[geeks] This damn question again...

[Cody Swanson]

Mark Benson wrote:
> I kinda get the impression from folk here that maybe I took a wrong turn 
> while picking the OS for our new server@$work. As I've said before my 
> experience is limited and I'm determined to get this right.
> 
> Currently, I'm looking at a IBM x3500 M2 / 4 core 55x0 Xeon / 8GB RAM / 
> 3x 147GB SAS / LTO Tape
> 
> Services required are:
> 
> Rails
> MySQL
> Apache/PHP
> Samba
> Possibly mail
> 
> Any further input regards OS? I do feel like a kid pestering you guys, 
> but I don't want to screw this up.
> 
> P.S. This is the first serious email I've written and sent from my new 
> iPhone and I have to say it really craps on WinMo 6 from major altitude!
> 

I think you'll be happy with pretty much any major Linux or BSD distro 
but the two big commercial distros are Suse and Redhat. Redhat by far 
has the most 3rd party software support from vendors like Oracle and 
IBM. Since this is for $work I assume that's what your boss would be 
interested in that as well.

If you're looking for a no cost enterprise linux distro CentOS is the 
way to go. It's essentially Redhat enterprise minus the redhat logos, so 
generally anything that works in Redhat Enterprise will work in it.

Good Luck!