[Linux4christians] Linux Server

[Howard Coles Jr.]

On Wednesday 14 June 2006 2:30 pm, jasonite at comcast.net wrote:
> I've heard about how robust of a server that Debian is, or so some say
> anyway. What's the general consensus around here? I've got a capstone
> project that's coming up that has me installing a Linux server just as a
> file server. I'm sure that just about any distribution will work for that,
> but I'd like to find one that works where it says it works. My former boss
> downloaded and tested out Fedora Core 5 when it first came out and it was
> buggy as all get out. It took all kinds of technical gymnastics for him to
> get it to join the domain and even then it didn't halfway work. His main
> sticking point was why even have a GUI for something if it won't work?
> (and, yes, he did know what he was doing...the guy is a geek of nature)
>
> Anyway, I was considering either Debian, Ubuntu, or maybe even Mandriva.
> I'm not necessarily looking for a distribution that is a full-automation
> distro. I just want one that will work and work well.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.  I can attest to their abilities, as we run them 
as a part of our Enterprise now.  The SAMBA setup is very straight forward 
through YaST, and they are cheaper than RedHat.  If you are looking for Free, 
I'd say you'd be hard pressed to do better than Debian for Linux.  It takes a 
little more on the setup, but with SWAT you should be able to get it going.  
Not only that but you can set it up with the level of stability that's comfy 
for you, they have three levels, Stable, (old but solid), Testing, (newish, 
but could have a bug), and Unstable (Bleeding edge, and somewhat buggy).
I've run Debian based distros here at Home for quite some time, and I've never 
had a problem with 'bugginess' :-D.   They're bent on having an extremely 
stable distro.

I think the Latest OpenSUSE could use A LOT of help, as they've had issues 
with package management.  I know its ndiswrapper will cause it to lock up 
hard, which could point to some networking issues.  But, the Enterprise stuff 
from SUSE is solid.

-- 

See Ya'
Howard Coles Jr.
John 3:16!