Date: 11/07/04 (Apache)    Keywords: web, linux

Of late I have been planning to setup a webserver¹, running off of a box built from the old parts of my newly upgraded pc over my cable connection to the 'net. I don't like windows (3.1/95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP) as a OS for running a webserver²,or any other related activity, so I planned to go with linux. I had a hardcopy of good 'ol SuSE (6.1 kernel) but upon installing it, I found that what was good 4 years ago isn't quite up to what I enjoy today. So I installed a copy Redhat that I had from work. I had built a web server for the department on it, and after a bit of futzing around, enjoyed it very much. Looking around though, I found that there were a number of distros that I had only been vaguely familiar with before and each of them seemed to have some rather handy feature.

So the question in the end is, what do I want out of the OS for my server?

1: a stable webserver. This is covered by pretty much all distros, so no hard choices yet.
2: an awesome desktop and USB 2.0 support. This is the secondary consideration, but rather important at the moment.

I've looked around and talked to a few people on my friends list and a few more on IRC and have been left with more questions than answers. So far, the more I look at redhat, the more my opinion of it can be summed up by one word: 'meh.' A few friends (you know who you are :P ) have been raving to me about gentoo, but I haven't seen or heard enough about it to make an informed decision. There's always FreeBSD, but that's a bit hardcore and not so much on the 'overflowing with spiffy GUI options' side. Old SuSE doesn't seem to have anything really gigantic going for it either. I have no experience with slackware.

As desktops go, KDE looks rather cool, as does Athena. I'ved used Gnome and it is better than CDE, but then again, what isn't?

This is where you, my friends come in. Revel me with stories, personal experience and your wisdom.



(x-posted, appologies if you see this more than once)

¹The webserver in question will be running primarily a website for students from my university, giving the low down on the professors so they know who to go for and who to avoid, and many other handy bits of school related information.

²The one and only time I ever used windows as webserver (W2K) was when a web developer at work wanted to show me something. So we installed it on my box. It was compromised in 30 seconds. That may be a bit on the generous side, believe it or not. That is why I have no love for windows as an OS in this respect.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/apache/13645.html