Re: Linux distro

On 8/2/07, Ron Johnson <ron(dot)l(dot)johnson(at)cox(dot)net> wrote:
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> On 08/01/07 10:37, Owen Hartnett wrote:
> > At 4:52 PM +0200 8/1/07, Leif B. Kristensen wrote:
> >> On Wednesday 1. August 2007 16:15, Madison Kelly wrote:
> >>
> >>> /Personally/, I love Debian on servers.
> >>>
> >>> It's not quite as 'hardcore' as Gentoo (a great distro, but not one to
> >>> start with!). It's the foundation of many of the popular distros
> >>> (Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) and the Debian crew is very careful
> >>> about what they put into the 'stable' repositories.
> >>
> >> I agree totally. Debian in a server configuration is quite easy to get
> >> started with, and is rock solid. My first Linux "test server" (my old
> >> Pentium 133 MHz desktop) way back in 2002 ran Debian Woody. I kept it
> >> running until it died from old age a couple of years ago. Later I fell
> >> in love with Gentoo. But if I'd have to run a server with maximum
> >> stability and uptime, I think that I'd still prefer Debian.
> >
> > As an alternative viewpoint, I've been running the latest postgres on
> > Mac OS X Server 10.4, and it's been great for me. It was my first time
> > using a server, and my first serious use of postgres (although I have
> > had a lot of previous unix experience.) All the power of unix, all the
> > ease of the Macintosh (and it's server installation gives you lots of
>
> Pardon me for being the contrarian, but why does a server need a
> GUI? Isn't that just extra RAM & CPU overhead that could be more
> profitably put to use powering the application?

A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
resources. Some enterprise management tools are in java which require
a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing X, so IMO
a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome is maybe
overkill. Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen saver :-)

merlin