Posted by Matthew Weier O'Phinney on 08/15/05 19:18

* Sebastian <sebastian@broadbandgaming.net>:
> I will be building a new server and wondering what would be a good
> choice for php/mysql/apache other than redhat.
>
> I was thinking either Debian or CentOS. can anyone share their thoughts
> on them for php environment?
>
> does anyone use them on high traffic php sites? or is there not a
> difference in what distro you run php on?
>
> sorry these may sound like stupid questions but i mostly used redhat
> since i started using php and thought i'd try something different.

Use an OS that either doesn't have an end-of-life for support, or which
can be upgraded to a new version without breaking everything.

I've used Redhat and Fedora, but will never use them for production
servers again -- after a couple years getting out-of-date, it becomes
next to impossible to find packages for them, and upgrading to a new
version almost always requires an attended install, and usually down
time.

Debian and Gentoo are very nice in that you can upgrade packages as they
become available, usually with no issues. You might also want to look
into one of the BSDs, as the ports system many of them employ also
allows seamless upgrades in most situations.

--
Matthew Weier O'Phinney
Zend Certified Engineer
http://weierophinney.net/matthew/

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