I'm making a decision to install a new server (mail server) with Debian or Red hat enterprise. Anyone can give me the advantage and disadvantage between both OS and which one is more stable. And also which one is the best choice for me. Thanks you very much in advance. Vee
My opinion Debian is a good choice. Red Hat as well, the advantage of Red Hat is that it is officially supported by a lot of manufacturers like Dell, HP and so on, but this is also the reason that is not for free. You also can considder Centos or Fedora, which are Red Hat alike but free. That Dell for example does not give official support for Debian does not mean it will not work. (I've a Dell server myself with Debian with a 2.6 series kernel and i ám very satisfied). Recently, HP announced that they are going to give support for Debian too. It is important to make sure that the Linux distribution will support your hardware like drives and RAID controllers to avoid disapointments. Personally, i think it is not necesarry to pay for licenses if you want to setup a mail server, You can start with Debian, because it is free and very stable. And.. there are a lot of howtos here available, which guide you to setup a mailserver on Debian in combination with Postfix. Postfix is a MTA, which is easy to configure and has a high performance. If you can't get Debian to work on your harware, you can go for Red Hat afterwards. Other opinions?
Thank you very much hans. Thank you very much hans. Could you tell me how long can I use debian in the future because I concern about getting support or upgrade version from Debian. If one day the product is discontinued, what should I do. Thanks, Vee
future support for Debian After 4 years and from 30 june 2006, there where no security updates anymore for Debian 3.0 (Woody) The Debian policy is: There will be support for the last older version after 1 year of the Release of the new version. The new upcoming stable Debian version is planned for the end of the year. This means that there will be support for the current stable version (version 3.1 codename Sarge) until let's say december 2008. As Debian is on of the most populair server-linux versions around, i think there always will be a possibility to upgrade to a newer version with support. I hope this information will help you with your decision. Maybe, Falko or Till can give you a better advise and/or more information then i can.
and if you install everything with apt then you shouldn't have problems upgrading from 3.1 Sarge to the next stable release either...
Debian and Red hat comparison I would like to thanks Hans, Falko and other peoples who given me a very useful information about the open source OS. For me, I have decided to use Debian for installing in the new server (mail server support 300 accounts) but I have some problem to convince my boss, Therefore, anyone can give me the comparison between Debian and Red hat enterprise in 4 factors as below. - Stability - Scalability - Security - Serviceability And also if you have more information about Debian and Red hat comparison, please kindly let me know. Thanks a lot in advance. Vee
@Vee I know your problem...People expect only quality when they pay for it. Later i will make some time to answer your question a little bit better. For now, i publish an URL to a reference list at: http://www.debian.org/users/ You find also a nice article about Debian's very good package system here: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-debpkg.html
@Hans: Well regarding the good package system you should only mention the links showing the problems Debain and it's package maintainers formerly had and maybe still will have... Nevertheless I would try to avoid answering that bullshitbingo stuff. In all points except scalability I would vote for RedHat. Not because I could tell you if RHEL is directly better (maybe Stability, because RH has customers who pay for their stuff and also do support on them, so they might check updates more carefully) than Debian, but it is a commecrial OS on which you can buy professional support. I mean this support is no magic-bullet, but depending on the size of your business it is better to have any professional support with that you can have any SLAs instead of only google and the rest of the internet. I mean it is not just for fun that many business applications prefer RHEL / SLES to run on... Anyway if you end up that only you and your colleques will take care about that machine, you should choose that Distrubution where you have the best knowledge.
@Ben, Thanks for your input. And yes, i agree: The Linux distro, which is the best for you, is the one you are most familiar with! I realise that professional support can be very important, but we also have to realise that lots of companies around the world are using free and rock solid operating systems like FreeBSD and Debian in huge numbers. But if professional support is really a must - of course - Vee should choose for RHEL. Nice to know is that computer giant HP has started to give support for Debian.
