Re: Linux distro

On 8/1/07, paolo(at)ecometer(dot)it <paolo(at)ecometer(dot)it> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
> ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Paolo Saudin

Be careful when rolling something out you are not familiar with. You
really shouldn't go into production with an OS you don't know.

As for Linux, using an *Enterprise OS* is the ONLY type of OS you
should use. Others may say that they "never had any problems" with
non-enterprise OS versions, but they have missed the point. An
enterprise OS is something that is tried-and-true, has long term
support, and has been proven to be stable and working. That basically
leaves RedHat Enterprise (and it's clones) and some versions of SuSE.
Ubuntu claims to have a "long term support" version, but it hasn't
been around long enough to be proven.

My recommendation is to go with CentOS, which is the best clone of
Redhat enterprise (redhat even works with them behind the scenes).
They release updates within 1-7 days of when an update comes out from
redhat, and it has been around a long time; tried and true.

Another important point to make is that if you plan on having more
servers in the future, you really want to have the same OS on
everything. It's not a good idea to try one OS here, then try another
OS there. That's fine for your desktop or for doing research, but is
an unsuitable strategy when deploying things in production.

Ubuntu, fedora, and many of the others are "desktop" linuxes, and are
not suitable for use on a server.