Personally, I've had decent success with CentOS but their PHP is quite a bit out of date. All the patches in the world can't bring it up to date… lol

Anyways, I prefer Gentoo, Puppy Linux or Debian for a server.. Depends on what I have time with. lol What are you folks running for your servers? Tell me windows and I'll poop on your moms grave. :p

Depends what I'm doing. Professionally I have ~3 production Ubuntu servers for web / mail, as well as 2 dev Ubuntu Servers. I also have about ~15 Windows Servers deployed at clients. I also have ~4-5 CentOS servers for VOIP deployed.

Personally, I run my website, email, etc on an Ubuntu Server. I do my MUD / website development work on a separate Ubuntu VM.

So I guess I'm a pretty big ubuntu fan :P

Also, mudbytes was run on a Fedora server until recently, now its on an ubuntu server :P

Both of the servers I run Arthmoor on have been Fedora since day one.

Debian. I don't like to have to screw around with package management, and debian's updating is about as simple as you can possibly want.

My cron entry:

7 7 * * *       /usr/bin/apt-get -qq update >/dev/null 2>&1 && /usr/bin/apt-get -d -qq dist-upgrade >/dev/null 2>&1

That fetches the latest updates every morning, and does everything but install them. I could have it do that too, but I like to see what's about to happen, so I just do "apt-get dist-upgrade" whenever I remember and away it goes.

Debian/Ubuntu. No trouble with it, even though I've heard unsubstantiated rumors of terrible gcc breakage that apparently only prevents MUDs from compiling. Overall, though, I think you're probably safe.

I wouldn't run dist-upgrade casually on a production server, though. I just update the packages normally.

Debian is more "rock solid stable" in that it hardly ever changes short of major bugs; Ubuntu upgrades to newer packages more often, which is nice if you need the new features but means keeping up with changes more often.

I've run Ubuntu since January and have never had one problem with the server. My only problems have been muds on the server with memory leaks.

I have enjoyed Ubuntu as it was a great learning ground for me since I had never worked with a server until then. I don't know if I would ever 'upgrade' to Debian or not since Ubuntu does everything I need it to do right now.

I'm not sure changing to Debian would be considered an 'upgrade'. Technically Ubuntu is derived from Debian, so some might even consider it a downgrade as you are losing the stuff that Ubuntu has added on top of Debian. That said, the two distributions have different mission statements, hence why Debian is (very deliberately) slow-moving whereas Ubuntu upgrades packages (and major distribution versions) more often.

Whether or not it's an upgrade, I still enjoy Ubuntu.

I had a Mudbytes member chastise me and laugh at me in PM's because I chose Ubuntu. :rolleyes:

Oh, I use Ubuntu too, don't get me wrong. My main server is Debian, but my file server, desktop, media center and all my virtual machines run Ubuntu. :smile:

My VPS is currently running Ubuntu and I've got no complaints. I've used several different distros for different purposes over the years and I don't really have a preference.

Anyone using the more exotic stuff? Like Solaris, Darwin, Pure Darwin, Free BSD, Firefly?

I found out about Solaris and Sun's Virtual Box being free, just recently. I fear I can't hold back the geek in me any longer, now. :lol:

Solaris 10 is an excellent server platform. I don't recommend it as a desktop, really. For
a Solaris desktop use OpenSolaris instead.

There will be a substantial learning curve if all you know is Linux.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

I use Debian.

Solaris might be a good platform for many reasons, but frankly I find that the outdated libraries and applications available for it make it more of a pain to work in than boon. And yes, it is fairly different from Linux.

If you want exotic, go find yourself a copy of OpenVMS.

h8r

I don't mean to be pedantic or anything, but claiming CentOS's PHP package is out-of-date is kind of misleading. Enterprise level OSes don't push the latest and greatest software packages for a reason. They require rock solid stability, and cutting edge software is the antithesis of that. The reason I say PHP isn't out-of-date is because CentOS (along with RHEL, which is basically what CentOS is) backports bug/security fixes. In other words, they go into their software packages and fix the same bugs that the developers fix when they release new versions. So, while you might not get the latest new features, you'll still always have the most up-to-date stability and security.

Anyway, if you want PHP 5.3+ on CentOS, it's extremely easy. Just grab this popular repo config from a well-known Fedora contributor, install it, and "yum update php php-* –enablerepo=remi". He also has the latest MySQL packages, if you want those as well. I've done this on both CentOS (work) and Fedora (home).

Oh, and if you couldn't tell, I'm a pretty big Red Hat fanboy. I've used just about every major flavor of Linux that's been released in the past 15 years, and I always come back.

You're not guaranteed to get every bug fix if you rely on backports. Some fixes require more than is easily possible with a straightforward backport. Also, this is assuming that the developers continue fixing stuff for older versions in the first place. Say you have PHP 2 on your server, and the current version is PHP 7 (making up numbers). What is the likelihood that a random bug fix to PHP 7 will really apply to PHP 2? So yes, a good maintainer will do what they can to track fixes, but eventually that becomes rather difficult to do and you will start lagging unless the developers provide backwards support in addition to your maintainer. Of course, the advantage is that you're not getting all the bugs that come with the new features, so it's a trade-off really.

And if all I know is Windows and Unix? :)
Never really used Linux, at all.

My idea is to use Solaris as a host system, since Virtual Box should be faster on it, than say on Windows or MacOSX.

Most of the programmer's work would be done in a Windows XP VM, while the server would run either under Solaris or in a Darwin window (heard Pure Darwin is pretty close to be added to the Virtual Box support base).