Re: Which distro for a server?

From: Jeroen Geilman (jeroen_at_nospam.net)
Date: 01/01/04 

Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 01:07:07 +0100

Max Khitrov wrote:
> First of all, I started with linux not that long ago, a few weeks
> perhaps.

Welcome!

> Have some reading material that I'm still going over and so I'm
> still in the learning stage.

Trust me - you will forever be in the learning stage...;-)

> However, the only real reason why I even
> bothered setting up a linux box is because I wanted to have a solid
> system that will never be used as a workstation, only as a server.

You have mistaken what Linux is.
It is more stable than Windows as a server OR workstation.
The only thing you can't always do on Linux is play Windows games, but
that's not what a workstation is for, anyway.

> In
> other words, I don't want any stuff on it for things like multimedia,
> mail (clients that is), office tools, etc...

Yes, you said - you want a server.

> Now yes, I realize that all I have to do is pick a distribution and just
> not install any of the packages that come with it,

IOW not have a distribution ?

> but after going
> through about 4 or 5 distros I found it very had not to have all the
> extra junk installed (even with the minimum setup on the first start-up
> the menus are already loaded with things that I'll never use).

Menus ? Oh boy have you missed the point completely...
My servers do not have X windows installed, I have one that runs xvnc
for experimentation, but for a production server - who needs a GUI ?

> With that in mind, what would be your recommendation for a linux
> distribution that was made to be a server (or can be made into that
> easier then others),

ANY Linux distribution can be "made into" a server.
As for easier... that, of course, is completely up to you.

> and yet not too complex that'll get me completely lost.

Getting lost is the first step on the road to learning...

> Obviously there's going to be a trade off,

Not really - I don't do trade-offs, and run 3 boxes on Linux - only one
still has Windows (for the games, man ;-)

> but I'd still like to
> hear some suggestions and a short explanation if possible.

OK, to recap:
- Any decent Linux distro can be used as a very stable server, for basic
Internet work or simple file sharing you can get away with as little as
300 MHz and 64MB of RAM. With 1GHZ+ (what I use) you can even use it for
distributed processing / clustering, huge databases, the works...
Try that with Windoze.
- If you want something that's easy to maintain, you either need to:
    - use a specialised server distro like e-smith or clarkconnect, or
    - learn to use webmin, which basically makes any distro manageable.
Both e-smith SME server and ClarkConnect serve as very decent Windows
and Web/Mail servers - out of the box, very secure, all administration
is done over a web interface.
- If you have dollars to spend, you could get one of the (quite
expensive) server distros like SuSe enterprise or such.
You said not too complex, so those really are all of your choices for
the moment.
Don't for a minute harbour the illusion that you'll be *using Linux*,
though - you won't.

But then, you don't want to.

Relevant Pages