From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c32f496672c2e0c5 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Received: by 10.181.12.35 with SMTP id en3mr12915946wid.2.1357227725413; Thu, 03 Jan 2013 07:42:05 -0800 (PST) Path: i11ni349746wiw.0!nntp.google.com!feeder1-2.proxad.net!proxad.net!feeder1-1.proxad.net!ecngs!feeder2.ecngs.de!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!newsfeed.x-privat.org!news.jacob-sparre.dk!munin.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tero Koskinen Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Linux distro for new server? Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 17:42:00 +0200 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: <20130103174200.bcf9c1584b18c0225c153789@iki.fi> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: dsl-trebrasgw2-54f941-244.dhcp.inet.fi Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Trace: munin.nbi.dk 1357227722 28790 84.249.65.244 (3 Jan 2013 15:42:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 15:42:02 +0000 (UTC) X-Newsreader: Sylpheed 3.3.0 (GTK+ 2.24.13; x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: 2013-01-03T17:42:00+02:00 List-Id: On Wed, 02 Jan 2013 22:50:47 -0700 Jeffrey Carter wrote: > On 01/02/2013 05:42 PM, Randy Brukardt wrote: > > > > One thing I definitely want to avoid is a setup that loads up lots of > > unncessary software (Ubuntu does that, for instance). As a server, it should > > have almost nothing on it beyond the stuff it is running or needs to > > function. > > I'm totally not qualified to answer your question, but we run Debian stable > servers at work. Another vote for Debian stable (meaning 6.0.x currently). I have a few virtual servers (mostly for hobby purposes) running Debian stable and I haven't had any bad problems with them. I should note that Debian stable comes with gcc/gnat 4.4 by default and version 4.4 does not support Ada 20xx well (Ada 95 support is ok). Other options besides Debian are Ubuntu and Fedora. Both Ubuntu and Fedora have shorter release cycles than Debian and also more up-to-date software (Fedora 17 has gnat 4.7, Ubuntu 12.10 has gnat 4.6). On the other hand, they also drop support for older releases faster. In practice, this means you need to update Fedora or Ubuntu distribution once a year or so (unless you run Long-Term-Support version[1]). I probably would not use Fedora as server, since it has habit of doing big software updates even inside one release. This means that your software might break if you run 'yum update' and API/ABI of some updated package changes. You should also decide whether you want 32-bit or 64-bit version. In most cases it doesn't matter, but some software might run only on 32-bit or 64-bit system. My variant of Not-Claw-Sockets[2] is one such piece ;). It (barely) works only on 64-bit systems. -- Tero Koskinen - http://iki.fi/tero.koskinen/ [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS [2] https://bitbucket.org/tkoskine/not-claw-sockets-linux-x86 (x86 is misleading, I ended up doing x86_64 version, but did not change the repository name.)