[clug] Distro advice for server

[Arafangion]

Arafangion wrote:

>Chris Smart wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Dear fellow CLUG mailing list'ers,
>>
>>I am after some advice as to what distro to run on my server that has been
>>sitting ever so patiently under my desk for the last 6 months. Can you help?
>>
>>Here are some details that might affect the distro choice:
>>
>>1) It is a dual opteron machine with 8GB ram etc, h/w raid 6 controller
>>(areca 1220 pci express) and lots of hdd space.. I want to run vserver on
>>it, so that I can give virtual servers to various people. It has a tyan
>>"lights out" card, but I think this is non-distro specific.
>>
>>2) I want to run in 64bit, but be able execute 32bit if needed.
>>
>>3) It will be mail / web / CMS / DNS / rsync / vserver / subversion etc type
>>server.
>>
>>4) I guess I want some sort of "hardened" type security on it, not sure if
>>SELinux is the way to go (or perhaps RSBAC, grsecurity and PaX etc), nor how
>>"easy" it is to configure on the various distros. (Do people bother with
>>this sort of thing?)
>>
>>I have been playing with Ubuntu but confess I'm an Ubuntu noob.
>>The distros that cross my mind are:
>>RedHat EL
>>CentOS
>>Fedora Core
>>Debian Unstable (no AMD64 on Sarge)
>>Ubuntu Server
>>Gentoo (custom built and managed)
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>I am a Debian person, so I would naturally recommend Debian, however I
>am not sure what Debian is currently like in the 64-bit arena.  Just a
>comment: Debian Unstable is a high-maintanance distro, and I will never
>recommend it. (I currently maintain a number of Debian Sarge systems,
>and I love it).
>There does appear to be an unofficial Debian Sarge for the AMD64, but I
>have never used it: http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/
>
>According to the FAQ there, " The first planned official Debian release
>of 64bit userland for AMD64 will be Etch (Sarge+1).", which appears
>promising.  If you do choose Debian, I would choose either the unoffical
>sarge, or the official etch (If available).
>  
>
I might also mention that there are two approaches, a "pure" 64-bit port
of the distro, where 32-bit programs are run inside of a chroot, and
having a 32-bit distro with a lib64.

I believe Fedora chooses the later, while Debian (and probably Gentoo)
chooses the former.