[TriLUG] What Distro Would You Recommend?

[Ryan Leathers]

heh - so what you're saying is you want Debian, but with one of those
big red "Easy Buttons" from Staples that will future-proof you.

Just go with Debian and "apt-get dist-upgrade" when the time is right.
This will probably be more satisfying to you than Ubuntu since you'll
immediately have more available packages without the temptation to flirt
with backporting, and you've flatly stated your disinterest in graphical
whiz-bang so lauded by Ubuntu fans. (FYI I use Ubuntu on my work PC)

Ryan



On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 13:42 -0500, Brian Weaver wrote:
> Ah, but I don't want a GUI. Nor do I want to use webmin and similar tools.
> In trying to keep the box secure, I want to have as little additional
> non-necessary tools on the box as possible. That's part of what had me
> playing with Debian instead of just using CentOS. RHEL just seems to throw
> in everything but the kitchen sink on a minimal installation. I was able to
> get pretty minimal with Debian, but I was not sure of the longevity of a
> Debian distribution.
> 
> I don't have any GUI or auto config tools on my current box. I need to
> configure something then I find the appropriate config and use Vim. The
> great thing about Linux and the associated applications is that once it's
> configured you normally don't have to touch them again. So I'm willing to go
> through any "pain" of editing config files and avoid autoconfig tools for
> what is normally a one time task.
> 
> -Brian
> 
> On 12/19/05, Ryan Leathers <ryan.leathers at globalknowledge.com> wrote:
> >
> > If I were doing this for myself I'd use Debian.  I'd want to know
> > exactly what I had and how it was glued together.
> >
> > Since you seem pretty sure you won't be able to invest time in tweaking
> > or tuning, I'd suggest something else.  Recently, Israel Pattison turned
> > me onto Clark Connect http://www.clarkconnect.com/  I might have some
> > reservations about using this in the most serious and demanding business
> > environments, but I'd also say its probably as close to perfect as you
> > can get for what you've described.  In under an hour, you'll wind up
> > with a fully featured and tightly designed mail/file/print server with a
> > well thought out gui management console.  Its hard to beat in a short
> > time frame.
> >
> > Ryan
> >
> > On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 10:07 -0500, Brian Weaver wrote:
> > > Without trying to start a distro war I'd like to get some decent input
> > so I
> > > can attempt to make a sound decision for once in my life. I have a
> > server
> > > that I'm running at home that I need to upgrade. I'm currently running
> > > Mandrake 9.2 (FiveStar) release. It has been a long time since I've been
> > > able to update the box and I need to move to a currently supported
> > > distrobution for security reasons. I have another box I was planning on
> > > making my primary server, just so I could turn on the old one if
> > something
> > > went wrong.
> > >
> > > The problem I have is which distrubution makes the most sense from a
> > > stability and supportability. The two that I've been messing with are
> > CentOS
> > > 4 and Debian Sarge, other suggestions are welcome. I would investigate
> > Linux
> > > >From Scratch, but I have a minimal amount of time. Basically, I'm going
> > to
> > > have to struggle to get the time necessary to setup server initially.
> > After
> > > that I'm only going to have minimal, if any, time to tune or tweek. My
> > > requirements are pretty simply....
> > >
> > > 1) Postfix, fetchmail, procmail, mutt, mysql and DBMail for 2 users.
> > (both
> > > mail users use imap)
> > > 2) Samba for Windows 2K and Mac OS X file sharing.
> > > 3) Printing from Windows 2K (cups)
> > > 4) SSH for remote access.
> > > 5) Iptables, etc for hardening where necessary
> > > 6) Software Raid and/or drivers for 3ware raid cards.
> > > 6) Down the road Apache/PHP may be necessary, java would be a nice to
> > have.
> > >
> > > The box will sit behind a linksys firewall and the only "exposed" port
> > is
> > > for the SSH server.
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