I am trying to decide on what O/S should I get, and would appreciate comments from experienced users.

I am not interested in getting the latest and greatest, and just want a stable and secure server that does not suck in resources like a hungry bear (or like MS does). So, with the emphasis on stability, security and optimization, which of the following operation systems would you recommend?

- CentOS Enterprise Linux, Version 4
- Debian Stable
- Redhat Enterprise Linux, Version 4?

Thank you...

It depends on what you like.


They're all good, all stable.

I'm partial to Red Hat or Cent OS, but someone else might like Debian. It just all depends on what your more comfortable with.

Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 is the commerical version of Linux offered by Redhat. CentOS is the clone of Redhat Enterprise 4. Debian is just another distribution.

Use the OS which you are familiar with. That way, you can make it stable, secured and optimized.

IMHO, they are pretty much about the same as far as the core is concerned, Linux is a mix-and-match of freely available components.

Better question? What do you want to do with said server?

I have been working all day yesterday between CentOS and Debian servers on one of our networks and I must say, although Debian's apt-get is pretty fast and easier than RPm dependencies...I just find some if it way out there. vim, for example, has way different commands than the rest of the Linux distros and no idea why.

I'm partial to Red Hat Enterprise 4 when Gentoo isn't available. It's pretty solid and works quite well.

Hi,

The server will be used for serving web pages via LAMP and will have memcached and probably Lighty for images+movies.

Regarding stability, I want to clarify this a bit. I have been using Fedora Core 4-5 on my desktop, and don't like yum too much. In fact, yum corrupted itself 2 times within the last 1 year (upgraded one package it depends on, but failed to upgrade itself, or vice versa, which failed package dependencies).

I would rather have RH Enterprise, but I want to put a cronjob for YUM to update the system with latest patches, etc. However, instability of YUM scares me a bit. As for Debian, I have been hearing great things about APT (that it is way better than YUM), but don't know it as much as I know Redhat.

As a side note, even though CentOS is a derivative of RH, it is hugely popular on shared hosting companies. Any idea why?

That is why I was asking whether I should go with RH Enterpise or Debian.

thanks for all the comments

Get Red Hat Enterprise 4. That doesn't use yum. It uses up2date. I know Lighttpd works on there, too. I'll even give you the script we use to install Lighttpd on CentOS/RHEL4 boxes.

Doesn't CentOS have the option to use up2date as well instead of yum?

So, both CentOS and Redhat does not have any package managers, which also means that whenever we need to install something, we need to install it from RPMs and/or compile it ourselves and resolve dependencies?

As far as I know, up2date is only for updating whatever is installed on your system, and dealing with dependency issues was a big nightmare on my desktop, though this is a server and only needs certain packages.

I have yet to run into any depency issues on my linux servers here...generally everything you need is installed.

Sometimes you might need to install a program or something...like I was needing to install a image hosting script, but I need a certain program. But the server allready had all the dependcies that the program needed so it was a simple tar.....thn ./ and bingo.

Cent OS does have the option for yum so you can use that if you need

for example

yum install mrtg

etc

Well, unlike most other webhosts, The Planet does spend on the software and hardware here by getting you the commercial RHEL 4 instead of just cutting down to offer just free OS.

You see that other than the ValueXtreme configuration, The Planet offers RHEL 4 for free while others charges for it.

It is most likely down to the dollar and cents issue here. Less other web hosts need to spend, the more money they make for themselves