[TriLUG] What Distro Would You Recommend?

[Rick DeNatale]

On 12/19/05, Brian Weaver <cmdrclueless at gmail.com> 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. I have two primary concerns: 1) Security & Managability.
> 2) Long Term Support
>
> I know that CentOS (RHEL Respin) has multi year support. Anyone know how
> long Debian releases are supported?

I believe that Debian support is event-based rather than time-based.
They support one release prior to the current stable release, but only
for a fairly short  time.  Woody (the release previous to Sarge) is
supported with security fixes until May 2006, or until security
support starts for Etch (Sarge's successor) which ever comes first.
http://www.debian.org/News/2005/20050708

You might want to look at Ubuntu.  It has the benefits of being Debian
based, which makes upgrading fairly easy, but it also has time based
release and support schedules. They've had server installation
configurations for at least the last two releases and recently
announced a formal server project.

http://www.linuxcompatible.org/Ubuntu_Server_Project_Unleashed_s60497.html

New releases come out every six months in April and October, which is
good if you want to keep current. But the Ubuntu Foundation also
promises a minimum of 3 years of security support on desktop
installations and 5 years on servers.

http://www.canonical.com/UbuntuFoundation


--
Rick DeNatale

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