[LBo] best distro for a server install

[Tim George]

> I know this question may have been asked umpteen times before, but what
> would you guys recommend to be a good distribution for a server install ?

I currently manage 4 Linux servers at two remote sites. Three of them
run Redhat Enterprise v3 and the other runs Debian v4.
I do all the administration via PuTTY and on balance I'd say I'm
happier with the Debian installation as it has more text-based
administration tools.

I have a couple of annoyances with the RedHat servers:
RedHat Enterprise is more reliant on GUI based tools and installs X by
default.
Some potentially very useful packages are not available direct from
RedHat.
When installing packages, you are sometimes asked to 'insert a CD'
which is not easy from 80 miles away. There's no workaround except
copying all the CD images, and mounting them loopback, or in my case
using a special piece of hardware (DRAC card) that allows me to mount
the CD drive of my PC onto the server across the network.

With Debian the main issue is that the testing distribution receives
too many patches to use on a server, and the stable distro only gets
security updates, so if a really useful feature is introduced in
Apache, you won't get to use it unless you roll your own.

The paid-for RedHat web-based administration tools are quite useful,
especially if you're managing a lot of servers.

Debian uses Exim as it's default mail server. I've found this suitable
as it's relatively easy to set up and fairly secure by default. There
is a good amount of web based support for configuring spam filters and
virus scanning.