[lug] distribution favorites?

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 09:34:45AM -0700, Daniel Webb wrote:
>On Sun, Nov 05, 2006 at 07:06:55PM -0700, Nate Duehr wrote:
>Same here.  I like Debian stable.  The plus for Debian stable is that once you
>get it set up, you can go for a *long* time without fiddling.  You can usually

I tried operating under that theory, but found that Debian really didn't
deliver that.  If you set up a Debian "stable" system, it's going to
upgrade to the newest "stable" the next time you "apt-get dist-upgrade"
after the Debian project pushes out a new stable.  Whether you're ready for
the upgrade or not...

You can stick with named versions, like "woody", but that only gets you
slightly better...  Let's say that today your production environment is
using woody and you need to install a new system because of growth.  I hope
you kept your CDs around, because you won't find the ISO images on most
Debian download sites.  Did you apt-get anything after the install?  Oops,
they're gone too...  And that stuff you got from backports?  Nope, not
available either.

One of our clients who is in this situation has set up a caching HTTP proxy
that all their servers use, and the cache never expires, so they can later
get packages that were installed previously.

Personally, I would recommend CentOS (7 or 10 years) or recent Ubuntu
(ones that say "LTS", 5 years for the desktop) for setting up a server,
because of exactly this reason.  Once you install a system and qualify the
applications, you probably want to stay with that platform.

With CentOS and Ubuntu, you don't NEED to upgrade for quite some time
unless it's your own requirements that drive it (needing newer PHP or
something).  With Debian Stable, it's really the Debian project that's
driving your schedule.  That's what I've found.

Thanks,
Sean
-- 
 Do you think reading about cowboys is sufficient to ride a horse?
 Like horses, real programs tend to throw you.  -- John Shipman, 1997
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability