Re: Linux distro for new server?

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

Thanks. And thanks to everyone else that has replied. I'll think about this 
over the weekend and make decisions on Monday.

                     Randy.

"Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote in message 
news:87pq1lpsv5.fsf@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.