Webserver - Have a box!

OK so the devil took me. If the lads are going to have a box to play with
then it should be one I like too. So I bought a little used PowerEdge 2850
with 8GB, 2 x 3.2Ghz 64bit Zeons, twin power supplies and NIC's and some fat
SCSI's. I know it is *nowhere* near the original plan but hey, one can
never have too many toys and it was only £265 FFS and I have plenty rack
space.

So............ I'm in two minds about O/S. I originally thought CentOS as
Redhat is a Dell out-of-the-box option. But now I'm thinking OpenSuse. It
has to be mainstream, the sort of thing they will encounter in future jobs.

So what say you......

 

In that case, Windows.

 

Ubuntu is arguably more mainstream.

Best plan is probably to put VMware on it, then you can install several
distributions at once

 

idiot

 

idiot

 

I already did that.......

 

There's no single answer, by the way. Distributions are either RPM based
(RedHat/CentOS, SuSE) or debian based (Ubuntu), and neither seems to be
going away, so it's best to learn both.

Just ignore anyone who says Gentoo.

 

Not for a webserver. CentOS or mebbe Fedora.

 

Yeah, right.

You were the one that stipulated "mainstream" and "will encounter in
future jobs".

In that case, I repeat: "Windows".

 

"Webserver"

Oh and it all has to be Open Source

 

TBH I'm a little confused by Fedora vs CentOS, how do they differ. All I
know is Fedore was the Open Source fork of Red Hat and CentOS of Red Hat
Enterprise but that doesn't tell me much.

It's like Socialist splinter groups, just maybe not quite so bad.

 

Are you insinuating that there is no such thing as a Windows Webserver?

Ah, so you've now moved the goalposts.

 

I'm only going to let them use Open Source products and also I wonder how
many companies run their Webservers on OSX, except maybe Apple.

 

We can only wish that were true.

 

No, but then I'm not planning to write up a new contract for Ben either.

Ah it was in the original spec. Or should have been if it wasn't.

 

Oh, nice reply

 

Their future jobs may not just be running webservers, of course.

You're right about CentOS, though (I was suprised debian scores so highly):
http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux

 

See? You've got the Microsoft philosophy through and through!

 

Fedora is actually made by RedHat itself. You could consider it like a
technology preview. The trouble is that it releases and changes so fast
you'd be an idiot to use it for a webserver because they only provide
security fixes for 13 months.

CentOS is trying to be a version of RHEL that you don't have to pay for -
they support their releases for 4 years or so, which makes it a much better
bet than Fedora for a web server.

 

Thanks' I've just been reading on that.