View Full Version : Debian or Red Hat?
amanoffewwords
13th Sep 2003, 03:37
I'm just in the process on having a vServer set up with Easyspace. One of the questions they ask is whether I wish to have Debian or Red Hat 9.0 as an OS.
Until then I had never heard about Debian so the question is rather tricky.
Bearing in mind my knowledge of any Unix type OS is, shall we say, being developped, which is the best option to go for? I'm getting cPanel and Web Host Manager to help me with the admin of it, but since I also get root access I'd like to be learn enough to know that it is doing what it is supposed to be doing not just what the software is telling me it is doing.
Which one is less likely to give me a headache, basically?
Cheers,
amofw
Depends on your access.
Debian IMHO is the most solid of the popular distros but almost all, including RedHat, are very good. Debian is less user-friendly on a desktop machine than RedHat, who have worked quite hard on ease of use. Install is much better on RedHat too, but I guess that's not an issue. They are both very easy to keep patched.
If you just have ssh access to root then you're not going to notice much difference, you'll work both via bash (the command line). If you can access with Gnome/KDE via X11 then RedHat will probably have much better tooling than Debian - as a Unix novice that's a good reason to go for RedHat. However, I guess a "powered by Debian" sticker will give you plenty of Geek-points :)
amanoffewwords
15th Sep 2003, 19:52
Thanks Evo, went for Red Hat in the end - just been set up 5 mins ago - looks like I need to go shopping for manuals on Amazon now...
Cheers
amofw
nb: I'll leave the Geek points collections until I've had more experience running a 'simple' :uhoh: OS
AMOFW - Linux isn't really hard, just different. Enjoy :ok:
amanoffewwords
5th Nov 2003, 01:31
Evo. You were and are dead right! Once you get the hang of it (ie swallowed a manual or two) it is BRILLIANT!
(1) My websites are so much quicker (2) I love having control over everything - like upgrading software on the fly, customising things and (3) it's kinda of fun, in a geeky kinda way!!
And I'm pleased I chose Red Hat - I can see why it's the preferred choice for a beginner. Although my QNIX experience years ago and my little forray into SuSe a couple years ago helped.
I came across an help page on the Apache or PHP site which started "to achieve this, here's a hint..!". Good ridance Microsoft wizards, hello the real world of computing.!!
Anyway, go to dash off and check my Crons...
Cheers
amowf
Not too late to change your mind? Red Hat just mailed me: "Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for Red Hat Linux 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 as of December 31, 2003. Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for Red Hat Linux 9 as of April 30, 2004".
(They want you to migrate to Enterprise Linux).
So I would go with Debian right now. And ditch cPanel unless you're sure you want it. These control panel things can be more hassle than they're worth; webmin is a nice non-intrusive alternative.
(They want you to migrate to Enterprise Linux).
They probably don't. Actually, they've probably woken up and realized that they don't care about you at all. It's about money, yes, but they're probably not making anything at all from the typical RH9 user, even with their up2date subscription, and the days of being able to haemorrhage money because you have the Internet or Linux somewhere in your business plan are long gone."RedHat" is a very valuable brand - CEOs etc. associate RedHat with Linux in the same way that they associate Office with Microsoft, and RedHat know that. The big boys will pay for RedHat Enterprise Linux and the IBM/Oracle/etc support that comes with it. That's how they make money, and focussing on that is the way to make more.
On the plus side, RedHat appear to be hosting Fedora Linux and funding some development work, so they aren't complete b@stards. Probably all that has happened is that the freebie RH9 has just changed its name to avoid diluting the brand - and the GPL requires them to return any changes made in the name of "Enterprise Linux" to the community, so you can bet Fedora will remain reasonably up to date.
AMOFW - glad you like it. Welcome to the One True Way ;) :ok: