Re: Linux distro for new server?

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

Ludovic Brenta writes:
> In case you really need GCC 4.6, you'll be happy to learn that Debian
> 7 "Wheezy" has been frozen for months and is very close to becoming
> stable; only critical bug fixes are allowed at this point, so the API
> and ABI are really "stable" already.  In fact, at this point in time I
> recommend you install that and in a couple months time you'll find
> that the upgrade to the real "stable" will be minimal.

Forgot the URL: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/index.html

There is no separate installer for "desktop" as opposed to "server"
machines; the same installer works for everything from a Raspberry Pi to
a z10 mainframe, with laptops old and new in between.  This installer
does not require the machine to even have a keyboard, let alone a
graphical display; it is quite content with a network or serial
connection.

I've used this installer at least a dozen times in the past 12 years.
Every single time I was astounded by the quality of the engineering and
the amount of detail that went into this program, especially considering
that this program normally runs only once on a given machine :)

Just three examples:

Back in 2006 I installed Debian 4 "Etch", several months before it
became "stable", on an already old Sun Enterprise 250 server (2x
UltraSPARC II processors, 512 MB RAM) with no keyboard or display; I
connected a laptop to the serial line, connected the Ethernet to my hub,
placed the net-installer CD-ROM in the drive and off I went.  The
biggest problem was a 10-minute research on how to go into the firmware
using the serial line and tell the machine to boot from CD-ROM.  After
that, the install and next reboot were a breeze.

Mid-2012, on my latest laptop, the installer for Debian 6 "Squeeze"
warned that choosing XFS as the filesystem for the root partition
requires the LILO bootloader as opposed to the default GRUB2.  After a
painless installation of the base system, I promptly switched the
selection of packages from "stable" to "testing", replicated the list of
packages installed on my old laptop to the new one, and installed the
rest of my packages.  Then I scp'd my home directory from the old
laptop, restored /etc from the monotone database I keep it in, and was
productive within a couple of hours, all told.

Last week, on the old iBook I just mentioned, the Debian 7 "Wheezy"
installer warned me that that kind of machine required a special
partition, at least 880 kB in size, with the name Apple_Bootstrap.

This kind of detail makes me enthusiastic about Debian, even after 12
years of continuous use, so excuse me if I sound biased :)

Hope this helps.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.