Joe Padilla wrote:
I have a small hosting company and I am going to be changing out some windows servers with some linux servers but since I am a newbie at linux, I would like to find a linux distro that has a solid company behind it. A company that I could call for help 24/7 when need be. A company that has support contracts were they could assist me (walk me through) in setting up some of the services I might need.
I'd recommend RedHat. See http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/compare/server/ for support and pricing options. SuSE is another viable option but I think generally in the hosting world you'll find RedHat to be much more common.
Another option would be to work with a local consultant who knows a distribution well and can assist you. That opens your distribution options up much further.
Consider taking a look at some of the hosting control panels for Linux such as Plesk (http://www.sw-soft.com/en/products/plesk75reloaded/) and Ensim (http://www.ensim.com/products/pro/index.html) - they sit on top of Linux and help configure the OS to provide the usual hosting services. They also provide a nice pretty web frontend for your customers to use.
And don't forget about community support resources such as IRC and mailing lists dedicated to either the distro of your choice or to the hosting business. There are some that are quite active and effectively open 24 hours.
-- Joshua Penix http://www.binarytribe.com Binary Tribe Linux Integration Services & Network Consulting -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-newbie
