Re: Solaris 10, FreeBSD or RHE Linux for production server Perl box?

I'm the original poster. First, a big thank you to everyone who has replied so far! I very much appreciate your input and advice. Thank you!!

Per a post or two above, I think it best to add that I'm asking for my own benefit. I only have experience with Windows up to this point.

However, believing a unix-ish environment would be a better way to go long term, I'm seeking your wisdom on which OS to choose for a server to run a collection of sites upon. I know I've got a lot to learn which ever OS I choose, but hopefully will learn enough over a year or two that I can operate a collection of sites from my own server(s) that I could earn a full time living from.

Thus I hope to pick the best OS for this. I'm not looking for the easiest OS to get started with. I want the best OS for the job. I'm not afraid of the command line, learning utilities nor any other task server admin is likely to require of me. I would however prefer to benefit from the wisdom of others here to make the best choice of an OS I can.

Oh, and to the kind Monk who mentioned:

"I can think of one OS I'd rather go with because of how stable their network stack is. You didn't mention it in your list of choices."

Please do share what OS you are referring to and why you might/would go with that OS instead (NetBSD perhaps?).

Thanks again to everyone for being so helpful!

Comment on Re: Solaris 10, FreeBSD or RHE Linux for production server Perl box?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Solaris 10, FreeBSD or RHE Linux for production server Perl box? by tirwhan (Abbot) on Nov 30, 2005 at 07:45 UTC
In that case, if you've got the time to spare the best course of action has to be that you download the operating systems in question and play with them for a while. Find out which appeals most to you. Set up an apache/postgres environment and keep it running for a little, learn how the distribution handles upgrades for you (or if it doesn't). If you're trying to find out how the OS handles load, run a stress test (or post a story to slashdot ;-). I'd definitely recommend looking into Debian, it does not have the glitziness of other Linux distributions but is very solid and a joy to keep running. Another thing to do would be to hang around some of the mailing lists/forums associated with the distributions you're looking into. You're bound to run into issues where you need help at some point, and the different communities work in different ways, so it's helpful if you feel comfortable in a specific community. For example, another OS I could recommend from a security aspect is OpenBSD, but newcomers often find their forums extremely harsh, while others enjoy the high technical clue to bullshit ratio. "The best choice of OS" depends on many factors and will often change from project to project, so its worthwhile to at least have rudimentary knowledge about how things are done in other environments. And welcome to the world of nix. Update:* I forgot to say, this may seem like a bit much for a nix beginner, but take a look at Xen, this allows you to run several virtual OS images on one machine at the same time. The guest OS kernel has to be modified in order to run under Xen, so at the moment it only supports Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD 5.x and ReactOS, but I've heard rumblings that Sun are working on getting Xen into Solaris as well, and once the new virtualizable CPU's from AMD and Intel are out (sometime next year) you'll be able to run any OS as guest. Useful for testing as well as production. Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.* -- Brian W. Kernighan	[reply]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re^2: Solaris 10, FreeBSD or RHE Linux for production server Perl box?
by tirwhan (Abbot) on Nov 30, 2005 at 07:45 UTC

In that case, if you've got the time to spare the best course of action has to be that you download the operating systems in question and play with them for a while. Find out which appeals most to you. Set up an apache/postgres environment and keep it running for a little, learn how the distribution handles upgrades for you (or if it doesn't). If you're trying to find out how the OS handles load, run a stress test (or post a story to slashdot ;-). I'd definitely recommend looking into Debian, it does not have the glitziness of other Linux distributions but is very solid and a joy to keep running.

Another thing to do would be to hang around some of the mailing lists/forums associated with the distributions you're looking into. You're bound to run into issues where you need help at some point, and the different communities work in different ways, so it's helpful if you feel comfortable in a specific community. For example, another OS I could recommend from a security aspect is OpenBSD, but newcomers often find their forums extremely harsh, while others enjoy the high technical clue to bullshit ratio.

"The best choice of OS" depends on many factors and will often change from project to project, so its worthwhile to at least have rudimentary knowledge about how things are done in other environments.

And welcome to the world of *nix.

Update: I forgot to say, this may seem like a bit much for a *nix beginner, but take a look at Xen, this allows you to run several virtual OS images on one machine at the same time. The guest OS kernel has to be modified in order to run under Xen, so at the moment it only supports Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD 5.x and ReactOS, but I've heard rumblings that Sun are working on getting Xen into Solaris as well, and once the new virtualizable CPU's from AMD and Intel are out (sometime next year) you'll be able to run any OS as guest. Useful for testing as well as production.

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -- Brian W. Kernighan

[reply]