Hello, as i've been reading in the forum i saw a lot of people like me, who used windows systems(and DOS in the early days) and who want to learn linux. I'm about to install a linux webserver with ispconfig, and i saw the howto's for all the linux distributions presented on the site, but i was wondering which distribution is recomended for a webserver(hosting only 2-3 sites)? At this moment i have a fedora core 8 installation running online hosting a joomla site. I am thinking about reinstalling from scratch so i don't have any nasty problems. Should i stick with fedora core 8 or should i use ubuntu or debian or some other distribution? Also could any1 suggest a free backup sollution so i can store my actual server if i screw it up?
Hi, I think you should not use a desktop orientated distribution for a webserver (short life cycle). I would use Debian - one can't go wrong with this. Best regards, Olli
Debians httpd directory layout may be too complicated for less experienced users, Centos is much easier in that case.
Thanks for the replies. How is the debian httpd directory layout complicated? I will use ISPconfig so i don't think that's a problem... is it?
centos / fedora on the BSD side of things unless you got an pc free you can have setup with the BSD OS your web site box is using to do any testing before upload to the real website box but its comes down to what you need on your box and what linux OS you feel most at home with
I am probably not qualified enough to tell as I have only used Ubuntu, Fedora 8 and finally settled on Fedora 7. I guess for 3 or 4 web sites what you're using is OK. Some suggest using linux without the whisles and bells of Desktop applications, and they're right as, apparently that has something to do with security. But then, as I said, for a personal web server, it's not really the hassle of going into all those requirements. For server back up, I suggest Acronis (but it's not free, I'm afraid!). The best tool for disk imaging and restore.
I agree with Musty. About Debian and *buntu distributions.Apache's administration slightly differs in comparison to other distributions but it's worth to try and learn it and after an hour or two admit that it's very handy.I mean commands like a2enmod,a2dismod,a2ensite or a2dissite.
Centos Centos is a good choice. A good community for when you need assistance or just want to google help and you can also get doc support from the Red Hat side of things. As we saw with the vmsplice, a kernel update was not available as quickly as some of the other distros but you can be sure it was well tested by Red Hat.
I agree with the majority in here, centos is a great system with a good community behind it. The only reason I would recommend debian is due to the kick @$$ packaging system that comes with it...
