Re: Linux distros for servers that matter

On Thu, Feb 03, 2005 at 03:40:25PM +0100, Philipp Kern wrote:
> On 3 Feb 2005, at 14:42, Andy Smith wrote:
> >The problem I have with debian purely from an observer's point of
> >view is that it moves so slowly.  You're saying now to wait for
> >sarge to become stable and then use that, but the current stable has
> >remained unchanged for how many years in debian?  Doesn't it still
> >come with kernel 2.2.x for example?
> 
> Your view is correct. But this is a trade-off. The original poster 
> spoke about servers ``that matter''. You get all security updates in 
> time for stable and the target does not move. Some people like this 
> stability for production servers.

In my view this is so conservative that it goes out the other side
and becomes a real problem.  With a 2.2 kernel I would find it
extremely painful to get software raid and LVM working properly, for
example.

> I personally wouldn't use unstable anymore, as testing is always
> self-consistent due to some scripts checking the distribution. So
> it is always somewhat more stable, the only trade-off being the
> security updates.

So Testing does get proper security updates within a few days of
Stable?

> I cannot tell if this helped you in any way. ;)

My problem is that I cannot find an operating system with the
correct balance of the following:

a) Good package management

b) Good security advisory management

c) Reasonably up to date packages

I'm not asking for bleeding edge, but these days if you're on Linux
you'd probably want for example kernel 2.6.x, php 4.x, mysql 4.x and
some assurance that it's going to keep track at around the same
speed.

Seems like FreeBSD 5.x is still quite broken and slow, FreeBSD 4.x
is outdated, Fedora misses out lots of up to date packages unless
you use third party repositories (then problems with package consistency,
security updates), gentoo hasn't got its act together with security
advisories and you still need to pull a lot out of ~x86, debian
release cycle is so slow, ...

Maybe I am just being too demanding.

I guess I would really like the kernel of Fedora (which comes
straight from Red Hat who employ a number of kernel developers and
is always late 2.6.x seemingly without much problems) with the
package management of freebsd or Gentoo. :)

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