[plug] Debian V Redhat for server

[John Summerfield]

> "Greg Raftery (Greg Raftery)" wrote:
> > 
> > Im after some opinions for which distribution to install for a server.
> > I am considering Redhat for its purported ease of use and because it
> > is a relatively no-brainer install. But I have heard good things about
> > Debian on this list, but I know it will take me a bit longer to
> > install.
> 
> Like Matt says, it's not hard.  The major advantage for Debian will be
> keeping the machine up to date.  I've heard countless horror stories
> about Red Hat upgrades (and, let's face it, unless you're throwing the
> server away after a year then an upgrade is going to be on the cards).
> Debian's upgrades on the other hand are virtually always flawless. 
> Debian also tends to be slightly more secure, generally better thought
> out and with more sensible defaults.  (Please don't let anyone who likes
> Red Hat take this personally - it's just my opinion based on my own
> experiences and others I've heard.)

I think the horror stories may be over stated. I have a system here that 
functions as a server; I installed RHL 5.0 on it. It's updated to kernel 
2.2.12 by applying applicable (and assorted other) rpms; I build kernels 
from tarballs/patches. Maintenance has been pretty simple.

My RHL 4.2 server's been a little harder; the problem's finding libc5 
rpms. I've tried building some from source, but there have been problems 
there too, partly lack of space. I finally got a 2.2 kernel on it by 
building a few packages from tarballs - those proved quite easy.

Upgrading individual packages with rpm has become easier with the advent 
of rpm 3 which arrived with RHL6 (and is packaged for RHL 4-6, I'm not 
sure about 3).

rpm --freshen  <package list>

Uses packages from the list to upgrade installed packages on the system; 
it does not install new ones.

-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.