> We can not seem to come to an agreement on the best operating system to run > spam assassin. So we have decided to post this question to the mailing list > so we can have other opinions. I realize everyone will have a different > opinion on the subject and some will have none at all, linux is linux and > unix is unix. So I would like to hear users experiences using different > operating systems. Pros/Cons/Problems/Headaches/etc. The operating systems > I'm most interested in are Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware, FreeBSDs, and > OpenSolaris.
Now why do you have to go start a flame war ;). I guess I'll add my 2 cents. Let me start by saying they're all great choices (though I can't comment on OpenSolaris). I prefer Linux. It seems to me that more and more development is becoming Linux centric. It makes sense since it definitely seems to have a larger user base (though I'm sure SA is very much developed with BSD and Linux in mind). I know when I moved from FreeBSD to Linux I definitely noticed a performance improvement. This has also been very well documented several times.. In most situations Linux outperforms BSD (though often at the cost of stability). Here's one such test, though it is slightly old FreeBSD 5.1 and Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test7. http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/ It also seems that Linux gets a lot more interesting features, IMO. Reiser4, SELinux, LVM2 (does FreeBSD have that with online volume resizing and snapshots?). I would say you should analyze your needs. What are you most comfortable with? You'll be happy with Linux or FreeBSD, so it's more a matter of personal preference. For a rule of thumb maybe you could say; If I want to be stability centric == FreeBSD, if I want to be feature and/or speed centric == Linux. (Knowing that both are faster then *Certain* other operating systems) As for my choice in Linux: I personally like SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) for my servers. Very nice update features, solid stability and performance, decent package selection, and YaST is quite nice if you don't like hand editing config files. You don't need a gui to run it since it has full ncurses support (RHEL's tool doesn't I believe). SLES 10 is due out this summer too with some impressive bundling (XEN for one). Ubuntu seems a bit desktop focused for me as far as serving is concerned. Debian stable is too old, but apt is amazing and as someone else mentioned you can mix stable, unstable, and testing packages together so it's really no big deal. Can't really comment on Slackware having only used it a few times, though I think it could use some better package management from what I remember. Gentoo is amazing. I would definitely say you should run Gentoo if you want a testing environment for bleeding edge features. It makes a fine server too if you have a few boxes and can use distcc to reduce the time to update packages and distribute load so users don't notice. I have had a few cases where ebuilds have been broken. That's not fun. It's definitely not the most stable for a server, but you can't beat it's package management, customization (except for maybe LFS), and speed. Ryan -- 'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks Did gyre and gimble in their cave All mimsy was the CS-VAX And Cory raths outgrabe. "Beware the software rot, my son! The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash! Beware the broken pipe, and shun The frumious system crash!"
