I personally prefer Debian and relatives to rpm based systems (like Fedora) because people who I respect with extensive experience have consistently said that the consistency of Debian policy makes upgrades go more smoothly. I don't have enough direct experience to really verify that one way or the other. But I can say that with the exception of the time when I was on a computer that was entirely out of disk space, minor upgrades have invariably been smooth and I've never encountered a showstopper during a major upgrade. (I had a ton of small problems switching from Knoppix to Debian, that's something I won't try again. I also had problems with Gnome breaking my favorite window manager.) From discussion with friends, that is pretty much par for the course for people who run Debian-based systems, but those who run rpm based systems tend to be far less lucky.
Ubuntu compared to FreeBSD. I am not qualified to make that comparison. I don't have direct experience with FreeBSD. But I've heard good things about both of them.
Ubuntu tries to be tailored to the desktop. I can verify that it is easy to install, and has been easy to administer for my needs. Security updates are issued in a timely manner, and minor upgrades go well. For a development platform you'll want to install development tools, like build-essential and subversion. Front ends to apt (eg aptitude and synaptic) work well.
Ubuntu is derived from Debian, which is less specialized. Debian is very solid, but has the problem that they don't stay up to date. This is not an issue for a server - a server shouldn't generally be bleeding edge - but it is annoying on the desktop. I know that from experience, I used to use Debian but I switched to Ubuntu. At $work, most of my fellow programmers have also switched to Ubuntu.
From what I've heard, FreeBSD is significantly less user friendly than either Debian or Ubuntu. However it is a very solid server. I can't speak to that from direct experience, but I've heard enough qualified people testify to it that I believe it.
Now three random ideas to throw out there. First of all, why are you planning to maintain this yourself? If you are just learning Unix, you'll have a long learning curve ahead of you and shouldn't have much confidence in your setup for a while. If you just need a web host, something like http://www.ipowerweb.com/ doesn't cost very much, and the administrators likely know what they are doing better than you do.
Secondly, speaking as a non-sysadmin myself, I'd suggest looking at OpenBSD. The big reason being security. You are unlikely to get into a situation where performance really is a big issue - generic hardware is overkill for most server tasks. But if you put a server on the internet, it will get attacked. If you are administering it yourself, you are likely to learn about the problems in your OS when someone breaks in. These problems mostly go away with OpenBSD since it is ridiculously secure. Debian is pretty good if you update it regularly (when needed, they do get security patches out quickly). However OpenBSD generally doesn't need security patching at all.
And thirdly I would suggest that after you have everything laid out, you should hire someone who really knows what they are doing to review your work. Not to set it up for you, just to audit it and point out things you got wrong. If you have a business running on those servers, it is far cheaper to pay for someone to find the problems before someone breaks in than it is to find the problems AFTER your site has been compromised.
In reply to Re^3: Solaris 10 for Perl development? Problems? Upside? Your thoughts, please!
by tilly
in thread Solaris 10 for Perl development? Problems? Upside? Your thoughts, please!
by Anonymous Monk
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