production server

[WipeOut]

-{snip}-
For anyone who has been following this thread and who is interested here 
is the decision I have come to regarding using FC1 on my new 
web/email/app servers..

I started by digging around trying to find a sutable replacement for 
RH9.. Many said Gentoo and Debian (Debian incedentally is the fastest 
growing linux distro according to the latest netcraft survey!!) as well 
as a few others like Suse..

So I started down the path of testing them out..

Firstly Gentoo.. The community are very active (hopefully FC will grow 
to be the same) and offer lots of help but unless you are very 
comfortable building your entire system from stratch and compiling 
software from source I would say stay away.. My experience of a few 
years on Linux was not enough to give me that warm fuzzy feeling when it 
came to *trying* to make it work.. After a 2 hour install process it 
took me about half an hour to break it..

Next I tried Debian.. The "Stable" version its too old and the packages 
are outdated.. There are offspring sites that are providing packages 
from the "unstable" branch to try and bring "stable" up to date.., I 
moved on and tried the "unstable" version.. This installed and has a 
much better installer but I could not see how to setup software RAID 
during the install and I didn't have even the faintest clue how to do it 
after the install so this was a problem, also I wanted to used LVM so 
that would have been another issue all together..

Now onto the RPM based distros I tried..

Firstly Trustix.. This is an awesome distro with a minimum install of 
only 90MB.. It is great for single service systems and appliances but I 
did find it a little restrictive and because they have changed the names 
of many packages and to when I tried to build some packages, by 
following the instructions, on it there were problems because it was 
looking for the wrong thing or in the wrong place..

I looked at SuSE, its nice enough but it is really far more aimed at the 
desktop area (something I think Fedora may also end up as!) than at 
being a server.. Probably becasue they rae commercial as well so to get 
a sever you have to buy a server, also there are no ISO's avalible for 
the free version..

Then I came full circle back to Fedora, for all its faults it does 
actually work well, and its compatible with all the software out there 
that is compatible with RH so thats a good thing..

My concerns with Fedora..
1) Redhat being in control of FC's destiny may force it down the path of 
becoming a home user desktop more than a server platform because they 
want people to buy RHEL which IMO is just way to expensive and we just 
could not afford it.. The RHEL WS is more expensive then Windows XP so I 
am not sure what they are going for there..

2) Upgrades from one version to the next may be rocky and that could be 
a problem on servers..

3) Security patches may take a while to come out leaving th server open 
to an attack if th exploit is remotely exploitable..

The things I like about Fedora..
1)It runs, works and feels like RedHat which I am familiar with, and its 
sponsored by RedHat.. (even with my concern in point 1 above)

2)Most packages that are not included with it should be able to run snce 
FC is exactly like RH..

3)With projects like Fedora-Legeacy starting up it means hopefully a 
longer life cycle..

4)Good hardware support.. ( My SATA server runs like a dream)..

5)and last but not least a fairly strong and growing community which 
will hopefully grow to rival that of Gentoo and Debian..

So the pro's out weigh the cons.. :)

Sorry for the length but I just thought I would share my experience..

Later..