How to pick a Linux distro

dougal85

I want to install Linux on an old machine just for the crack and set it us as a good old LAMP.

How do i know what distro to choose? Is there all that much difference? What is usually used for hosting - if there is a usual.

acidbox

I use CentOS, which is the free community version of Red Hat Enterprise. I think you will find that many people use this code base (Redhat = Centos = Fedora). It has good community support to.

sheephat

Redhat Centos Fedora

Three Good choices

i used Fedora in my last machine, although recently i have been giving debian a go

Protato

I assume this is your first venture into the *nix world.

Pick which ever flavor has documentation that makes the most sense to you. Each flavor will have it's own set of specific features, but the core is going to be the same. After you've learned a bit about linux, you can make the jump to another distro that better suits your needs.

Personally I'm a fan of Gentoo, but have heard good things about Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora. I know Gentoo gets bashed a lot, but I found the documentation to be well above par, and being able to "emege" packages through the portage system is pretty cool.

dougal85

Protato wrote:
I assume this is your first venture into the *nix world.

Not quite, I installed it about 5/6 years ago when I had a winmodem so wasn't impressed since I couldn't even get online. I have also used it a bit at university (but never had to set-up) So I'm reasonably familiar with using it and have installed once, but I didn't know much then.

I'll do a bit more reading around. Thanks for the suggestions.

Since I'm mostly playing around and its nothing to serious, I've also read and seen video's about XGL - can that be set up on any distro?

Protato

Gentoo supports it, so I'd assume a lot of the others do too.
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_XGL#Installing_Xgl_2

piersk

Ubuntu all the way

piersk

The installation of Ubuntu (desktop, not server) is one of the easiest I've ever done. Boot into Live CD. Double click "install" icon on desktop. Sit back and wait.

Of course I had a couple of issues with my wifi card once the install had completed, but aside from that it was all good.

rowanparker

Debian 🙂

The most stable thing you'll ever see 😃

Got it on a desktop and server and the server has been up, well, since a power cut the other day, but before the power cut i had uptime of a few months and this is a P3 128mb rRAM!

csn

FEDORA CORE P\/\/||Z!!!

Sxooter

It depends. Fedora core is what I'm running. But it gets outdated pretty fast and you'll need to upgrade.

Centos / Whitebox / RedHat EL are nice in that they get supported for 5 years or more, but they tend to feel old and creaky after a while. 🙂 RHEL is kinda the standard for hosting companies.

SUSE is good.

Ubuntu is very nice as a workstation OS, but as a server OS I don't really know.

So, if you wanna have a nice desktop that can double as a server OS, I'd recommend Ubuntu or Fedora Core as they're usually fairly up to date / modern. If it's gonna be a command line only server OS, then Centos is a good choice.

csn

Isn't Gentoo the answer to obsolescence? ;P Perhaps not stability...

piersk

Sorry, I meant to say earlier that I've got a VPS (with Bytemark if you're interested) and I'm currently running Ubuntu Dapper (although I'm probably going to upgrade it to Feisty tonight)

dalecosp

Any "distro" with the expression "BSD" in the title will do.

See?

protato wrote:
Pick which ever flavor has documentation that makes the most sense to you.

The BSD's are widely known to have the best docs on the planet. Many Linux distros don't even have manpages....

Sxooter

dalecosp wrote:
Any "distro" with the expression "BSD" in the title will do.

See?The BSD's are widely known to have the best docs on the planet. Many Linux distros don't even have manpages....

Probably because they use the newer "info" system.

BSD is ok, linux is ok. They both have their strong points.

If someone gets around to making a desktop flavor of BSD that's as easy to install and configure as Ubuntu, and has as many packages ready to go, please, let us know.

dalecosp

That's the "GNUer" info system.

But enough of religious flamewars on that subject. *BSD is easy enough for me :p

Sxooter

Well, seeing as how it's a BSD licensed DB in my signature, I can't really argue.

csn

Sxooter wrote:
If someone gets around to making a desktop flavor of BSD that's as easy to install and configure as Ubuntu, and has as many packages ready to go, please, let us know.

There's something way easier and simpler! 😛 FreeBSD-based even.

piersk

isn't bsd technically a flavour of unix, not linux?

csn

piersk wrote:
isn't bsd technically a flavour of unix, not linux?

That's what I've thought.