Lightweigtt Linux Server Distro

AndrewP said:
CentOS then? It's just RHEL minus the 'major North American Linux vendor' ;) branding.
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Quite possible, though it's probably overkill in the stability department and I'd look for something more slimmed down which. That said, I like CentOS, mainly because it's identical to RHEL in every meaningful way..
 
bigredshark said:
No, I never thought RHEL was a good idea here (it costs money first up) but personally I think you either go for something at that end of the market (paid for support, absolutely stable, supported by the hardware manufacturer) or you go for something like Arch (very lightweight, quick and flexible).
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Ah, sorry. My bad - I thought that's what you were saying. :)
 
Chaos said:
Not linux but freebsd is worth a look to.
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FreeBSD - for those people that Linux folks think are a bit geeky ;)

I installed it on a VM, just to have a play. Had to google for a bit just to figure out how to load a GUI... and then it was just 3 windows that looked like they all had command prompts in.

I fail at BSD :(
 
Mr.Clark said:
FreeBSD - for those people that Linux folks think are a bit geeky ;)

I installed it on a VM, just to have a play. Had to google for a bit just to figure out how to load a GUI... and then it was just 3 windows that looked like they all had command prompts in.

I fail at BSD :(
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Try PC-BSD. It's a lot more user-friendly.
 
I installed freeBSD once, the sole reason being that you can tweak it and then install JUNOS on it and you've got yourself a pretend Juniper M7i (for something less than the 10k + asking price) which was rather handy for my JNCIP practice...

While that was very useful, I can concieve no other reason which would cause me to use freeBSD ever again, it's not at all friendly.
 
bigredshark said:
While that was very useful, I can concieve no other reason which would cause me to use freeBSD ever again, it's not at all friendly.
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Robustness and security has been favoured over user friendliness in the case of FreeBSD/OpenBSD. Personally I wouldn't use either as a desktop OS but as a server OS then you could make far worse choices.

Mr.Clark said:
FreeBSD - for those people that Linux folks think are a bit geeky ;)

I installed it on a VM, just to have a play. Had to google for a bit just to figure out how to load a GUI... and then it was just 3 windows that looked like they all had command prompts in.

I fail at BSD :(
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You can install gnome/kde if you want a more heavy weight windows manager.
 
Una said:
Robustness and security has been favoured over user friendliness in the case of FreeBSD/OpenBSD. Personally I wouldn't use either as a desktop OS but as a server OS then you could make far worse choices.

You can install gnome/kde if you want a more heavy weight windows manager.
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Absolutely, but RHEL is a good trade off in terms of robustness and security or Solaris is probably a better bet if you want to move away from linux. I know where you're coming from but I'd never use BSD on a server because those two provide powerful alternative (that I can actually use efficiently)
 
skiba said:
Tell him to go for Centos, years of development from RHEL and it's free.
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Indeed it is and it's very good, but lightweight isn't something I'd call RHEL - sure it depends how much you strip it down but it'll never as lightweight as Arch or similar. Depends what he wants
 
bigredshark said:
Absolutely, but RHEL is a good trade off in terms of robustness and security or Solaris is probably a better bet if you want to move away from linux. I know where you're coming from but I'd never use BSD on a server because those two provide powerful alternative (that I can actually use efficiently)
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DO you work for Red Hat by any chance? :)
 
.walls said:
DO you work for Red Hat by any chance? :)
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Nope, I work for an ISP.

I just like the fact that with RHEL, if something goes wrong it's not all on me. I can phone redhat and get excellent support within minutes (far better than microsoft support in fact). For business use, particularly our business (it runs our nameservers - a very critical app) thats something I need to have, I can't risk having them go offline because there's a gap in my knowledge
 
bigredshark said:
False, RHEL is without parallel as a server OS, not least because it has easily the best support going.
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I meant to say 'better' not best. I also meant to add the word 'free'.

Whats wrong with Arch as a server OS? You can install it as a completely bare bones OS then build it up and secure it to meet your requirements, as a server.

Debian may be uber stable, but its also uber dated (IMO)
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Two words: Bleeding edge! Quite often after doing a 'pacman -Syu' my install will break and I'd have to spend 5-15 minutes fixing it. You don't always want the latest software on your install.

Really if I was going to pick a server OS I would pick 'the worlds most advanced OS', ie Solaris. Mainly because I've had some (very little but some nevertheless) experance with it.
 
Id stick with CentOS or OpenSuse.... CentOS if i had to chose one.

Used them both at home and extensively used RHEL and SLES at work so im a fan of both.
 
Thanks for all of the suggestions guys, I will give him information on each Distribution and I can let him decide!!

I would imagine it will be CentOS but am unsure.
 
GarethDW said:
I'm hearing lots of positive stuff about Arch... I think it's time I had a play with it, then I'll be able to comment on it.
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do yourself that favour and play with a arch install in vbox/vmware .....it took me a day or 2 doing that before i decided to switch over to it completely due to the speed and stability.
 
to be honest i've never had to install any obscure hardware but my ATI 3870 and X-FI (OSSv4) are a breeze to install.

if it's not available as a binary package install though pacman most likely it's in the user repositories pre-packaged for you to compile yourself.
 
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