Re: Linux distro for new server?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Tero Koskinen" <tero.koskinen@iki.fi> wrote in message 
news:20130103174200.bcf9c1584b18c0225c153789@iki.fi...
...
> 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 have a Ubuntu laptop; the constantly changing interface has forced me to 
the latest LTS version. I hardly could find anything in this latest version 
(literally everything had moved), and for a machine that only gets used a 
few times a year (mostly for ARG meetings) that was getting intolerable. At 
least now I won't have to do that again for several years.

That experience soured me enough on Ubuntu that I wasn't particularly 
interested in using it on a server. For a server, hardly anything should 
change for long periods; pretty much the only thing required ought to be 
security updates, other updates ought to be optional. But no one seems to 
work that way anymore. (That's one reason I haven't been in much of a hurry 
to retire my old W2K server...it's essentially the last Windows version 
before it was overrun by cruft. But of course the security deficiencies are 
a concern.)

It sounds like Fedora changes too often for my taste. (Do they have an 
equivalent of the LTS of Ubuntu?). And it sounds like Debian stable is just 
too old relative to GNAT (I do use some Ada 2005 features in my code, no 
interfaces though.) None of which looks too promising.

                                  Randy.