Simple one: What Varient of *nix is easiest and best for a home server?

Werewolf

Werewolf

Werewolf

Commissario
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
33,259
Location
Panting like a fiend
Hi

I've been meaning to try and learn more about *nix and html, so it occurred to me the obvious way might be to try to combine them both by setting up a simple server for my home network that I could play with (and possibly do a decent website that I could then move/copy onto my web hosting).

So the question is, what would be the recommended version of nix to play around with for a newbie, with a view to using it to run a private website (basically to let me try out web stuff on, on my home network not on the internet), probably using apache.

The only thing is, my budget for this is going to be small, so if possible I'd like to use an old Dell I've had lying around as it's pretty much silent and small enough that it won't take up much room (it's only a P3 700, but I should have plenty of ram for it, and it's already up and running).

Rather annoyingly, I actually threw out about 3 other systems that could have been modified to run as a server a couple of months ago (although none of them would have been as small/quiet as the dell as they were all socket A athlons).
 
Ubuntu or Debian is best for newbies IMO. Although Linux Mint does get a good rap from newbies too i hear (although ive never tested it so cant personally recommend it!).
 
for a webserver ... centos or debian + nginx

keep seeing a lot of people running ubuntu webservers :eek:

not sure if any are easier than each other, think there are some lamp distro's but then you arguably wouldn't be learning much
 
Last edited:
Personally i would say CentOS for a server. Run it headless and either do everything on the command line via ssh, or to get things up and running quickly put Webmin on it. If you do put Webmin on, then although much of the config is done for you, you get a working server quickly so you can play with websites, and you can still ssh into it to break it and fix it and learn it.

I always choose CentOS for my servers since it is essentially RedHat Enterprise Linux for free. Stable, well documented, and very well supported.

As far as laptops and desktops go though, Arch all the way :)
 
Debian.... no contest

DL the small installation image, if your target rig is connected to the internet, which allows you to install just the packages that you want.

PS.. pity you threw out the socket A rigs :( they would have run a 32bit install... no problem
 
Centos is currently quite far behind most distros and support seems to be dying out (there were literally months without any updates for Centos 6 right after very delayed launch) and most of the "stable" software is just ancient. Additionally, major distribution remote upgrades paths in RedHat clones are now broken (probably commercial decision on RH), so for example users of 5 will not be able to remotely upgrade to 6, it can only be done physically in front of the machine and even that is relatively "dirty". When you try to venture into "modern" world the third party "unstable" packages are often really lame, for example a lot of multimedia rpms are often compiled against non standard libraries in user home directories that don't exist anywhere outside that persons machine, etc etc.
In Windows terms, betting on Centos distributions (at the moment, there was a time when RHEL clones were great) is a bit like sticking with XP because "why move on?"

On the other hand Debian has always had great stable and unstable distro support and for cutting edge is has loads of third party packages relatively well organised, maintained and properly done. Debian often overcomplicates relatively easy things, but it offers great learning curve. Upgrading and moving between major releases is usually relatively easy, well documented and properly supported.
 
For a newbie, Debian based package management is much simpler and much more widely supported, you'll find more .deb's than .rpm's in my opinion.

Good luck either way :)
 
What a load of twaddle ... why is it that people who push Debian are the ones who also push the most FUD about other distributions. Don't see it anywhere near as much from people running Ubuntu, Opensuse, etc

CentOS is a debranded version of RHEL which is aimed at the enterprise server market. Does CentOS have the latest multimedia RPM's provided with it ... no, nor should it. The upstream OS not random junk which doesn't really belong on a server in the first place. If you want a cutting edge desktop variant then run something like Ubuntu or Fedora ... i.e. a distribution which is aimed more at that sector instead of at running stable, supportable servers. If you pull in things from random repositories, which are not connected to the distribution in question, then you get what you pay for and that is true for any distribution.

The release of CentOS 6 was delayed from the release of RHEL 6. But that was due to the project reworking their build toolchain and procedures. Now, not so much, and they have added continuous release repositories which means that security patches that the upstream distribution are releasing for version x.n+1 are released for x.n whilst they are working on getting a x.n+1 qa'ed and out the door.

RHEL, and hence it's derivatives, don't support major version upgrades, i.e. 5.x to 6.x, but given the sector that they are aimed at it is unlikely that you'd be doing that with them anyway. RHEL support major release versions on a 10 year life cycle now and back port fixes to the version they are running whilst maintaining ABI and API interfaces which means that you can run commercial supported software on the platform without worrying about it breaking every time you patch something. Stability is their aim, not being cutting edge. The chances are that most of their customer wouldn't look at doing major OS version upgrades anyway as by the time it becomes needed the hardware will have gone end of life anyway so it would be time for a new system anyway.

Oh, and if you are using a proper commercial hardware setup then you'll have ILO/iDRAC or equivalent so you don't need to be on the same continent as the server, let alone being physically sittings at it, to do anything.

Comparing CentoS 6 with Windows XP is laughable and just goes to show your agenda. Support seems fine to me now too and the amount of traffic on the mailing lists seems to indicate that it isn't dying at all.

edit:

I'd also disagree with SMN's post. Using YUM is no more difficult than use the Debian equivalent.
 
This is for home use i understood - so ILO/enterprise stuff is irrelevant?

And YUM is no more difficult, but i can guarantee (i used Fedora for 3 years, Centos for 4 years at home - before moving to Arch on all via Ubuntu), that .deb is much more widely supported as a pre-packaged format.

Go onto, for example, www.gnome-look.org and check out any package. 99% will be "Option 1: .deb, Option 2: source". It is THE easiest package system to use for a newbie, due to its support more than anything.
 
This was never going to be a simple question as there are so many different opinions on different distributions from different posters here.

Personally I use fedora and centos at home , fedora as a desktop boot on a spare machine and centos 6 on my home server.

It really is a matter of personal taste for what you want to do from your OP take your pick. I personally learned linux on one of the early red hat versions and found a lot of good info for learning and a good book to get me started (the current version is the fedora bible by Christopher Negus) which was great as it showed both ways i.e gui and command line of doing everything.

My vote would be the fedora or centos route but ultimately the decision will be yours :)
 
I didn't mean to start an argument between users of the different distros ;)

Thanks for the advice so far, what I've decided to do is grab a pair of 80gb WD drives from my 'box'o'bits™'* and I've put them both in the Dell, with the idea that I can install Centos on one, and Debien on the other and change between them with a simple change of the drive cable (I want to avoid messing with boot manager and multiple boot OS's at the moment).



*Well one of them, I'm not sure how, but I think the parts breed when I'm not looking (it would explain the odd hybrid soundcard, modem I disposed of a while back).
 
Try Debian & CentOS, either are fit for the job.. it's just down to personal preference.

Debian Minimal install very good, CentOS on the other hand.. I didn't like.
 
I've run into my first minor issue with debian* - apparently there is an error with dev /ad0 during partition (it can't find it:p)

From a quick google it looks like the partition manager may not be happy.
I'm going to have a bit more of a play later (possibly use a windows disk to wipe the old windows partition that is on the drive), and probably set up one of my spare monitors, as at the moment i'm having to swap between monitor settings to check information :)

On the plus side the Dell isn't a P3 700, it's actually a P4 3.06 with 512mb of DDR ram, so better than I'd thought.


*Well apart from the first DVD I burned didn't work.
 
argh I remember the last time I tried Linux I at least managed to get to a desktop/working command line :p

I'm having problems with debian-6.0.4-kfreebsd-i386 which basically doesn't want to see the hard drive...it gets to the point where it's meant to be doing the partition then gives an error about dev /ad0
Debian 6.0.4 i386 simply gets to the install screen then gives some message about "unsupported graphics mode" (I think it is), before going weird.

And Centos 6.2 installs fine, but then I get to a login at boot that does not accept the password I gave it during the instal (reinstalled twice now to use easier passwords).
I'm not sure if it's because it didn't give me a login name and is expecting a default on (I've tried admin/Admin/ADMIN/root/Root/ROOT etc), and at the moment i'm too tired to go looking for a simple guide as I've been trying to get one or other for a large part of the day.

Wolfy is too tired to be patient tonight.
 
I'm not 100% sure why I chose the freebsd version, I think it was automatic as I recognised the name from a previous play with linux many years ago.

I've downloaded the i386 netinst image now, and will try that this evening :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom