[TriLUG] Linux Distribution for server Opinions

Scott G. Hall ScottGHall at BellSouth.Net
Fri Jan 23 15:51:00 EST 2009


I've just had the recent pleasure of evaluating a number of distributions
for building a couple of servers, testing each for a couple of weeks and
putting them through several what-if paces:

CentOS 5.2
Novell SuSE 10.1
OpenSuSE 11.1
Ubuntu 8.04
Xandros Professional 4.1  (I had it on hand to try anyway ...)
FreeBSD 7.1
Solaris 10
OpenSolaris 2008.11  -- under evaluation now

Sorry, but RHEL wasn't evaluated -- not my call, due to a problem with
free eval program and installation media.  Now that 5.3 has been released,
I'll see if I can't take a look at it as well.  I also wonder how Fedora
compares.

In the recent past I've had bad experiences with Mandriva and Knoppix,
so I didn't even bother evaluating them this time around.

Besides a communications server, as you are looking at (same applications),
I am evaluating for an internal company webserver, developers server
(a wiki, CVS repository, doxygen, etc), and Microsoft services server.
Each of my tests was done on the identical x86 hardware (NOT 64-bit),
a 586 build of the OS and packages if possible, 386 build otherwise.
Goals also included evaluating security, ease of administration, overall
performance -- not just speed, but handling failures and failovers and
recovery, diagnostics, various storage devices, and complexity and cost
of maintenance.

A desire, if time and resources are available, would be to test the
frugal linux distros: Slackware, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, Vector
Linux, and so on.

I found that the commercial editions: Novell, Solaris and Xandros, were
at the top of stability, setup, and maintainability.  An overall
impression was that they just felt solid.  Of course, they were the
most expensive initially, but I see a good reduction of maintenance
and administration costs in the long run.

Compared to their commercial counterparts, OpenSuSE and OpenSolaris
just didn't work out as well.  I had package installation problems,
configuration problems, and numerous crashes due to incompatibilities
between packages.  Also their performance did not seem as fast, though
the difference in the measurements are negligible.  The free version
of Xandros evaluated the same as their commercial version, after you
added and configured the packages on your own -- you just don't the
proprietary Microsoft addons.  The cost savings of using the free
version of each of these is far offset by the time and effort involved
in getting them setup, and their commercial versions are more solid.

CentOS was a solid performer, though it did take a bit to get it
installed and setup.  It and FreeBSD fell in the middle of the range
of criteria.  The various Ubuntu's (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu) all
were identical (who runs a GUI desktop for a server?), and were right
behind, but I did have problems with the configuration of several
packages and a few performance hiccups.

I would choose Novell's commercial SuSE if you need better Microsoft
support, because the integration of proprietary software.  Otherwise
SuSE and Sun's Solaris are pretty much an even match, followed closely
by Xandros.  I wish I could see how RHEL would fare compared to these.

My next choice would be either CentOS or FreeBSD.  I wonder if Fedora
Core would fall here as well, or compare with the above?  Ummmm ...
Ubuntu falls a little behind.

I would stay away from OpenSuSE, OpenSolaris, and from other recent
experience, Mandriva and Knoppix.  There is way too much stability
problems, dependency on the GUI for administration, and far too much
babysitting needed to make these run well.

Good luck!

Steve Kuekes wrote:
> I'm finally replacing my 4 year old email server at work with 
> something more up to date.   I think its running old Redhat 9 
> (pre-Fedora)
>
> This will be a server that is on a dedicated T-1 link to the internet 
> hosted on our in-house corporate network.
>
> These are the applications that I'm planning on running on the server.
>
> * DNS
> * Dovecot, postfix, mysql for an IMAP email server for multiple domains
> * Openvpn for secure remote access to our internal network
> * Webmail access to the IMAP server (I'm looking for a good open 
> source webmail package, let me know what you think about this too.)
>
> I don't care about GUI management apps like the Fedora 
> system-config-??? apps as I manage the system from SSH and the command 
> line, mostly.
>
> I've been using Fedora for my other Linux servers, but I'm looking to 
> see if there is something that is better.  I've had problems with yum 
> getting access to update servers for older versions.  It also seems 
> that Fedora doesn't have standard rpm's for dovecot and postfix using 
> mysql as the authorization and configuration database.  Everyone seems 
> to be using Ubuntu, so maybe I should join the party there??

-- 
Scott G. Hall
Raleigh, NC, USA
ScottGHall at BellSouth.Net




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