What is the best OS for a server

Hi all

what is the best operating system for a server?
it has to be able to be as a web server and use SSH (secure shell) and used
for backup of data.
I know of fedora11 and centos but I dont know of the best os to use.

Regards
GK

On 2009-10-11, Gabriel Knight <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> what is the best operating system for a server?
> it has to be able to be as a web server and use SSH (secure shell) and used
> for backup of data.
> I know of fedora11 and centos but I dont know of the best os to use.

RedHat (CentOS is identical, except the logos), Suse and Debian
Stable.

My preference is for RH/CentOS.

--
Joe - Linux User #449481/Ubuntu User #19733
joe at hits - buffalo dot com
"Hate is baggage, life is too short to go around pissed off all the
time..." - Danny, American History X

On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:46:02 +1100, Gabriel Knight wrote:

> Hi all
>
> what is the best operating system for a server?

Linux.

> it has to be able to be
> as a web server and use SSH (secure shell) and used for backup of data.

OK.

> I know of fedora11 and centos but I dont know of the best os to use.

As I already said, the best "OS" is Linux.

If you mean best "distro", I'd say Slackware.

Fedora would be near the absolute bottom of any list of acceptable
distros to run a server on.


--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
"Bother!" said Pooh, as he garotted another passing Liberal.
Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

On Sunday 11 October 2009 06:46 in comp.os.linux.networking, somebody
identifying as Gabriel Knight wrote...

> Hi all
>
> what is the best operating system for a server?

Anything UNIX-like, and preferably GNU/Linux. ;-) FreeBSD, NetBSD and
OpenBSD are also very good, and then there's OpenSolaris, of
course. ;-)

> it has to be able to be as a web server and use SSH (secure shell) and
> used for backup of data.

All of the above can do that effortlessly. :-)

> I know of fedora11 and centos but I dont know of the best os to use.

They are the same operating system, and in the event of the two you
mention here, they are even related, as Fedora is the "perpetual beta"
for RedHat Enterprise Linux, and CentOS is the "free" version of RedHat
EL. It's the same distro, but with different "branding". ;-)

That said, among GNU/Linux distros, RedHat/CentOS, Debian and Slackware
are most commonly touted as stable server-oriented distributions. If
you're serious about the server concept - in terms of uptime and
stability, et al - then you most definitely want to avoid bleeding edge
distros.

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:46:02 +1100, Gabriel Knight wrote:

> Hi all
>
> what is the best operating system for a server? it has to be able to be
> as a web server and use SSH (secure shell) and used for backup of data.
> I know of fedora11 and centos but I dont know of the best os to use.
>
> Regards
> GK

CentOS is usually is the best choice unless it won't run on your
hardware. If you are using server hardware then you won't have any
trouble, if you are running recent desktop hardware there is a good
chance that CentOS doesn't support it. RHEL, on which CentOS is based,
uses a very old kernel. RH targets RHEL at the server market so they
don't seem to put a lot of effort into back porting drivers for desktop
hardware which means that it can take a very long time before support for
new hardware shows up in RHEL and then into CentOS. The only way to find
out is to try and install CentOS, if it works then you are done if not
then you need to consider alternatives.

Fedora is actually a pretty good server OS as long as you are using it on
a small number of machines. When you run a machine as a server you don't
use X and you don't use most of the GUI applications that tend to get
broken in Fedora. What you are running is the kernel, which is always
stable, a shell and a tiny number of programs like ssh and maybe Apache.
All of those tend to be rock solid even on Fedora. Fedora 11 also comes
with the latest version of KVM which is working really well for Linux
clients. If you need to run some commercial software that needs RHEL
compatibility, and the Fedora compatibility libraries aren't good enough,
you can run a CentOS5.3 KVM virtual machine on top of Fedora 11. I've
found that the performance of CentOS VMs on Fedora 11 is within a couple
of percentage points of native. The big problem with Fedora as a server
OS is the huge number of updates and the limited support period. While
RHEL and CentOS are supported for 7 years, Fedora is only supported for 1
year. A CentOS system has a few megabytes of updates per month, Fedora
has hundreds of megabytes per week. A CentOS system can be installed once
and then left there until the hardware dies. If you install Fedora you'll
have to install it's successors once a year. If you have a small number
of machines, half a dozen or less, then this actually isn't a very
onerous task. If you have hundreds of systems then this becomes an
impossible task which is why you'll never find Fedora inside of any large
companies.

On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:46:02 +1100, Gabriel Knight wrote:

> Hi all
>
> what is the best operating system for a server? it has to be able to be
> as a web server and use SSH (secure shell) and used for backup of data.
> I know of fedora11 and centos but I dont know of the best os to use.
>
> Regards
> GK

'Best', according to what criteria? I'd use Debian stable.

Gabriel Knight wrote:
> Hi all
>
> what is the best operating system for a server?
> it has to be able to be as a web server and use SSH (secure shell) and used
> for backup of data.
> I know of fedora11 and centos but I dont know of the best os to use.
>
> Regards
> GK
>
>

IMHO the best and easiest is Slackware.
It is the easiest to manipulate to your liking and follows closest to Unix.
During install you have a good opportunity to leave out what you don't need or want.
I think I have tried most of the major Linux versions.


--

A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
< running Linux >

Dan C wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:46:02 +1100, Gabriel Knight wrote:
>
>> Hi all
>>
>> what is the best operating system for a server?
>
> Linux.
>

don't dismiss opensolaris or freebsd for a zfs fileserver
or openbsd for a shell server

>> it has to be able to be
>> as a web server and use SSH (secure shell) and used for backup of data.
>
> OK.
>
>> I know of fedora11 and centos but I dont know of the best os to use.
>
> As I already said, the best "OS" is Linux.
>
> If you mean best "distro", I'd say Slackware.
>
> Fedora would be near the absolute bottom of any list of acceptable
> distros to run a server on.
>
>

Gabriel Knight wrote:

> Hi all
>
> what is the best operating system for a server?
> it has to be able to be as a web server and use SSH (secure shell) and
> used for backup of data.
> I know of fedora11 and centos but I dont know of the best os to use.
>
> Regards
> GK

There is no best OS, any of the Linux dists can accomplish the exact
same things, especially in a server environment (runlevel 3). So, use
whatever you want. Personally, I use CentOS, but I also manage
hundreds of servers with CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, RHEL, and so on. Any
are fine, use the one you know best.
--
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.

Keith Keller wrote:

> Slackware == awesome

True.

> However, I am not sure I would recommend Slackware to someone new to
> linux for a public-facing server in a production environment.

True, but consider that issue regarding any dist out there. No one
"new" to Linux should be running a publicly accessible web server. If
it's not hooked up to the Internet, then it doesn't matter, but
otherwise it's something none of us want to think about.
--
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.