finding "_one_ answer." Matter of fact, finding "_one_ answer" isn't possible.

The value in this thread is a multitude of people who have done "a, b, and c" and require "d, e, and f" and would suggest "Linux Distro G" to me because I have those same requirements. If I don't require "d, e, and f", I will move on to the guy who needed "u, v, and w" and suggested "Linux Distro T." You have a point; this thread's value is not in finding "_one_ answer", but this is very valuable.

Re:Mod Topic -1 Flamebait

[Kadmos]

HA! You can't fool me. Lets examine your post:

By saying "Linux Distro G is best for me" you are trying to imply in people's minds that "G"entoo is the best, all the while claiming that each distro has it's own merits.

You later go on to say thet "There is no _one_ answer". This may seem straight forward, but once again you are implating in our subconcious by underlining the word "one". In combination with your previous subversive statements you are really saying :

*Gentoo* is *the* *one*.

Your very tricky but you won't get away with it that easy!

Purely subjective

[Codename_V]

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.

Mod this guy up.

[nlinecomputers]

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.

Re:Mod this guy up.

[Nicholas Evans]

And you now also know one person who almost blew his brains out over SuSE. No operating system should /ever/ be so...friendly. *shiver*

Re:Mod this guy up.

[alw53]

I tried to install a Suse system and it wanted to reformat the entire drive. I couldn't get it to install on my existing partitions. Tried Gentoo and it compiled for 3 days (literally) and then failed.
Redhat's init.d turns the sky overhead black with crisscrossing symlinks.

I just love Slackware -- it's so straightforward and unpretentious. Doesn't hide the boot or installation processes behind GUI's.

No Silver bullet

[quantus]

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.

Management Likes Recognizabe Names

[buffalo1111]

Like RedHat Enterprise Linux, plus it just plain works.

Slack

[Vinson Massif]

All others pale before this mighty distro.

Yeesh, what a question. Guaranteed page refreshes and add views.

Re:Slack

[geminidomino]

Indeed. If I could not, for whatever reason, use FreeBSD for my servers, it would take me approximately a picosecond (would you prefer a visecond?) to decide on its cousin, Slack.

Slack is easily the most BSD-like, so I kinda find it funny when people say "Well, if you were asking about *NIX, I'd recommend FreeBSD, but since your not, how about Gentoo/Debian/SuSE, etc..."

If you had said UNIX

[FullMetalAlchemist]

If you had said UNIX I would have answeared FreeBSD or NetBSD. However, you asked for Linux so I guess I have to say:

Debian Linux, or maybe Debian BSD, just to be rude :P

Re:If you had said UNIX

[sigaar]

from the Debian/BSD page:

"(last updated 6th October 2002)"

real quick on updates, heh?

Re:If you had said UNIX

[sigaar]

"What are you smoking? Give me some, please."

Maybe you want to read the web page. Or is your short term memory so buggered from all the ganja, you won't remember anyway?

One vote for SuSE...

[badasscat]

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.

Re:One vote for SuSE...

[badasscat]

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.

Argh...this kinda came out wrong... the reasons I gave up on other distros were not specifically due to the updates (Red Hat has a nice auto-update utility as well) but for a variety of reasons. SuSE is, IMO, the most polished distro I have used overall, and that includes the very nice YAST2. I have just not had any real problems with it, whereas I've had various bits of hardware that could never be properly configured under Mandrake or RH/Fedora, despite the fact that they were supposed to work out of the box. (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.)

Re:One vote for SuSE...

[glsunder]

Yast also works just fine without requiring gui, which is a big plus to many of us.

Re:One vote for SuSE...

[blackjackshellac]

Funny. Yast is the reason I dispise using SuSE. That and the annoying SuSE capitalisation.

Re:One vote for SuSE...

[Nailer]

(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.)

That's a very unusual problem. What happened when you tried? Where did you go for help?

Re:One vote for SuSE...

[zarko]

Can it be an issue with different filesystems, or some special slant on SCSI? Original posting said "bits of hardware that could never be properly configured" which sounds to me like there was something not considered as commonly used by distro makers.

IBM, Red Hat or Novell (SUSE)

[LegendOfLink]

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."

Good admins don't need a specific distro...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good admins don't need a specific distro...

[FullMetalAlchemist]

True, but a good administrator makes his work as easy as possible; to be able to focus on what is important for the organisation.
In most cases this happens to be either (any form of) planning or enforcing security.

God-like admins leaves the wastelands of admins and goes on to green pastures.

Re:Good admins don't need a specific distro...

[Rytsarsky]

This is partly true... but after running SuSE for some time. It got to the point that yast didn't do everything I needed it to do. So, I had to go behind its back, making it not only unneeded, but also troublesome. I've decided that I want (learn) to do things myself... so after I build my new machine, I'm gonna try out gentoo.

Disclaimer: I am in no way calling myself a system administrator. I'm a programmer, but enjoy learning what I can about system administration.

Re:Good admins don't need a specific distro...

[zarko]

OK, this actually calls for a cheatsheet/FAQ on getting "too nice" thingies out of your way in say 3 most market-established "branding" distros (RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake) and maybe repacking some packages. Say we call it de-branding :-) Why? On one side it is very true that Linux is linux and that "branding" sugar icing can start geting in the way. On the other side, one also goes with a bran in since he reeeealy doesn't have the time or reason to go picking individual parts and then maintaining it. On the third side, one can easily be faced with the need to run/administer at least 2 different distros, in which case going to common and universal fast, becomes very noble cause.

White Box, a clone of RHE3

[Jerry]

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.

Re:White Box, a clone of RHE3

[easter1916]

Running with Linux for over 7 years!

You must be fucking knackered man. At least put down the CDs, at best just stand still for a while.

I say Ubuntu

[xutopia]

that's what I use and I love it as both server and desktop.

Re:I say Ubuntu

[Gherald]

Ubuntu is awesome for desktops but I would not touch a server with it. That is what Debian stable is for...

Re:I say Ubuntu

[WaxParadigm]

Ubuntu actually makes a decent server, provided you catch it before it installs all the GNOME desktop/Xfree86 stuff.

Is it that hard to type "custom" at the boot prompt given by the installation CD?

Re:I say Ubuntu

[oconnorcjo]

[Ubuntu] that's what I use and I love it as both server and desktop.

This statement is very immature and I am very surprised it got modded up. The parade of users mentioning thier favorite distro is just silly! It is not enough that a distro be cool/fun/stable/leading edge/fast/simple. The most important thing is for it to be supported by alot of OTHER people and companies.

I know nothing about Ubuntu and so it might be "the greatest thing since sliced bread" BUT IT SHOULD NOT BE ON A CORPORATE SERVER.

The reasons are:
1. Few people know it and even fewer who will give you a service/support contract based on it.
2. No outside vendors support it such as IBM, Oracle, etc.
3. Very little documentation. You can go into any bookstore and pick up a book on SUSE or RedHat.

It is great to use a cool distribution as a personal server or desktop but when in a corporate environment, don't f*ck around. Get a distribution that is known by alot of professionals and supported by alot of other vendors. That way one doesn't screw up a companies datacenter when they leave.

RedHat and SuSe have a large network of professionals and vendors supporting thier distributions which will assure a company can find support and services when the need arises. When upper managment says they want to use a product of a linux supported vendor (Oracle/IBM/Borland/etc..) or want to outsource some development or are adding a new administrator, does one want to have to justify using "favorite community supported" distribution (this includes Ubuntu/ Gentoo/ Mandrake/ Linspire/ Knopix/ AnyDickAndHarry and even Debian).

RedHat or SuSe may not be the best but in a corporate environment, it is very desirable to use a distribution with alot of resources (contractors/vendors/books/people) that a company can buy/rely on to get things done.

Hardware

[AngryElmo]

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).

Re:Hardware

[clard11]

I think this is a very good point. How about Linux on an IBM zSeries box ? This would get plus points from management for scalability, managability and decent service, all on reliable hardware. I think there are three distros that are packaged for the "Iron Penguin" : Suse, Redhat or Turbolinux.

SLACKWARE

[evilone]

Slackware is GOD

Re:SLACKWARE

[Rooktoven]

well maybe not god, but pretty cool. Perhaps you meant DOBBS?

Re:Slackware

[Royster]

Too bad the moderators are promoting on the basis of their own desktop preferences and not ease of admin for professional installations.

Slackware has to get my vote.

Why bother asking here?

[ian rogers]

So far, I've seen 3 comments or so backing up why someone suggested a certain distro.

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 /. 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.

Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Gherald]

> 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.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[lysander]

I, a Debian user, tried Gentoo on two machines. Here were the problems I found:

• Gentoo's idea of security updates is not yet fully developed. There should be a logical step between "this is a security problem" and "ooh, here is a new version". glsa-check needs to work in concert with portage, rather than as an afterthought. This will get better.
• Gentoo's build process doesn't include sensible FEATURES flags by default. In particular, collision-protect, maketest, sandbox, userpriv, and usersandbox really need to be on. I don't want to be building as root. I sure as hell want software to run its own tests to make sure it works (especially if I were trying crazy optimization flags, which I wasn't). And collision-protect, to make sure that packages weren't overwriting other packages' files, seems like a bright idea as well -- except that it doesn't work. I have to turn it off every other week to 'emerge world' for updates. It needs to work, and it needs to be on by default.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Gherald]

- "Rolling upgrades" is how Gentoo handles "this is a security problem". This suits my needs.

If it doesn't suit yours, don't use Gentoo, because I highly doubt this is going to change anytime soon. There is no sense competing directly with Debian stable. Gentoo does not security patch old versions, it's as simple as that.

- The documentation should be in make.conf.example, but none of that stuff should be on by default. Enable it if you need it.

Collision-protect is not a crucial feature, but I agree that it would be nice if it worked, and it probably will work soon.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[mwhahaha]

While I concur that Gentoo and Debian are both great distros (i've managed to get a few gentoo boxes in at work), the problem comes from the lack of enterprise support for things such as Oracle and EMC. Oracle only runs on RedHat and maybe SuSE, and EMC software is only supported on RedHat and SuSE. While I have managed to get a gentoo box connected to an EMC, it doesn't have their PowerPath software for failover, etc. That and it took me a week to get the stuff working properly. If Oracle and EMC supported gentoo, i'd set our redhat licenses ablaze. Unfortunately the only thing gentoo/debian can do is web/smtp/dns which is fine if you run mysql/postgres as your choice of database, but these days in an enterprise environment you are stuck with at least one RedHat/SuSE box.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[testing124]

Surely Gentoo delivers the best balance of the above.... Now, if stability and security are paramount I would go with Debian stable... Here here! Finally someone who understands which distro is right for a given job.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Matt Perry]

Oracle only runs on RedHat and maybe SuSE

Oracle runs great on Debian. I have two Oracle 9 production boxes running Debian Sarge and a third machine with Debian and Oracle 10 for some development and testing work. In addition to that I have lots of Debian (and RedHat) boxes that have the Oracle client software installed. We use Oracle for some internal company web sites and several bioinformatics databases because it's the "approved company standard" so we're not dealing with large scale installation stuff like clusters. That being said everything that we use it for works great including Intermedia which in the past has always been problematic, no matter what platform Oracle is on.

There's a lot of resources online for installing Oracle on Debian and the notes on Oracle for Redhat are useful for Debian admins too.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[lysander]

Collision-protect is not a crucial feature, but I agree that it would be nice if it worked, and it probably will work soon.

I think it's pretty important. If, without collision-protect, I emerge package A and then unmerge package B, how do I know it didn't take some of A's files with it? Didn't I just break A and not even know it? How would I even begin to figure it out or fix it other than by emerging A again? (An example.)

It's unclear what the resolution is as a maintainer of a machine. Should I just let the new package clobber files and hope for the best? I agree that someday it'll work properly, but right now it doesn't give me a happy feeling... which is why the only gentoo install I kept is on a toy machine rather than something important.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Chandon Seldon]

Hint: If Oracle isn't supported, there's no reason to be using it.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Matt Perry]

Define "supported." Debian supports Oracle so I'm using it.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[scheme]

Define "supported." Debian supports Oracle so I'm using it.

The poster probably means supported as in being able to call up Oracle and have them send down an engineer to personally help fix the problem when your Oracle db starts eating data/acting weird. Hell, the poster probably would even settle for being able to call up Oracle and getting them to help solve a problem without having them saying that you need to reproduce the problem under RHEL or SuSe before they'll look at the problem.

Right now if you call up Oracle and try to get them to help fix your problem based on your support contract they'll probably tell you to install it on RHEL or Suse and come back if the problem is still there.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Gherald]

Then you use Debian stable. It's quite simple really. Not everyone is a part of what you call a 'real production environment'.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Rich0]

If, without collision-protect, I emerge package A and then unmerge package B, how do I know it didn't take some of A's files with it?

That shouldn't be possible. When unmerging B it should notice that the mtime on a package A file is different, and as a result it shouldn't delete it.

In fact, when you upgrade a package it installs the new version before removing the old version. Since 99% of the files are going to overlap, nobody would have a working system if this wasn't the case. By looking at mtimes, when the old version is cleaned any files that were overwritten by the new version are left intact.

Don't get me wrong - portage features should just work, and it is important that at least those doing QA not just stick to the run-as-root flags.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Chandon Seldon]

I don't know about you, but if I'm spending 10's of thousands of dollars for a software licence, I'll go through the extra 6 or 8 hours of obnoxiousness to get RHEL or SUSE up and working if that's what's officially supported.

I prefer Debian. Significantly. But for $30,000+, milking every penny out of Oracle's tech support is more important than my distro preference.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[Matt Perry]

A good point. However, if you are paying $30,000 for an Oracle license you need to renegotiate your contract. That's far too much for a single instance.

In any case, I work for a pharmaceutical company of about 60,000 people. We have a global contract for Oracle that includes support so deploying another Oracle box is of little cost to us overall. The place where we are using Oracle on Debian are places where we'd be unlikely to use Oracle's support. In fact, these are places where PostgreSQL, or even MySQL, would probably be sufficient. However, Oracle is the company mandated database standard and that's what we have to use. There isn't any such standard for Unix systems so we use Debian where it makes sense. It also helps that our DBA is top-notch having administrated Oracle on both Unix and Windows for many years.

Having said that, most of the Oracle instances throughout the company do run on Oracle approved OS's such as AIX or Windows. Those usually have a much more complex setup such as failover or clustering. They also house more mission critical databases.

In any case, the point of my original post was to refute the parent poster's comment that Oracle doesn't run on Debian. It does, and it runs well.

Re:Gentoo and Debian the only serious contenders

[mwhahaha]

I didn't mean that you couldn't get it running. as I said i managed to get some things running. The problem is when you have problems, you're SOL. They aren't going to help you fix your problems. I've had this issue with EMC where they wouldn't help me because I was running an emulex fibre card on our Itaniums. They only supported the qlogic cards so they just said "sorry we can't help you because you're not running a supported configuration". And my issue wasn't even with the cards, it was with their software not being able to install under the Itanium architecture. When we were doing our oracle installs and setup, oracle sent people out to install the DB software and they didn't seem competent enough to install on RHEL let alone debian or gentoo. But that's just been my experiance. Sure I could get oracle9 running on gentoo, hell i've seen ebuilds for it. But companies want support from vendors, not some crazy sysadmin.

We use SuSE, but

[Tsiangkun]

I would prefer debian for administration, but it's more of a religous preference than one based on technical merits.

Corel' Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wrong question

[tonyr60]

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.

Begging for War

[mick29]

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.

Re:Wrong question

[gcain]

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.

best TCO: Debian (IMHO), best commercial: SuSE

[Anonymous Coward]

if you need the lowest TCO, a distribution that scales best from firewall, server, desktop choose Debian (stable and testing for the desktop).

Debian makes everything work with 15000 packages, or tries its best. :) So for an admin, you wont

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.

Debian

[Skuggamara]

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.

RedHat and variants for me.

[nomad63]

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.

Re:RedHat and variants for me.

[saur2004]

There is one thing I would like to see RedHat do. (They might have already done this and I just havent read anything about it. But I dont think they have) I would like them to come out with some sort of syncronization manager so that some company using say RHEL 3 could allow employees at home running say FC3, to syncronize, making sure both are using the same gcc, libc, and other libraries so that executables could be portable. Would that even be possible?

Yes its pretty trivial to recompile, but this is one thing that I think they, kind of lost when they went to thier new business model.

Re:RedHat and variants for me.

[scheme]

There is one thing I would like to see RedHat do. (They might have already done this and I just havent read anything about it. But I dont think they have) I would like them to come out with some sort of syncronization manager so that some company using say RHEL 3 could allow employees at home running say FC3, to syncronize, making sure both are using the same gcc, libc, and other libraries so that executables could be portable. Would that even be possible?

That's not going to happen. The reason to run FC3 is that is has newer versions of the kernel, glibc, g++, etc. that give you nice things like better hardware support, selinux, newer x.org etc. Your sync manager would downgrade the client machine killing the reason to use fedora core and possibly rendering it unusable (e.g. app a requires features found in kernel 2.6 but you just got downgraded to kernel 2.4). The other alternative would be to upgrade the server possibly rendering the server unstable.

If you need full binary compatibility, you need to run the same version of the same distribution or install compatibility libraries and pray for the best.

Name one.

[Cambrant]

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.

poll!

[__aazofn1209]

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.

so easy you failed.

[ciroknight]

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.

Re:so easy you failed.

[B3ryllium]

OS X is a super-BSD in the same sense that Todd from Scrubs is a Super-Todd.

"Yes! Face-Five!"

Re:so easy you failed.

[SharpFang]

Plus OBSD rules when it comes to security but sucks when it comes to efficiency. Just doesn't scale well for high loads. Sure it often is the best option, leaving all the competition far behind. Sometimes, not, though.

That's a no brainer

[Tibor the Hun]

OS X!!!

muahahaha

*ducks*

Don't want to do your own homework?

[J3zmund]

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"!

While we're on the topic...

[Raunch]

Which deity is the best?

Re:SuSE What more could you ask???

[LWATCDR]

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.

Depends where you are

[color]

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.

Wrong query.

[Spy der Mann]

Try this time with quotes.

Results 1 - 23 of 23 for "which distribution of linux should i use". (0.06 seconds).

There ya go. :)

Re:Wrong query.

[tha_mink]

It's funnier without quotes. Do some investigation and see for yourself.

(Which by the way...proves my theory. No matter what the search terms...you will ALWAYS get porn as a match)

Re:Wrong query.

[Thud457]

Google understands that everybody loves pr0n, and is just trying to help you out with your addiction.

Enterprise Linux Sys admin

[CerebralPanic]

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

Re:Enterprise Linux Sys admin

[Skuggamara]

Actually, I tend to agree with you on this. I love the flexibility of Gentoo, as it appeals to my "tweak everything" nature.

In a production, business environment, I haven't been able to find a good place for Gentoo though, due to it's long installation time (which you have to use if you want to get many of the Gentoo benefits).

My vote still goes to Debian, especially Sarge with the new installer.

It's all been downhill since...

[georgewilliamherbert]

It's all been downhill since Ygdgrasil Linux 1.0 in 1992, with the 5.25" boot floppies and all.

Mod article -5, Flamewar

[RailGunner]

Because everyone is just going to list their favorite distro.

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.

Re:Mod article -5, Flamewar

[Psychofreak]

RC hands down.

Then I think one of the generic colas, but I like ALL cola that ain't diet so it don't matter!

Phil

Red Hat Enterprise

[Skuto]

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.

Re:Red Hat Enterprise

[Skuto]

How exactly is this a troll? Idiot moderator detected.

RH or SuSE

[MrCJC]

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.

Re:RH or SuSE

[LnxAddct]

Just out of curiosity, why do you want Novell to give RH a run for their money? Both are from the same country. RedHat contributes significantly more code to the kernel and they open source all of their patents and any other technology they require. It's stated in their mission statement. Novell on the other hand just recently got into the game and will quickly leave the game if they find that its not profitable. They've been looking for their niche for nearly a decade now just moving from one thing to the next until they can make some major cash. If in 3 years they still aren't making as much as they desire, they'll move right on and drop linux. RedHat has been around for a long time and their life is linux, without it they are nothing. They've been good to the community and are the only reason that business even takes linux seriously. Why would you want to get rid of that?
Regards,
Steve

Re:RH or SuSE

[MrCJC]

Nothing against RH, I would just like to see another player get involved in the E-Class Linux market at their level. Right now, RH is the defacto-standard for most "should we move to Linux and which distro" questions. I'm hoping Novell can provide some competition, which, with luck, will better both products and services provided by the companies. Which means we all benefit. Capitalism at its finest.

Yeah, I had some questions too

[renderhead]

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.

Re:Yeah, I had some questions too

[funwithBSD]

1.) Richard Stallman.
2.) Richard Stallman.
3.) Richard Stallman.
4.) Richard Stallman.

uh

[Cryptnotic]

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).

Re:uh

[thephotoman]

Warty Live CDs won't boot on my desktop, but my installation of Warty went off without a hitch.

Re:uh

[WaxParadigm]

I think the point is to not run out of cash...that they (cannonical) will have cash flow by selling services to companies that need it.

Which Linux for Professional Admins?

[alxc]

Give Suse a look.

poll?

[Skeezix]

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.

slackware hands down

[bird603568]

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.

Making Microsoft Happy

[scisco]

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.

Re:Making Microsoft Happy

[civilizedINTENSITY]

"recursive fractal division" implies an organic growth rate and the population of an ecosphere with a multitude of minute variations which natural selection fine tunes. To destroy that diversity and invest in a monoculture is to limit the speed and even the very reach of that development. It is not as simple as linear development, true. It is also far superior in the middle and long term, due to that very diversity inherent to parallel development, which you decry.

The amazing thing is this. The community is not divided. We need people to test all the various windows managers, as well as the various programming languages (from Lisp, Perl, Python, Rudy, C++, C#, etc...). GnuStep/Cocoa will develop useful things. Mono will develop useful things. Yet the culture is not divided by the variety of fruits growing in this open valley.

The bottom line is that this isn't your grandfather's OS, and the rules have changed. If there is anything for MS to fear, it is the rate of change the new model insists upon. Multiple sets of code heading in the optimal direction for each sets' vision, cross polinating freely. Yeah, its not as simple as a managed monopoly's vision. It is organic in nature, growing in every direction where water, sunlight and soil let it take seed.

Why do you need to ask?

[shish]

Any professional admin should already know which is the best distro... (it being, of course, whichever said admin feels most comfortable with)

Re:Debian of course

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.debian.org/consultants/

CentOS (was: White Box, a clone of RHE3)

[Brainchild]

WhiteBox is obsoleted by CentOS. See this FAQ and answer.

Whichever your CEO owns stock in.

[Anonymous Coward]

If he has NOVL stock, SuSE.

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.

Re:Whichever your CEO owns stock in.

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

Merck, Glaxo, Novartis, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Ciba: Slackware!

Re:Whichever your CEO owns stock in.

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

and just for the record, yes, IAM a terrible human being.

Can a whole story be modded as...

[cnelzie]

...flamebait? I mean come on now!

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.

Re:Can a whole story be modded as...

[DarkTempes]

i mostly agree with the parent... but one thing i must add on, is if you're going to use linux for a multiple server setup in which you will have to apply and manage the OS yourself, you will want to go with a distro that is decently able to make custom livecd's with packages you want for all your servers or that can do local network installs (typically using an image on the network). then installs are just a breeze and you won't need slowish internet-download installs, and can even use binaries for those distros that tend to just compile everything to speed up the install process really fast (for example: gentoo allows such things by hand or using catalyst, but the learning curve on making such things with catalyst is high) i believe most other distros do too, as long as their package management method supports such a thing.

Re:Can a whole story be modded as...

[Tandoori Haggis]

Having discussed this with the guys who did the trials for enterprise roll out in certain places, I agree with the parent. Whether you choose SuSe or RH will tend to depend on the corporate user requirement at the time of the initial trials.

UR's change. Weighting changes.

RH was the best solution five years ago for some corporate users. SuSe may be a better option now.

Personally the only Linux boxes I admin are my own. I dabbled with RH based distro's but found that the answer for me was SuSe 7.3 Pro. Also I was concerned about RH's direction at the time.

I admire other distro's and believe that they all have a part to play. WRT Enterprise - IMHO its a two horse race (UK) - at present. This could change.

Re:Can a whole story be modded as...

[Bob The Cowboy]

You forgot Slackware, you insensitive clod!

Re:Can a whole story be modded as...

[Leebert]

Can a whole story be modded as flamebait? I mean come on now!

Eh... Slashdot's hit count was probably a little low for January so they decided to give it one final "oomph" this evening.

Which reminds me to drive slowly tonight, it's that time of month for the cops also. :)

Re:Can a whole story be modded as...

[surprise_audit]

Offtopic, but...

it's that time of month for the cops also

So that's what was happening today. I was out running some errands and saw enough patrol cars to populate the local PD several times over... I was beginning to wonder if I'd missed a bio-terror alert, or something.

FreeBSD

[quantum bit]

Not a "linux" distro, but nothing screams "professional admin" more than BSD...

Best for the Enterprise?

[FortranDragon]

Why, Nipples, the Vulcan distro. It's logically intuitive.

;-)

Re:I have to go with Fedora Core 3

[pivo]

I like Fedora a lot (modulo their strong GNOME leanings) however I don't like it for servers. Fedora is released often so you have very current versions of everything, I like this feature on my workstation. But it's not good for servers, Fedora distributions are obsolete if they're >= 2 releases old. That means that, in order to ensure you're going to get security updates you need to upgrade your distribution about once a year. That's a pain for servers, especially ones that are working just fine.

I prefer Debian for servers, even though I'd never consider using it for a desktop distribution.

In the end though, it just depends on what you want to do with Linux, I guess you'd have to say, "use the best distro for the job." Even though that might not sound very satisfactory to someone getting started with Linux.

RHEL or RHEL-clones

[brsmith4]

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

Scientific Linux

[vondo]

from http://www.scientificlinux.org or WhiteBox. Both are RHEL repackaged and free (don't let "scientific" confuse you). Both, aside from kernel updates will keep themselves up to date and will have support for ~5 years. These are great for most "desktop" things, but you'll probably not be satisfied if you want to watch or edit video. (Then you have to add packages not in the distro.)

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.

Re:Gentoo of course

[sigaar]

"Gentoo is quick to patch security problems"

Excpet applying the patches isn't so quick, no? Imagine your P-I sendmail server (there are plenty of those around):

"security update your sendmail"
"Oh wait, I'm still compiling the previous updated sendmail"

WOW is that a loaded question

[eno2001]

"Does this OS make me look fat"? (Or is that "phat"?) ;P

Re:Debian of course

[direwolf puppy]

It's my understanding that you can get Debian support through HP. I know you could get per-incident before, and according to this, it looks like they support Debian as well as the "more commercial-friendly" distros.

No matter what you're asking...

[AvantLegion]

... Debian, Gentoo, SuSE, Fedora, and Slackware will get recommended.

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.

The Question is too Hard

[poofyhairguy82]

If every Linux provided everything listed here, most of the other distros wouldn't exist. I have to break it up.

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.

Who supports these installs?

[elint]

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.

Xandros 3.0

[bhsx]

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.

Re:Gentoo of course

[JohnnyGTO]

Gentoo if and only if you are prepared to run a test server to test all the packages before running them in real life. I use Gentoo on our office servers (as well as all my personal hardware) and have learned from experience that the occasional package can fubar your WHOLE day :-)

Tough question, multiple answers

[discord5]

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 :)

Mandrake

[Cyhawkalewagee]

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 =)

Re:Mandrake

[infolib]

Today i just finished installing Mandrake 10 on his main computer, tomarrow i get to begin converting marketing support.

Yeah, Mdk very nice. Just wondering: Don't they run MS Office or something? How do you handle that?

Also, I don't find Mdk that stable - of course the kernel hardly ever crashes, but sometimes KDE freezes which isn't much different to the average Joe.

Thy *BSD

[ahodgkinson]

Seriously, for a free (as in speach) distribution with the minimum of feature overload and ease of administration, *BSD is a very good choice.

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.

don't ask slashdot

[FSK]

Pick 3 or 4 distros and call their sales department. See what support package deals they're willing to make.

Some of the "depends"

[wytcld]

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.

Re:Some of the "depends"

[Rooktoven]

Slackware, the last I looked, you can't keep current at all easily.

Ummm ftp slack-current to your package directory (rsync if you don't want to cull cruft), upgradepkg --install-new *.tgz.

Done.

(Damn, that was difficult...)

I have a couple other questions to add...

[Lendrick]

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?

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[wild_berry]

AMD or Intel?

ATi or nVidia?

Egg over easy or sunny side up?

Red pill or Blue pill?

(Bonus marks awarded for "CowboyNeal" answer.)

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[standsolid]

vi, KDE, Mac, Neither, Pirate (duh).

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[Zardus]

It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: Pirates are dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Pirates community when IDC confirmed that Pirates' market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all outlaws. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Pirates have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Pirates are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by faling dead last in the recent Literature Network coolness test.

You don't need to be Hattori Hanzo to predict Pirates' future. The hand writing is on the wall: Pirates face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Pirates because Pirates are dying. Things are looking very bad for Pirates. As many of us are already aware, Pirates continue to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Sea Pirates are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Sea Pirates Jordan Hubbard and Long John Silver only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Sea Pirates are dying.

All major surveys show that Pirates have steadily declined in market share. Pirates are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If Pirates are to survive at all they will be among outlaw dilettante dabblers. Pirates continue to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save them at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Pirates are dead.

Fact: Pirates are dying.

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[starvo]

Ninja.
Sheesh, you shouldn't even have to ask such a question. Ninjas are cooler, for at least the next 18 years.

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[losinggeneration]

vi, kde, pc, both suck, pirate only because my friend kills ninjas... can't get too attached to them you know?

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[losinggeneration]

AMD, nVidia, Red+Blue mix

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[javaxman]

Pirate.

Pirates have been cooler than ninjas ever since The Spongebob Movie came out.

Wait. Check that. Ok. Maybe not... cool is in the eyepatch of the beholder?

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[T-Ranger]

Red and Blue Pill Omlet(tm) (patent pending).

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[merdark]

vi, GNOME (damn kde fanboys are too loud), mac, neither (but certainly not bush), what about a ninja who IS a pirate?

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[Ingolfke]

Who's cooler: pirate or ninja?

Pirates. Ninajas are pretty cool, but pirates get all the booty!

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[merdark]

I know, you have no other choices. So sad. (Really)

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[rjsquire]

vi
KDE
Mac
Kerry
pirate.

Duh!

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[Sodki]

Should I use vi or Emacs?

Emacs

Which is better... Gnome or KDE?

GNOME

Should I get a PC or a Macintosh?

Macintosh

Should I have voted for Bush or Kerry?

Kerry

Who's cooler: pirate or ninja?

Ninja, of course

Re:I have a couple other questions to add...

[Josepdin]

vi KDE no! pirate, of course, arrr

distros

[valadil]

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.

Re:OMG, YOU FORGET TEH MOST IMPORTANT PART!!1!!11!

[dynamo]

yeah, it was sorta flamebait, but that was funny

not enough information in question

[crush]

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.

Argh. Fuck. Kill.

[smcavoy]

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.

Cygwin.

[jimmytango829]

It's got the best of linux AND WINDOWS! w00t!

P.S. Made you look.

Re:Cygwin.

[jimmytango829]

Damn...isn't anyone lauging at Cygwin? I guess everyone takes Cygwin seriously but me. Also, I reply to myself.

Re:Cygwin.

[codemachine]

I was going to say, I'm not sure I'd consider Cygwin the best of Linux.

It is nice to have if you need it, but there are far better Unixes out there than Cygwin on top of Win32. Heck, there are even better Unixes on top of win32, such as CoLinux.

Re:Cygwin.

[bcmm]

I can't resist posting my old sig here

The power and flexibility of Windows, the user-friendlyness of Linux.

Slashdot participation injection

[sleighb0y]

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..

Re:Windows XP

[MerlynEmrys67]

This is a Linux distribution How ???

But Seriously Folks...

[eno2001]

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.

Unfashionable, these days.

[cowbutt]

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.

Re:Wrong question

[CmdrGravy]

I think this should be modded FUNNY rather than FLAMEBAIT

Re:First troll post!

[A beautiful mind]

Nah, it takes less. Believe me, i DID it.

OS X

[simpl3x]

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...

Re:OS X

[sampowers]

... Because when the submitter said Linux, there is an implication that x86 hardware will be involved. Call me back when your OS glistens on the hardware we've already invested in, instead of just my laptop.

Also, can you imagine the response from a common PHB when presented with what appears to be the age old "Macs vs PCs" argument? "I thought Microsoft took over Apple in 1998!"

Re:OS X

[freemacmini]

Having used the server I would not really reccomend it.

I still think you are better off with a freebsd server (or netbsd if you want to use the mac mini).

Re:OS X

[Silent_Fire]

Because it's not really stable enough yet for an environement which wants no unscheduled downtime, at least as a server. It's UI also has some problems from a server admin's point of view.

Re:RedHat

[LnxAddct]

This post is 100% true. Why mod as troll? Any major operation is using Oracle. Any one seriously using Oracle is using RedHat. Even if you aren't using Oracle, most firms with a large linux infastructure use Red Hat. They have the experience, and support that a real company needs. They make an excellent product and they rely on that product. Novell is an alternative, but in all honesty, they recently came into the linux game and only did so because they think it will be profitable. If it turns out not to be, they'll move right along to the next thing and drop linux. Novell has been trying to find a truly profitable area for nearly a decade. RedHat's life is linux and they open source everything they do. They also commit significantly more code then anyone else and so are very familiar with the kernel and other projects like OpenOffice.Org and especially Gnome.
Regards,
Steve

After years and years...

[ajaf]

... 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).

Re:First troll post!

[nbert]

Score:2, Troll

Great - I don't want to know how many mod points you just wasted ;)

I'm a Gentoo fanboy myself and if I ever happen to work at a place where I'm really in charge of everything and money doesn't matter I'll put Gentoo on every box.

However, this discussion is rather pointless, because everybody will defend the distro he/she feels comfortable with. I can do amazing things with Gentoo, but I'm quite sure that any serious RedHat wiz can do the same with Fedora.

Re:To an administrator...

[sp0rk173]

Agreed. An on-site compilation server that builds all neccessary packages weekly (and possibly serves as an intranet server for webmail/samba donmain controller/etc), along with a handful of dedicated servers and however many desktops managment decides to float away from windows - all running FreeBSD - would be my option of choice. Cap it off with an OpenBSD gateway and you would have a very stable, smoothly-running, well integrated, time-tested, mature network. All that's missing is high-level support

Of course, he asked about linux, didn't he? It's a shame.

Re:Wrong question

[Gob Blesh It]

Or "informative".

Well, as long as we're on the subject...

[Avoid_F8]

Here's the real question: vi or emacs?

*ducks for cover*

Re:Gentoo of course

[steveg]

I like Gentoo. All my home machines and one of my work machines runs on Gentoo. Nor would I dismiss out of hand the idea of running Gentoo on a server.

However...

As an administrator, I'm not particularly intrested in a distribution that will "teach me the inner workings of Linux". Stability and predictability are lots more important for production machines.

The new servers I'm putting on line now are all running Debian, and I'll be switching some old RH9 servers to Debian as I get the time to do that.

Someone earlier emphasized package management as a prime requirement for easy administration. Debian does that very well. Gentoo is also pretty good, except when things break, which does happen. I see Debian as more stable, Gentoo as more configurable. For a desktop, I'd choose Gentoo, but so far I'm leaning to Debian in the server room.

My biggest objection to most of the commercial distributions is that they are far too "versioned". If old versions had security updates forever, that'd be fine, but having to do a disruptive upgrade every few years on running servers just because there are no more security updates on the running version is quite inconvenient. This is one place where Gentoo really shines, being essentially "versionless". Debian makes version shifting relatively simple, so I'm comfortable with the relatively infrequent version bumps I'm likely to see.

Are you serious?

[Whitemice]

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?

Different Companies, Different Distros

[barney_must_die]

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.

Uber Linux

[MrCobaltBlue]

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.

Re:Uber Linux

[Zolotkey]

lol At least you try to impress your friends with using Linux

look to the polls...

[davez0r]

...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.

Question should be flaimbait

[SumDog]

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

Re:Question should be flaimbait

[thephotoman]

Have you even tried the Sarge installer? If you don't tell it to go into specifics at the beginning, it won't. Package config questions during config, however, tend to be semi-sane, especially when installing Gnome/KDE on top of X. It asks you whether you want your desktop manager to go to KDM, GDM, or XDM...a useful question, because sometimes I've found it rather easy to break one of those three, and then need one of the others to get in to a graphical system to do urgent work (which, in my position, just can't be done with the command line.

Bottom line: one .deb installs anywhere. RPMs, on the other hand, may not work on any system but the one that created them.

Poll

[gothzilla]

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. :)

Re:Poll

[BenjyD]

Current results (using grep, not find next !)

Debian
41
Redhat (Redhat + "red hat")
69
SuSe
47
Gentoo
33
Slackware
9

Re:Poll

[gothzilla]

I guess I should have expected a *nix user to show up a windows user. I mean this IS slashdot. :)

Novell/Suse gives the warm and fuzzy

[johnjaydk]

In our outfit we got to departments using Linux. One with the clueless manager the other with a clued in manager.

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 ...

There is no holy grail

[minion]

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.

Which religion for professional agnostics?

[Poietes]

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?"

The answer is not what you want to hear...

[marcushnk]

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..

Re:White Box, a clone of RHE3 --hahaha

[EvilStein]

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...

RedHat's genius..

[Sliptwixt]

.. 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".

A program to answer your question.

[Hobadee]

#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;
}

Re:A program to answer your question.

[omry_y]

two things:
1. this mix of java and c is a big no-no.
2. you access an element out of the array in the loop.

Mojo Jojo?

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

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!

Knoppix

[doombob]

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!

Distribution Zealots

[Pitr]

If there's one thing I hate more than distribution zealots... it's people who don't use Slackware! ;P

(Yes, that's a joke! ...well sorta.)

There are only two real enterprise level distros

[wsock32.dll]

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.

what about GRML?!

[crawancon]

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/

SuSE is a good choice for business

[cypherz]

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.

Ha!

[ccharles]

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...

Silly kids

[topical_surficant]

The obvious answer is Knoppix.

Uh, yeah.

[Minwee]

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.

Re:Uh, yeah.

[Tumbleweed]

See, that's a trick question. Ideally, you'd want to mix and match from the three.

First, take the Millennium Falcon, add ST's transporter & holodeck systems, and add the storytelling from the (new!) BG, and you'd be all set. Best ship, best universe, best storytelling. Et voila! And all that without using muppets! Sweet...

This is a roll your own type, so I guess that'd be the equivalent of either Gentoo or LFS.

Yes, I am a nerd. Shut up, so are you.

Surely the most pointless question ever...

[episteme]

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.

Re:Debian of course

[kinema]

Actually if you are looking for a good support option for Debian (or any other distro for that mater) check out Progeny

Re:Debian of course

[ShinGouki]

if you need high level support options, your job description isn't "admin" it's "executive"

Re:Gentoo of course

[steveg]

Actually, yes. Applying patches is reasonably quick. Compiling an updated package is usually not terribly time consuming, and the old package is still operational up until the moment the new package is installed.

Unless your server has a *very* heavy cpu load all the time, compiling source versus loading binaries isn't much of an issue.

I updated my workstation this morning -- about half a week's worth of updates. It took 18 minutes, all in the background.

Caution: Lynchbait.

[Cytlid]

Windows or SCO. Take your pick.

(they're all coming to kill me now)

No...

[Art Tatum]

It usually goes the other way. Tell your boss to shave his d***.

no one ever got fired for buying Red Hat

[Mr. Slippery]

while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?

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".

Re:SuSE What more could you ask???

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Wrong question

[CmdrGravy]

Now that's what I call flamebait

Not Gentoo

[Drakino]

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.

Re:Not Gentoo

[Jestrzcap]

If you are running updates in the background and want to catch important information just grep the output to a file.

Something like "emerge -u world | grep '*' >> important_update_info.txt"

The imporant messenges are all prefixed with * so you can easily catch them. Make a shell script to do it for you. Mail it to youself if thats what you need.

As for just blindly updating, thats not something you should be doing on a production server. Test server first, then roll changes to production.

Re:Not Gentoo

[thelen]

What's your opinion about using it on nodes in a server cluster? I've been pondering using it on a cluster of about a dozen machines with identical setups (java, tomcat, mysql primarily). The idea would be to run a master server locally from which to download patches onto the nodes. Of course I'd need some way of testing the updated packages before cloning the other machines...

Re:Not Gentoo

[kamagurka]

Well, basically you just admitted to not having put a lot of thought or reading into maintaining those Gentoo boxen you speak of. For example, the problem of missed enotices (Although I have to agree, the default way this is handled is) can be solved with 3 apps i can think of now, not the least of which is grep. All in all I love my Gentoo and find it easy to maintain; On the other hand, i don't really have enough experience to comment on its enterprise-readiness.

Re:Not Gentoo

[Meaulnes]

This seems a little off base to me. We have several Gentoo servers (6 or 7, I can't remember the exact number) at work, and I use gentoo on my work desktop, laptop, and personal desktop. (Oh I shouldn't forget running Gentoo on my Xbox). Someone in my department also uses Gentoo on his work desktop as well as his personal desktop. I personally have been running Gentoo since it was at release 1.2 (with a few month haitus whilst I learned *BSD). The Xbox aside, I have never had an emerge -u world break a a well-maintained box.

Now, I have a friend who has a remote dedicated Gentoo server who adamantly refuses to run etc-update and his box breaks every time he runs emerge -u world.

For my money Gentoo is the answer. Weekly emerge sync's & upgrades (look at what you are upgrading), consitent usage of etc-update, and a good thorough understanding of Gentoo's USE and ARCH settings will keep a Gentoo box in good working order.

At work, when we have a new service to provide, we look at the following OSs in order

1. OpenBSD
2. Gentoo Linux
3. Mac OS X
4. Windows.

All of our external services run from OpenBSD, most of our internal services run in Gentoo (even a predictive dialer) or OS X, and a total of 3 servers run windows.

When security is really important however, we don't even consider Linux, opting instead for OpenBSD.

Just my $.02

Re:Not Gentoo

[AnthonyZEO]

I couldn't agree with this more. I've been using Gentoo on and off for 2 years or so (on more than off) and this is one of two huge strikes against it for a production env. A production system is built for stability, not "the latest versions of everything". A lot of times I find an emerge has a 50/50 change of breaking whatever I try to upgrade. I will *never* try an emerge world again because it is equivalent to saying fubar world. You do not want this happening on a production box unless you actually want a pink slip. A lot of crap slips into the portage tree, and subsequently onto your production box.

Another point I'm a bit surprised no one has brought up is that vanilla Gentoo is dependent on gcc to perform upgrades. A lot of places would fire you if your production box has a compiler on it.

As a Gentoo user who actually likes Gentoo I have to say that it is barely ready for a personal environment, forget about production.

I know nothing of Hardened Gentoo. That may be an option. I hear IBM likes SUSE though, and you know what they say about picking IBM.

Re:Not Gentoo

[kashani]

Most of these answers sound like they've been written by first year admins. Welcome to the admin world kids, you're going to break things no matter which OS you use.

1. Gentoo has some problems. Reverse dependencies being the big one. Gentoo is working on this type of problem and it can't come soon enough.

2. Important info getting lost in the emerge. This is a gimme as well and should have been fixed long ago.

3. That PHP problem was probably turck-mmcache, or possibly another module, which does need to be recompiled each time you change PHP versions. And yes if your modules are broken on any distro Apache will bomb out. Gentoo does bump your version up pretty often 4.3.8 to 4.3.9 to 4.3.10 etc since they don't tend to do much back porting. Again #1 affects this, but I'll take a 2 minute inconvenience over having to screw with php 4.2.1 or 4.3.6 or whatever nonsense pakcage that I'd have to compile by hand since they don't support the functions I need.

4. Your Postfix problem was probably the update from 2.0.16|19 to 2.1.x. That was a major update and the release notes talked about Postfix changing its internal structure so they could filter email better among other things. The ebuild would instruct you to clear your queue, stop Postfix, and then do the update. If you didn't do this, it broke. This would have been a problem on any system as Postfix 2.1 offered significant improvements over 2.0 and God forbid 1.1. I still don't think anyone is shipping Postfix 2.1 as part of their OS, but I only use Gentoo and Redhat.

Being an admin of a Gentoo system requires less work, but more thought. It takes me less work to get Postfix 2.1 installed or mod_php with xml, Oracle, and sablot support, but I have to think about what's going on in my software. I agree that Gentoo shouldn't make it quite so easy to shoot myself in the foot and I have shot myself quite good a few times.

On the other hand I can do things with Gentoo, like support recent software, lock packages to particular versions, never have to build RPMs by hand, and other nonsense. I can can also tell mod_php to use Mysql and tell mod_perl not to. And they will continue to do this as the packages get updated. Redhat, Debian, Suse all make great products, but once you get off the beaten path you're in for a world of hurt. If you never need any special options, builds, support for odd things, etc. then by all means use another distro. But if you have to support customers, programmers who want to test mod_php with Postgres, Mysql, and Oracle, and all the other fun that comes with being an admin, you could do much worse then Gentoo.

kashani

Re:Not Gentoo

[surprise_audit]

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 might help:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=17 16588

Re:Not Gentoo

[Rich0]

The ebuild would instruct you to clear your queue, stop Postfix, and then do the update. If you didn't do this, it broke.

The problem is that if you just did an emerge -uD world, and postfix wasn't the first thing on the list, you probably didn't see the warning before you blasted through the installation process. Likewise, if it wasn't hte last item you probably never saw any warnings at the end.

Most people don't emerge one program at a time. It would be nice if the notes were collected and printed at the end...

Management?

[bitspotter]

A better question would be which management is best Linux.

The answer is: ME.

Re:First troll post!

[ZephyrXero]

very good point

Re:First troll post!

[agm]

Why would you need X on a production server? Seriously.

But your point is taken. Is does take a while to compile some things. Using distcc, the more Gentoo boxes on the local network the better compile times you'll get (in general).

Asking this question on slashdot

[ShinGouki]

is about as smart as dropping an 80lb crack rock into the middle of harlem

A serious question...

[SharpFang]

IBM is so much pro-linux. Which distro do they support/recommend?

Re:Then vs Than

[pclminion]

Why do you bother? Clearly, these people can't learn by example, or they'd have figured it out already. So why waste your time?

Are you trying to impress us with the fact that you know how to spell basic English words?

RedHat "enterprise"

[daddymac]

We've been a redhat shop for years, and with the birth of "Enterprise" redhat, we've gone with that. Packages with bugs, security holes, etc. are fixed in a very timely manner, and you are alerted when new software comes out, along with what was fixed in it. You can choose whether or not to upgrade, at your leisure. The paid subscription gives you access to their up2date repo's which are (in my opinion) very speedy downloads. 3rd party Hardware/software vendors generally write their stuff with redhat systems in mind, so you have a larger software/hardware supported list. Good stuff. I've played (ran a web/mail/dns server, installed handwriting recognition/X windows on a 486 stylistic, etc.) with debian and while I loved it for it's apt-get command, I didn't see any other advantages over redhat (which are all fixed with up2date), but things that I took for granted on redhat (colorized fonts in vi, chkconfig, a "sensible" place to keep network scripts, etc.) were not "instantly" present in debian. You are more than welocme, of course, to tune it how you want. If you want something that just works OOB though...

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.

RH/SUSE

[OneFix at Work]

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.

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 ... "We support Linux 7.3, 8.0, 9.0..."...

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...

Re:RH/SUSE

[AcmeShells.com]

Redhat = one of the oldest? I think not. Correct me if i'm wrong. The only reason everyone, even businesses choose redhat is because its marketed.

Re:RH/SUSE

[OneFix]

No, legal departments shouldnt have to be "on the ball"... They don't like using something that may even be percieved as illegal.

In most circumstances, taking a product and redistributing it with your name would not be legal. Even if the EULA allows for that and even if RedHat is fine with that, most legal departments aren't...

No company (unless they are SCO, M$, or IBM) wants to be in the middle of a lawsuit over the product they are using...

And besides, WhiteBox's own page states that...

There may be remaining packaging problems and other odd bugs. These are solely the responsibility of the White Box Linux effort and should not in any shape, manner or form reflect on the quality of Red Hat's commercial product. In fact, if you need a fully tested and supported OS you probably should go buy their box set.

So, you have it right from their site...it is essentially telling you NOT to use this for a production environment.

As for my not mentioning CentOS or TaosLinux, I can only say that from my experience, WhiteBox is the most well known...

Re:A similar question

[pclminion]

I think it's a roundabout way of advocating code refactoring. A good heuristic for when to stop refactoring is when the indentation level hits a certain threshold.

But you're right. Refactored code is typically slower than before, due to data copying and function call overhead. There are some places where you just can't afford it, and you end up with some pretty high indent levels in those cases. This goes hand-in-hand with duplicated code.

The trick is knowing where it's justified to have such extreme nesting.

Toss Up

[Micah]

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.

SLES9 / SUSE9.2 combo

[siezer]

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

Re:SLES9 / SUSE9.2 combo

[Kz]

you mention using LDAP for authentication. i've done this on a SLES9 box, and it worked really good for a while... until they started having problems with the UPS, then the air conditioner, etc.

every single time, it was shut down without notice... and every time it woke up with the BDB database unreadable, therefore nobody could login.

i read all the info about LDAP, tried several tweaks, but i couldn't get it to survive a hard poweroff. in the end, i gave up and returned to oldstype /etc/passwd

is there a better way? can BDB cut it?

Gentoo

[UncleScrooge]

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!

So true

[BinLadenMyHero]

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.

Wait just a doggone minute!!

[gutbucket]

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.

Re:Debian of course

[miffo.swe]

"high-level support options - No check"

Actually, as a proffessional admin i have found myself having much better support from OSS in general than from any high level support. Its a different kind of support but still it works out really well. It mostly depends on how good you are at googling. Mailing lists are also very underestimated because who answers a quiestion better, the developer or some call-center ape who reads out loud from some stupid database?

Most often when you cant find a solution the problem depends on a bug in the software and access to the developer in some way is the only thing that can resolve the issue. Thats where OSS excels tremendously compared to most companies i know of.

High level support in the form of a guy who goes to your company and fixes things for a silly amount of money is another thing. There are plenty of people who sells support contracts on OSS software so that isnt that big of an issue. Its just that its perceived as a big advantage to be able to play the blame game and have someone fix things when management yells.

Re:SuSE What more could you ask???

[ignorant_newbie]

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.

um... let's see. it's not released under a bsd license. it's not a bsd kernel, it's a mach kernel...

RHEL no question

[ComputerSlicer23]

I've built up my "RedHat-fu", to the point, that it's the one distro I know how to to completely configure a machine from start to finish to be setup exactly the way I want via network boot. It might be possible with Suse, but I've never run that.

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

Suse 9.1

[pair-a-noyd]

if you want rock solid reliability and ease of installation and configuration.
Works out of the box.

9.2 is quirky....

Re:Not the one "we" chose !

[Rooktoven]

Why is that?

It's wonderfully suited for business. Maybe the org I work at isn't big enough...

it's mostly the same though

[kuzb]

I mean, linux is linux is linux. Usually the only things that change are:

1) the package system
2) the installer

Solaris 10

[JonathanX]

Seriously.

Re:Solaris 10

[JustNiz]

What part of 'Which LINUX" are you having trouble with?

the one you know

[kipple]

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.

Re:the one you know

[BCW2]

"(if security is a concern)"
If security is not a concern, he won't be a sysadmin for long. Or what his company does is so unimportant that nobody cares. Security is always a concern.

I know I'm being paranoid but am I being paranoid enough?

I do agree that the best distro is the one the sysadmin knows best, if he can teach it fast and well.

If it would be that easy

[netcongestion]

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...

Distro

[northcat]

Which Linux? You mean Which Distro? I can understand when a Linux newbie says Linux when he means Linux Distribution but Slashdot...

Forget the others - we run Slackware servers!

[arfonrg]

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.

Agree & love Gentoo

[dougnaka]

I love Gentoo, am running it on my home and work desktops. But this has been a problem historically. What parent talks about as problems are real problems with Gentoo, but are not the only reasons not to run it blindly in production. Another problem is having a C compiler be required. If your box gets compromised you've given a potential cracker all the tools he needs to do even more damage.

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

Re:Agree & love Gentoo

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Another problem is having a C compiler be required. If your box gets compromised you've given a potential cracker all the tools he needs to do even more damage.

If your box got compromised, the compromise was probably accompished by the attacker by overflowing a buffer and throwing some shell code in the right spot. Think about that - they're already sending code to your machine.

Second, if the machine is compromised, what exactly is stopping the intruder from uploading packages or staticly linked binaries of whatever they want?

Re:Agree & love Gentoo

[Dammital]

Now, it's very likely that the above poster upgraded his config files blindly and this is what messed up his installation

While this is easy for a Gentoo n00b to do, I've experienced dependency issues similar to what parent described, to-wit:

Apache was broken [...] 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.

If you don't take especial care to re-emerge spamassassin when Perl is upgraded, the former will fail silently (running beneath evolution). Mplayer's ebuild wasn't smart enough to rebuild win32codecs when I turned on its real USE flag. Portage is not perfect!

Re:Agree & love Gentoo

[Drakino]

Now, it's very likely that the above poster upgraded his config files blindly and this is what messed up his installation

Nope. I spent actually a great deal of time in etc-update after this last upgrade. Problem is, the location of smbpasswd wasn't set in my smb.conf file, so it used the default. It upgraded me to Samba 3.0.10 from I think 3.0.7. I don't recall smb.conf being a file I saw in etc-update, so it remained my old file. I actually just looked uver my saved terminal buffer from the update and found a bug.

* /etc/samba/private moved to /var/lib/samba/private
* Copying /etc/samba/private/* to /var/lib/samba/private/
cp: `/var/tmp/portage/samba-3.0.10/image//var/lib/samb a/private/': specified destination directory does not exist
Try `cp --help' for more information.

So emerge did try to move things for me to the new default, but failed. Since it figured this was automaticially done, it didn't hilite the change at the end of the ebuild process.

Bugs like this shouldn't make it into stable for a distribution that is "enterprise ready".

Re:Agree & love Gentoo

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Anyway, there is still the strong advise (mainly from enterprise linux distributors) not installing a compiler on a server. Yes, they also provide gcc packages, but as said, they strongly advise not to install those packages

Probably to encourage only using binary packages made for that distro, which are more strictly controlled and tested, less likely to screw things up and easier to roll back from if they do.

Re:Then vs Than

[omry_y]

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.

From someone who makes a living with OSS solutions

[Qbertino]

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.

Re:Is this a joke?

[Gherald]

This is not a joke, you need to rethink your assumptions.

Gentoo is a fine choice for production servers, provided you are prepared to use the latest version of all software.

Debian with the most recent 2.[46] kernel will run on the widest variety of hardware of any distribution. This includes all new hardware that works with kernel.org sources.

warm and fuzzies

[Koatdus]

- - the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?"

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.)

your happiness != upper mgmt's happiness

[ChoyLeeFut]

The solution which will make the PHBs happy will be in mauve, regardless of the technology. (Yes, an ObDilbert reference.)

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!" ;)

Debian doesn't like new hardware

[JHillyerd]

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!

Why just one distro?

[eclectist]

I'm not a rank noob, as I've only been on Linux for a couple of years (not counting a flirting with it back in '98), but it seems to me that the greatest strength of Linux in a business environment would be best shown by using multiple distros. RHEL or FC for the server, Mandrake or a Debian flavor for the joe-user workstations. The Sysadmin can use Slack if he wants, and if you've got a truly hoary machine in the back room of the basement with ancient dust-covered ISA cards in it, or a brand-spanking-bleedingedge-new box that the Boss's cousin said 'was the best thing out there [sic]' well, that's what Gentoo is for.

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.

Why not just avoid the whole headache?

[blueforce]

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>

Redhat or Suse

[mlg9000]

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.

Sooo...

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

What did we decide?

Which distro is the best?

Re:OMG, YOU FORGET TEH MOST IMPORTANT PART!!1!!11!

[donothingsuccessfull]

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

All your Linux are belong to us......

[GryphonTech]

:-P

Next week on Ask Slashdot

[demi]

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?

Re:Next week on Ask Slashdot

[Jesus_666]

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.

ed. ed is the default text editor. If it's the default it has to be good, right? BHPs can't argue with that logic, they'll love you for installing it on each and every system in their department (replacing all other text editors/word processors).

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.

Copy the text off of the back of a box of cereals. Use Google to translate it to Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese and back to English. Randomly replace part of it with a lorem ipsum. Ask a lawyer for important sounding but meaningless phrases like: "The user (hereafter referred to as USER) of this product (hereafter referred to as PRODUCT) agrees, that he will not, under any circumstances, sue or in any other form hold the author of this software (hereafter referred to as AUTHOR) accountable for anything, including but not limited to damage (including, but not limited to, actual, consequential, or punitive), liability, claim, or other injury or cause related to or resulting from using, not using, abusing, knowing, not knowing or being in the same room as PRODUCT. (Void where prohibited or in violation of common sense.)"
Make sure to force your customers to agree to the license before actually reading it.

Nintendo DS vs PSP, anyone?

The GP32 runs Linux, so neither of them.

Holy Grail?

[martian265]

more like Holy War.

Don't you know that you've called forth the forces of the DistroTrolls? We'll all be wiped out.

One Thing Matters

[SpottedKuh]

[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...

not exactly true

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:not exactly true

[lunatik17]

I don't think you have very much experience with Portage. I've used both Debian and Gentoo extensively and I've actually screwed up Debian more often than Gentoo. In fact, I've never screwed up Gentoo at all, because of the nature of its package management. Because Debian is a binary package based system, there is the possibility of installing a package that depends on something you don't have. But with Gentoo, that package doesn't even install if there is a problem, and resolving it is as simple as editing a text file. I've had to do some fiddling with ebuild files in Gentoo, but mostly because I run a lot of bleeding-edge software.

There are two reasons why Gentoo would not be a suitable choice for a production environment: 1, installing a package can be time (and resource) consuming because you're compiling it from scratch. 2, there isn't really any commercial support available for it. However, in my experience, Gentoo is as stable as Debian.

Re:not exactly true

[Hast]

Because Debian is a binary package based system, there is the possibility of installing a package that depends on something you don't have.

No. It is possible that an admin forgets to add a dependency to a package, but that has nothing to do with the packaging format.

Besides in my opinion the biggest bonus as far as Debian goes (in production environment) is the use of three separate branches with different stability standards. I'm unaware that any other distro has that "feature".

Re:not exactly true

[Trejkaz]

I've found probably a couple dozen broken ebuilds in my last couple of years using Gentoo. In every case but one, the package was masked... so I was supposed to expect them to break. The one remaining case was when Xorg 6.8 came out and was unmasked before it was known that ATI's latest drivers (also unmasked) crashed it. Eventually they set up a block so that both couldn't be installed at once. :-)

But on a personal note, the thing I like most about Gentoo is CONFIG_PROTECT. It applies CVS-like merging to all my config files so I don't have to.

Re:not exactly true

[lunatik17]

Gentoo has two trees: arch (x86, amd64, sparc etc) and ~arch for unstable. Very comparable to Debian Stable and Unstable branches.

Re:not exactly true

[Hast]

Yeah yeah, you're just trolling I know.

But Debian stable may be old and stale, but it sure as hell ain't broken. That's the bloody point.

Can't set mountpoints?!

[Chris Tyler]

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.

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 /etc/fstab -- so I can't understand this comment (?).

Re:Not the one "we" chose !

[MightyMartian]

I could ask the same. I like being able to dump a kernel straight from kernel.org in, compile and the have it LILOed in no time. It was the thing that turned me off distros like Mandrake, being chained to use their modified kernel source. It's really easy, as well, to install it pretty compact if you're putting together dedicated servers.

it doesn't matter

[SQLz]

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.

Gentoo

[Denagoth]

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...

Favorite distro for home user?

[Otik2]

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?

Simple, maintain your own

[Mr. Arbusto]

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.

make upper management feel warm and fuzzy? RedHat.

[walterbyrd]

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.

Debian

[gullevek]

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.

Re:First troll post!

[alan_dershowitz]

He's gonna be more impressed you're running a production server on a PENTIUM 160.

None of the above

[nurb432]

If you are a real admin, you will just use FreeBSD and not mess with complications of using Linux.

Re:None of the above

[naelurec]

ditto.. FreeBSD is great for production..

reasons..

1. Great documentation. The FreeBSD site has the FreeBSD Handbook-- in addition there is Absolute BSD, BSD Hacks and other books that provide lots of great detail of how the entire system is built.

2. Clear distinction of the base system. Unlike Linux, FreeBSD is an OS. There are clear boundries of what is and is not part of the base system. Ie -- config files of non-base system software does not go into /etc but /usr/local/etc. Same with binaries, libraries, etc..

3. Ports -- 12,000+ programs just a 'make install' away from using. Lots of advance tools such as portupgrade, portaudit, etc have been developed to make managing and auditing your system simple.

4. Well defined file hierarchy. See man hier for details on how its laid out -- the ports follow this layout. Nice and clean.

5. rc.conf vs init.d -- I dunno.. seems cleaner and easier to me.

6. ipfw/ipf vs ipfilter -- need I say more? I have yet to know anyone who prefers Linux's default firewall.

For me the switch from Linux to FreeBSD was easy .. stuff that I just couldn't quite grok with Linux came easy with FreeBSD (perhaps due to the excellent documentation) -- after learning FreeBSD, the consistency of the system made it very easy to know whats happening and where things installed. The use of ports/packages makes keeping an up-to-date system a breeze.

I use FreeBSD for several production systems (mail, web, ftp, print, file, spam/virus filtering, ldap, dns servers, desktops, etc..) and it works great. Granted, Linux is no slump, but I find myself reaching for the man pages, google and books more often with Linux than FreeBSD as it just isn't nearly as intuitive (for me).

so stop updating

[dgym]

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.

Re:so stop updating

[dgym]

Sorry, I wasn't being very clear, that is only the first step.

It does one very usefull thing, it tells you exactly what it would have done if you didn't add the -p so is fundamental to making sure that only the things you want to happen, well, happen.

If I don't like the version it is suggesting, it can be tweaked. If I don't like what it is going to do by way of dependancies, they can be tweaked too.

Then come the proper emerges...

Depends on which part is MOST important

[chaoschimera]

"...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.

Hurd

[agent]

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html

Re:Then vs Than

[simetra]

Heh. Touche, English-Speaking Ninny!

Gentoo!

[MrJerryNormandinSir]

Gentoo is the way to go! That's what I use and I've got a career in Linux!

SuSE good enough for Novell, good enough for me.

[iXiXi]

SuSE is stable, stable and did I mention stable?

Personally I use ...

[Jagungal]

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.

Re:First troll post!

[nbert]

I don't really care Mr. AC, because I won't deploy it until I'm at the top. And even if it happens I'll make sure that administration will be as easy as with any other distro.
I don't really see what's dumb with that at all.

Re:I love my MEPIS

[codepunk]

You cannot possibly be serious, Mepis would be a good choice but it will not run on good hardware. It cannot boot a scsi root which takes it completely out of the running.

Re:RedHat

[Monkey]

In addition to Oracle, many third party commercial software vendors only support Redhat, and some support only certain releases of RH.
It becomes a support issue when you call one of these vendors up and the first thing they ask you is "What version of Linux are you running?". If you're not using their "supported" Redhat platform, you either end up lying to them about what you're actually using, or risk the vendor using your non-compliance with their standard as an excuse for not supporting you.

the answer is simple

[asciiRider]

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.

Userlinux and here is a link

[beachdog]

First, if you are migrating to Linux, check out this IBM "redbook". Very helpful for a business:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246380.h tm l
----------
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.

Word Count... Winer is Debian and... Linux!!!!

[homerito]

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"

Mod Parent Insightful-Maybe?

[PCM2]

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.

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" ... well, that strikes me as being Not Good Enough(tm). Can anyone clarify?

Re:Mod Parent Insightful-Maybe?

[Medieval_Gnome]

Is the official Ubuntu position that we should wait for all our software to get updated exactly once every six months?

Yeah, for the most part. They have their 'stable' version which only gets upgraded every 6 months, and then they have a development branch (hoary currently) that is under active development, but NOT guarenteed to be stable. They are fairly cutting edge there (GNOME 2.9.4, Xorg) but the packages not in their core do lag behind some. Biggest one I noticed is that blender is back at 2.33 or 2.34 when current is 2.36.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful-Maybe?

[PCM2]

I tried installing a Hoary snapshot and it was too much like stepping right back into beta territory for me. Sound didn't work anymore, just to give one example. I feel like I'm stuck -- I like what Ubuntu is doing in a lot of areas (UI, Project:Utopia, the pared-down install) but in other ways I guess I'm what you'd call a Gentoo guy and their release schedule isn't doing it for me (but I just don't have time to deal w/Gentoo). Is there a way to be sort of bleeding edge while still expecting the thing to boot and function? Hoary IS a second release, isn't it?

Re:Mod Parent Insightful-Maybe?

[poofyhairguy82]

Is there a way to be sort of bleeding edge while still expecting the thing to boot and function?

Sure, work with the backports guy. He is really nice. He has backported things like GTKpod and Gimp for me. Also the devs behind the distro are working to open up the universe some. Ubuntu has some kinks to be worked out, but everyone working on them is very nice about their role.

Hoary IS a second release, isn't it?

Correct. Ubuntu is an infant currently. Hopefully in a year or so when the community grows, more people will be willing to step in and fix some of the problems the devs don't want to deal with (like the backport guy did). Of course....you could always just use plain Debian Sid if you want the daily packages without the bugginess of Hoary (I recently gave up on Hoary- it is too buggy now). Just use the nice Kanotix installer to get it on your hard drive and enjoy!

Oh dear.

[BrokenHalo]

As soon as I saw the thread, I wondered how long it would take for the Gentoo fanboys to jump on it. Obviously, I wasn't mistaken.

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

Re:Oh dear.

[DyNoMiTe24]

Are you kidding. I am an administrator for one of the departments on a university campus(I will not say which) and we used to run a customized slackware distro. It was horrible. Machines would break all the time. We eventually switched all of the clients to Fedora and servers to RHEL and it is so much more of a stable distro than slack.

Re:Oh dear.

[BrokenHalo]

...we used to run a customized slackware distro. It was horrible. Machines would break all the time.

Hmmm. Sounds to me like the problem there is the "customized" bit. Slackware is well known as one of the most stable distros around (because it is so simple). My experience is that you more or less have to go out of your way to break it.

Only sensible approach is...

[darnok]

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.

Re:First troll post!

[Goozbach]

An XDMCP terminal server of course!

Removing the GUI is simple...

[koko775]

dpkg -P ubuntu-desktop.

There you go.

Corporate OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with those who consider the OP to be a lame, trollish thing. The way the question is asked, it's basically not possible to answer usefully. So in typical slashdot fashion, all the idiots began yammering about their favorite shiny toys. The delicious irony is found in the number of posts which acknowledge this ... then go on to yammer about their favorite shiny toys!

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.

fanboys

[Sweetshark]

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 ...)

Re:fanboys

[Taladar]

Mh, I use Gentoo and don't know kile, does this count as hate?

Re:fanboys

[TelJanin]

More like Gentoo and Vim

More like, what's the worst distro

[nsasch]

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.

Is this a Joke?

[smc13]

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

[Corson]

CentOS, aka free version or RHEL.

One question: What happens when boss calls support

[vinn]

Okay, if you're the cool admin dude who's into building his own servers and installing his favorite distribution (with most packages custom compiled from scratch, of course) you're NOT the person most enterprise IT departments want to hire. PHB's like cookie-cutter OS installations that anyone can walk in and admin. (That's because they're scared to death you're going to quit and they want to hire someone off the street as soon as possible to replace you.)

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.

Re:Is this a Joke?

[Slartibartfast]

Sorry, but that's Just Dumb. If your CEO, etc., know so little about Linux that they barely know what a distribution is, then it's simple: tell them you're using "Linux," and go with whatever distribution best fits your needs. Oh, and that's "Ubuntu". IMHO, I would choose Debian -- or a Debian flavor -- if security is paramount. Its install, etc., isn't as slick as RH, but when it's up, it's rock solid, and it's a sysadmin's dream for patching and upgrading. In other words, it's more work to get running, but we're not talking "users", here, we're talking sysadmins. Glitz is great on the desktop -- but for servers, I want stuff I can maintain in as easy and automated a fashion as feasible, and Debian fits the bill perfectly; rarely, if ever, does a Debian "stable" fall into the dread RH Dependency Hell.

Solaris 10

[cbowland]

meets all the requirements hands down. Plus some (like containers!)

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/10/top10.jsp

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.

ipod linux

[jamesjameson]

My ipod linux will smoke all of your distros in a heartbeat...

Re:A competent IT manager

[cyber_rigger]

A competent IT manager will sneak Linux in
and make is look like whatever the PHB is used to

....and no one will ever know.

here's what I'd recommend

[CAIMLAS]

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?

How about just making this a poll?

[randallxski]

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.

Not to beat a dead horse but...

[DJEMi]

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.

Here's What We Did (Fedora/RedHat)

[Batmensch]

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.

SuSE on Big Iron

[Dammital]

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'm a Debian guy at heart

[jocknerd]

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.

Bottom Line

[Anonymous Coward]

I can be done, and if you have the know-how, it can be done well.

Is that a pick-up line?

Holy Grail!

[dirtyforker]

A holy grail of linux distros? Great! Which one is it? I'm gonna fork my own personal distro off of it...

Not SuSE Professional 9.2

[NullProg]

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.

Opinion from a Professional Linux SA

[Abattoir]

Despite the flamebait nature of the question, I will add my thoughts.

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 .conf file editting,
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... ... then they'll deploy SuSE 9.2 Professional on workstations and SuSE Standard
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.

Re:Opinion from a Professional Linux SA

[lifes a cluster]

Speaking from a HPC Cluster admin's opinion, I would have to agree with this post. SuSE, for the most part, does an excellent job of keeping the patches rolling out, and the patches are usually tested well. In our environment, I wouldn't want to use anything else. And now that they're part of Novell it's even better - SuSE has a multi-billion dollar company backing it.

And what about Debian? <nt>

[ebyrob]

I *said* no text didn't I??!

Someone please mod this up.

[cfalcon]

Insightful. Funny. Something!

KRUD from tummy.com

[rymes]

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.

You couldn't be more wrong.

[krunk7]

um... let's see. it's not released under a bsd license. it's not a bsd kernel, it's a mach kernel...

Actually, this is one of the most frequently mentioned myths which float around. There are several reason's why it is completely wrong:

1. The Mach micro kernel itself is based on bsd 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD. Though it has evolved into something different than the original bsd kernels, so has NET, Open, and others.
2. The Mach micro kernel only handles very low level functions and does not handle all the functions most think of when they name "what an OS does?" such as I/O, networking, file system support, and high level API's. In osx all this is done by a FreeBSD derived kernel (10.4 will be fbsd 5.2 based iirc).

In order to clarify a bit, you can refer to this Ars Technica brief cover of this FAQ.

FreeBSD

[rawg]

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 answer is plain simple, Can't you see?

[mhu]

42. That's the answer.

To be honest...

[Reteo Varala]

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.

Re:Debian of course

[tchuladdiass]

A good item to add to this is this example:
We are required to fill out an outage report and root cause analysis for each outage. So, if the kernel locks up for some reason (it happens from time to time, even on linux -- given a few hundred boxes of varying hardware quality...), and if there is no clear reason in the error log, stating "I don't know what happened, or why it happend, or how to prevent it in the future" just doesn't cut it. At least with vendor support, you can say "No log items produced, this incident has been turned over to the vendor for further investiagion, case number 1213459-X35B"
That is what makes managers/customers happy.

Useless Article

[jtpalinmajere]

...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.

Professional Admin - A Reasonable Response

[ryanisflyboy]

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).

Re:I have to go with Fedora Core 3

[Dr. Descartes]

I agree 100%. Well, maybe 50%. I learned and continue to learn Linux on Slackware machines. I've have a Gentoo and Fedora Core test box as well at home too. At work, however; my workstation is a Fedora Core box. I keep my box up to date with apt-get and the administration is relatively pain free. That's one thing that some people may miss, if you're administrating servers the last thing you need to be doing is fiddling to get something to work. As a double bonus, there's a couple of boxes that run Red Hat Enterprise Linux here and having a Fedora Core workstation helps me prepare for any gotchas that RHEL may have.

On everything else we run Debian or Free BSD. The stability and security is really nice and quite important. Oh, we do have one Gentoo box but it's internal only.

I personally feel that Slackware is my one true distro. I've used it for years and I'm quite fond of it but having a Fedora box for work is for the best.

Re:I have to go with Fedora Core 3

[Dr. Descartes]

My apologies for the weird formatting. I've never seen Konqueror do that before. C'est la vie.

Litmus Test

[Proc6]

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 :[

My own gripe:

[SanityInAnarchy]

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.

Re:My own gripe:

[surprise_audit]

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.

I saw this in the forums a couple of days ago, but haven't had time to see how well it works:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=1716588

It gives a script that runs emerge for you, captures any of those messages, then optionally writes them to the screen, emails them to you, or saves them in a file.

sure

[SanityInAnarchy]

AMD
nVidia
over easy
red pill

FreeBSD

[0x000000]

Forget Linux. FreeBSD.

Secure, fast, and stable. The ports tree is a godsend, and it just works.

Dare I answer?

[SanityInAnarchy]

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?

distro of choice for enterprise requirements...

[capsteve]

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?

My vote...

[Junta]

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.

FreeBSD, then RedHat

[rho]

Purely one man's opinion, but I like FreeBSD for servers.

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.)

The right tools for the right job

[yaneurabeya]

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.

Get Slack, man

[Obstin8]

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.

Ask the OS

[c666hellchild]

just use a linux boot CD and type
MAN BEST_LINUX

In a professional environment, Novell SUSE or RHEL

[X-Nc]

The fact of the matter is that all of the "big name" distros would be just fine but if you are talking about an enterprise (or even a SOHO) environment then go with the ones that will be technically solid and also have the $$$$ support to keep management happy.

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.

Redhat Enterprise or SUSE

[CCW]

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.

Hello Flamewar!

[harmgsn]

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.

Chris the Ninja Pirate!

[Narcocide]

http://www.weebl.jolt.co.uk/quest.htm

A PROFFESIONAL ADMIN ......

[klaasb]

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.

Re:A PROFFESIONAL ADMIN ......

[RupW]

If you were a real proffesional you would build your own optimized linux distro.

Yeah, because you get good third party support for that. RTFQ.

Re:A PROFFESIONAL ADMIN ......

[NewOrleansNed]

And if YOU were a real professional, you'd likely be able to spell the word 'professional.' You'd also understand that support usually doesn't come to people who decide to go out and roll their own distros unless they're prepared to be their own support line. There are reasons why businesses purchase Linux distros as opposed to just downloading them, and this is one of them.

Standardize!

[mcrbids]

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.

What will they value as the Warm and Fuzzy

[aixguru1]

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.

Slackware

[Exter-C]

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).

CentOS,or TAOLINUX

[kernel_canine]

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

holy grail...

[bonezed]

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

Slackware!

[rkollman]

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!

Just like cars

[rastos1]

That is easy:

Q: What car is the best?

A: The one you own and know inside out.

Short Answer / Long Answer

[jonoton]

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...

Re:First troll post!

[daniil]

Great - I don't want to know how many mod points you just wasted ;)

At least five. Sadly, i ended up being completely unoriginal, as the first-posting AC posted exactly the same thing. Damn :(

My manager does not care!

[kompiluj]

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.

If its in a corperate environment ....

[thempstead]

.... 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.

Also whatever distribution you use must be supported as a platform by the application vendor, e.g. Oracle ... 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.

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 ... 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).

At the end of the day you are looking for a stable, supportable system not a l33t one.

t

international view

[marafa]

i just read the entire article (amazing!) and thought it was an eye-opener as to the issues
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

Is it any wonder?

[milette]

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! :)

Debian scales well...

[mikelang]

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.

I use Linux From Scratch

[ChrisMDP]

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.

Nobody ever got fired for downloading redhat......

[supersnail]

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.

Flamebait?

[nurb432]

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.

Re:Debian of course

[cas2000]

> "No log items produced, this incident has been
> turned over to the vendor for further
> investiagion, case number 1213459-X35B"

you can say pretty much the same thing with debian, except you can quote a message-id number as well as a bug tracking number....or even a URL so that any interested parties can read the discussion themselves.

and submitting a bug report to bugs@debian.org will probably get a result (or at least an answer) faster and better than any provided by any commercial linux distro or commercial *nix.

Enterprise or just Production?

[theirpuppet]

I have to say, Linux - in my experience - has truly suffered from a lack of real enterprise usage.

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 /. to host a "what's your favorite distro" discussion.

Ease of Administration? Desktop or Server?

[TheKeyboardSlayer]

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.

debian surpassed redhat/fedora in my experience

[frankie_guasch]

We had some redhat servers running fine until we had some problems with stability, and some broken packages with redhat 8. With debian nothing breaks ever, this is the main reason to have it. Updates work like a charm, the system is stable. It's not easy to install, but latest sarge releases improved this a lot.
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

• More official packages, I don't have to search other rpm repositories, everything is apt-get near.
• Updates won't break a thing.
• Stable, even with testing packages

Multiple sounds in ALSA software

[Kristoffer Lunden]

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).

Which Distro?

[WerewolfOfVulcan]

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)

SLACKWARE!

[AcmeShells.com]

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

To make PHBs warm and fuzzy...

[Kjella]

...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...

MOD PARENT UP

[mmkkbb]

Shouldn't be an AC.

WTF - moderator on crack?

[Medievalist]

How, pray tell, is my post flamebait?

Remind me not to bother posting next time.

Mac OS X

[ylon]

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).

Re:Gentoo of course

[Rich0]

Sure, and many of us know how to go about recovering hard drives, etc. Still, we all run backups and RAID since it is much easier just to hot-swap a drive, or restore a backup.

I think his point is that while all admins should understand the inner-workings of their systems, they shouldn't expect to have to dive into them day-to-day on every box they manage...

Money ££$$

[isorox]

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.

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 - /boot (800MB?!), /var (including a mysql database), and / (everything else). Oh, and swap. No /tmp mounted tmpfs.

Several to choose from

[Phred T. Magnificent]

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:

• Do you require vendor support? If so, Suse or RHEL are your most likely options.
• Do you require easy updates with automatic dependency resolution? Go with FreeBSD, with Gentoo as a possible second choice. Suse and Debian seem to be doing pretty well in this area, too, but they haven't got it perfect yet. This issue was the main reason my organization chose to drop Red Hat about a year ago (in favor of Gentoo, if that's relevant).
• What system are your admins most familiar with?
• How many servers are you running? If you're only doing a few, pick whatever you want, but if the number is larger (say, 10 or more), don't go with Gentoo unless you plan to run a build server and install binary packages from there. (With a build server, though, Gentoo scales very well into large numbers of servers.)
• Do any of your applications require a specific distribution or platform? You may well find that you need to run Solaris or AIX for some things.

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.

Internet Access

[slapout]

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.

surprised so few people are recommending RedHat

[BenRussoUSA]

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 .com (that grew to ~400 employees before going bust) and now work at a financial transactions processing company. In that time I have usually been managing 100+ servers of Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, SCO, Tandem-UX etc... machines from your average desktop system to 16 processor HP-V class servers... large storage arrays, 24x7 "5-nines" systems etc etc etc.

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?

[vpd084]

How about FreeBSD? I think its better than any linux distro. :-P

Re:Gentoo of course

[AutoTheme]

Yep, aside from the all caps, I love the Debian versioning... Apache 1.0, PHP 3.0, KDE 2.0...

...Is Better Than Debian, How?

[Vagary]

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?

Re:Gentoo of course

[steveg]

??

What version of Debian are you looking at?

My old Woody box has Apache 1.3.26 and PHP 4.1.2.

Not the newest, but who cares? Security fixes are backported to those versions. If you're running a server, that's what you want.

And Woody is due to be end-of-lifed here pretty soon. This is where you will have to deal with that "occasional version bump" which can pretty much be done in-line without a ton of disruption. You'll then be using what will be the new stable version, Sarge, which currently is using apache 2.0.52 (or 1.3.33, your choice), and PHP 4.3.10.

The versions of the packages are irrelelvant. The only time you have to deal with version changes is when you change from one version of the distribution to another.

For a desktop I want newer applications. For a server, I want it to work and to continue to work.

Re:First troll post!

[bcmm]

Wow.
Either Linux for iPod has ported X.org, or you have found a way to seriously slow down compilation on proper hardware...

(Maybe you ran GCC at nice level 19 and played doom3 for 4 days straight?)