Ah, the joys of CentOS Linux

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2007-03-07 09:50pm

I've just assembled a server and since I wasn't able to get Windows Home Server beta and didn't want to setup a full W2K3 box, I decided to go play with CentOS 4.4 (essentially Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4) and Ubuntu 6.10 Server.

Ubuntu Server was not the most pleasant experience in the world and I ditched it fairly quickly. It's a fine desktop OS, but I don't think its quite ready for server prime-time. CentOS 4.4, OTOH, seems rather nice. It's an older distribution but so far seems stable. The only issue is that I created a three-disk software RAID 5 device at install-time, but then the drive labels changed on me when I booted for real. The RAID system promptly got confused and started rebuilding the array with the correct three disks.

Hopefully, it'll all be worth it for this:

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2007-03-07 10:36pm

You know you can download RHEL 4 for free, right? Of course, you don't get free access to updates, which CentOS provides, and it is essentially the same product.

However, if I had the choice of using CentOS or Fedora Core 6, I'd go with FC6. Its a much more sophisticated system. There can be a tendancy to dismiss Fedora or its counterpart OpenSuse as being worthless second rate versions of an enterprise product that are unstable and not ready for prime time, but my recent experience with FC6 was exceedingly pleasant.

Ultimately though, for real hardcore server use, unless you're running an application that's Linux specific or have unusual, hard-to-detect hardware, the best bet is to use a BSD. The BSDs tend to be more secure and reliable, and as an added plus have much better package management. I see Linux being useful mainly on laptops and on systems more likely to have hardware detection/driver problems.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2007-03-08 01:39am

RThurmont wrote:You know you can download RHEL 4 for free, right? Of course, you don't get free access to updates, which CentOS provides, and it is essentially the same product.

Well, you see, I like having free access to updates.

However, if I had the choice of using CentOS or Fedora Core 6, I'd go with FC6. Its a much more sophisticated system. There can be a tendancy to dismiss Fedora or its counterpart OpenSuse as being worthless second rate versions of an enterprise product that are unstable and not ready for prime time, but my recent experience with FC6 was exceedingly pleasant.

I've had bad, bad experiences with multiple Fedora releases (save FC1, which was really RHL 10) and have since shied away from Fedora. I'll wait until RH cleans up Fedora and releases RHEL (so I can get that lovely CentOS goodness).

Ultimately though, for real hardcore server use, unless you're running an application that's Linux specific or have unusual, hard-to-detect hardware, the best bet is to use a BSD. The BSDs tend to be more secure and reliable, and as an added plus have much better package management. I see Linux being useful mainly on laptops and on systems more likely to have hardware detection/driver problems.

I daresay RHEL is quite reliable and secure enough; I don't need an ultra-hardened system like OpenBSD nor do I feel like messing with FreeBSD at this time. If I really wanted server robustness, I'd be using Solaris

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2007-03-08 01:45am

Well, you see, I like having free access to updates.

Well good!

I daresay RHEL is quite reliable and secure enough; I don't need an ultra-hardened system like OpenBSD nor do I feel like messing with FreeBSD at this time. If I really wanted server robustness, I'd be using Solaris

Given a choice of using Solaris or BSD, I'd use BSD. I've used Solaris and I think its interesting, and cutting edge in some respects, but a lot of it really seems to be quite creaky, and I'm not at all convinced that it really is a good choice, at this point in time, for use on non-Sun hardware. Also, for what its worth, FreeBSD whoops its posterior when running in VMWare.

Also IMO OpenBSD is only really good for firewalls and systems that need to be uberhardened. The added chores of admining OpenBSD+really obnoxious policies on the part of Theo (like no downloadable .isos) make FreeBSD the obvious choice for most systems, IMO.