[Linux4christians] Linux Server

[Mike McMullin]

On Sun, 2006-06-18 at 01:21 -0400, Ken Sprouse / WA3FKG wrote:
> Howard Coles Jr. wrote:
> > 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.
> >
> >   
> I have go agree.  Our church needed a file server and Internet gateway.
> I had been playing with Red Hat and it was the only distribution that I
> knew well enough to try but a friend suggested that I try SuSe out so I
> loaded it on a spare laptop and was surprised at how easy the
> installation was.  So next I loaded it on a desktop system in my ham
> radio shack and started using it on a daily basis.  Then our network
> manager at church loaded it on a system that had been replaced with a
> newer faster box for our school secretary.  It has been working well
> ever since.  We are running all open source software on the box as our
> IT budget is thinner than a shoe string.  It was not without more than a
> little head scratching, wailing and gnashing of teeth though.  :-)  We
> are running version 9.1 and I think the current version is 10.1 for the
> free distribution.  I'm running 10.0 on my systems at home.  I think if
> all you need is a file server with SAMBA you could load up anything
> between 9.0 and 10.0 , configure it and walk away.  Good luck with your
> project.

  SuSE has a 6 month release cycle and the system is patched from SuSE
(Security etc.) for two years from release date.  If you go SuSE go with
10.0, there are a few gotcha's with 10.1 that they engineers are working
their tails off to fix at this point.  I'm running 10.0 on my main
system and 10.1 on a laptop, fyi.

  Mike