Good info here. I feel your pain with Gentoo, that was a monster of an install on my test machine that after a while I was just not interested in.
I moved over to using Ubuntu 5.10, one install attempt in server mode, then the more successful attempt in normal mode. From there I used the simple package manager to get every application (with the dependencies) I needed to get up and running. I found the friendly 'windows-guy-moving-to-Linux' Ubuntu interface lets me get to configuring the packages a lot faster, thus keeping my momentum to roll out new things going. So far Ubuntu has met all my needs for what it is, a no cost server to test open source software in our otherwise Windows dominated network. Matt Warren IT Technician A+ N+ MCP MCSA 414-847-1207 Ken Cook Co. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Navarre Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 3:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [IMail Forum] OT and a bit wordy - Linux I know that a lot of people here have pondered Linux as either an alternative to Windows Server or for DNS or a firewall. I certainly have plans that would be cheaper and possibly better using Linux. As a Windows guy, I really wasn't up to speed with Linux. I've recently spent some time trying to get there. I thought I would share some of my experiences so far. The first choice is which distribution to install. Using google to decide is almost impossible. It seems that the fanatics for a particular distribution are just as bad as the anti-Microsoft zealots. The best advice I received is also the most daunting - try 'em until you find one you like. I tried Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu and CentOS. A few notes about each one. Debian - It is well known for stability. They have three versions: "stable", "testing" and "unstable". The advantage of stable is that all the software in the stable tree has been highly tested and should work well together. The disadvantage is that it is often behind other distributions in terms of features. I got "stable" up and running, but I didn't get a warm and fuzzy feeling about it. I also felt torn; I wanted some of the software in "testing" but wasn't sure I wanted the risk. Of course other distributions that have the same software in their regular version would probably have the same risk as Debian's "testing" tree, but the terminology bothered me. I guess I am not sure how risky the "testing" version would be, and not having the latest software would bother me too much with "stable". Installation wasn't too bad, but it seemed like it was aimed for fairly geeky people. I also felt that the message boards and such for Debian were pretty Newbie hostile. Gentoo - I didn't really think I'd ever deploy it, but I wanted to check it out. Gentoo is designed so that you only pick exactly what you want and then that software is compiled specifically for you machine. I never got it to boot from my hardware-based RAID system (Compaq DL360). To be fair I didn't spend a lot of time trouble-shooting. Gentoo is not for the faint of heart. You have to specify every tiny little detail. My biggest concern after playing around with the installer is how long it would take to make changes or create a new system in an emergency. I can see that Gentoo might make a really wicked-fast and efficient system, but in my world I make changes frequently based on client needs, and I feel that even when I became proficient at Gentoo it would take too long to make changes. Ubuntu - This was supposed to be the polar opposite of Gentoo. Some Linux heads are kind of pushing this as the desktop-replacement Linux. There is a server install option, and that is what I tried. I have to say I was disappointed. It didn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy; I still felt I had to make a lot of manual and petty decisions during the installation. The worst was that I also couldn't get this to boot after install. I spent a little while trouble-shooting, and I think I probably could have fixed it. I got frustrated though with a supposedly easy installation that couldn't work correctly "out of the box" with hardware as standard as a Compaq server. I punted. CentOs - This is basically Red Hat Enterprise Linux without the name. Red Hat sells Enterprise Linux along with support to corporations who want someone to call when things go wrong. However, it is all open source. CentOs takes the freely available source code, removes the branding and packages it so that morons like me can get it up and running. So far I am highly impressed. Installation was by far the easiest of the distros I tried. I choose the single CD install, which means that I didn't have a graphic interface. However installing one is pretty easy with "yum", the latest package manager. One I installed the graphic interface (I choose KDE), I was able to start making things happen. It has a nice graphical interface for Apache, and so far I am finding my way around pretty well. My intention is to take one of my websites and move it to Apache and mysql. I have been trying to use the Zen shopping cart, but it hasn't been running to well with IIS. Hopefully it will work the way it should under Apache and mysql on Linux. With any luck I'll have it up and running in the next day or so. I hope somebody finds this useful. I know for me the hardest part has been trying to figure out where to start. From what I have seen, I would definitely recommend CentOS as a place for Windows jockeys to start when looking for a good Linux server distro. Paul Navarre To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
