On 22 Apr 2015, at 16:07, Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk wrote:
On 22 Apr 15:17, Bobby Moss wrote:
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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.
See, now I've watched many a times a security update hit Debian well before RHEL or CentOS, so I generally consider Debian Stable as the right way forwards... that and it's not full of rpm hell where actually half the stuff you're running is either self compiled or coming from non-official sources... ;)
To each his own! :) You have to have the discipline to stick to known good packages and not add extra repositories (like EPEL). I find this is often down to organisations sticking with ancient versions of RHEL (I know some that still insist on RHEL5) rather than moving up to new versions or hobbyists who like to tinker. I've been guilty of doing it on occasion myself.
That said, RHEL/CentOS 7 now comes with Docker, which removes that temptation as you can do what you like with the container without messing with the host system. Makes app deployment much easier & keeps host secure. It'll be good when this (eventually) becomes the norm.
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.
Mmmhmm.
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.
I don't, and wouldn't, run Umbongo on anything other than a toy machine with out direct interwebnets access.
I went with Ubuntu out of laziness, as DO offered a pre-built Wordpress VPS ...built on Ubuntu. Wouldn't have done this myself if starting from scratch :)
That said, as a kind of intro to noobie Linux users trying to create their servers for the first time it's a good learning tool.
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.
New features don't happen in stable, at all, ever. They might happen in backports, and then you generally want to know that the backport maintainer is sane and timely.
Exactly. When I said new features, I meant between versions.
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.
Both are a PITA to keep up to date, though, Debian all the way! (OK, so there is Debian GNU/kFreeBSD for those that *really* *really* want a FreeBSD kernel :))
They could make life easier with pkg. It's very much the advanced/power user option, and I've yet to use it on my own VPSs as it tends to be overkill for my needs.
Cheers,
Brett Parker
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