Hopefully I can answer both of you here :)
On 22 Apr 2015, at 14:45, Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk wrote:
On 22 Apr 14:09, Paul Grenyer wrote: Hi Bobby
Thanks for your reply.
However, if security is the paramount issue I'd go with CentOS or FreeBSD.
That sounds wrong to me, CentOS is community supported rebuilds of RHEL. FreeBSDs security record isn't that great, and if you were going to a BSD for "security" raisens, then OpenBSD would be the generally accepted flavour...
I didn't know security raisins existed. I'll be sure to include them in any end-to-end encrypted slices of fruit cake I find myself producing. Yum! :D
Back on topic, CentOS (to all intents and purposes) is RHEL. The focus is on security and stability over fancy new features, and the tools you use on top to harden it are military-grade. Security patches are rolled out quickly & new improvements only arrive after they've been tested to death. (You could even secure it further with something like Oracle Linux, which is essentially RHEL with a hardened kernel). They've also made a lot of sensible decisions when it comes to default settings etc and it's very easy to scale.
So long as your copy of CentOS comes from a reputable source the only difference should be that you're not paying Red Hat for a support contract. I count DO's pre-built CentOS images as being quite reputable. If you don't, we can agree to disagree on that.
Ubuntu seems to me like a desktop distribution that's trying to behave like a server OS. While you can use it for small web servers (I use it for my own WordPress blog) I question how scalable it is. You may have counter examples to refute this.
IMHO if you want to use a Debian-based server OS I've found Debian is probably a better choice, as it seems to strike a good balance between new features/security patches and keeping things stable.
In the case of BSD: in general you have security systems that go right the way down to kernel level, as (particularly in the case of FreeBSD) their focus is on being "secure by design". There's also an element of security through obscurity you gain by using it too. We could also talk about how amazing BSD server uptime is.
Ultimately it's up to you which BSD you want to use. FreeBSD & OpenBSD would both work in a server setup. I'd question the use of PC-BSD though as that's aimed more as a desktop OS.
I realise with all those areas I've been fairly vague. Hopefully I've avoided starting a flame war! :)
Regards,
Bob
Also, Paul, can you please ensure that you send mail to the list as text/plain only, as the HTML attachment gets the mail stuck in the moderation queue, which generally doesn't get glared at overly often.
Cheers,
Brett Parker
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