Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is There a Web Development Linux Distro?
Qbertino writes I've been a linux user for more than 15 years now and in the last ten I've done basically all my non-trivial web development on Linux. SuSE in the early days, after that either Debian or, more recently, Ubuntu, if I want something to click on. What really bugs me is, that every time I make a new setup, either as a virtual machine, on concrete hardware or a remote host, I go through 1-2 hours of getting the basics of a web-centric system up and running. That includes setting PHP config options to usable things, setting up vhosts on Apache (always an adventure), configging mod_rewrite, installing extra CLI stuff like Emacs (yeah, I'm from that camp) walking through the basic 10-15 steps of setting up MySQL or some other DB, etc. ... You get the picture.
What has me wondering is this: Since Linux is deeply entrenched in the field of server-side web, with LAMP being it's powerhouse, I was wondering if there aren't any distros that cover exactly this sort of thing. You know, automatic allocation of memory in the runtime settings, ready-made Apache http/https/sftp/ftp setup, PHP all ready to go, etc. What are your experiences and is there something that covers this? Would you think there's a need for this sort of thing and would you base it of Debian or something else? If you do web-dev, how do you do it? Prepareted scripts for setup? Anything else? ... Ideas, unkown LAMP distros and opinions please."
What has me wondering is this: Since Linux is deeply entrenched in the field of server-side web, with LAMP being it's powerhouse, I was wondering if there aren't any distros that cover exactly this sort of thing. You know, automatic allocation of memory in the runtime settings, ready-made Apache http/https/sftp/ftp setup, PHP all ready to go, etc. What are your experiences and is there something that covers this? Would you think there's a need for this sort of thing and would you base it of Debian or something else? If you do web-dev, how do you do it? Prepareted scripts for setup? Anything else? ... Ideas, unkown LAMP distros and opinions please."
Yep. Learn puppet or similar
I'm wondering what the point of this "Ask Slashdot" was in the first place. The submitter rattles off everything that he knows about configuring a web development environment, experience with multiple distributions...then asks if there's one out there that does the work for him/her?
Why BOTHER? If you already have that much experience, then I would assume you know how to set up and secure a system much better than any distributions vanilla configurations are going to provide. As the OP I'm replying to mentions, not everyone configures their system the same way and not every system SHOULD be configured the same way, it's context and hardware sensitive. Pick a distribution that you like and set up your web development environment accordingly...like you're already doing...
The more you think about it the less sense it makes, they pretty much posted the answer to the question in their own summary. Every Linux distro is a "web development Linux distro" if you know what you're doing.