Best Linux Distro for Web Server: If you are planning to build a web hosting company, small business servers, or simply host your own website at home, then it is best to use Linux as your operating system. Linux servers have been known to be extremely reliable and rarely crashes so there's less downtime. Linus Torvalds has once been quoted as saying "How do you power off this machine?" when upgrading the site "linux.cs.helsinki.fi", and after using the machine for several months.
Around 60% of all web servers ran Linux, but we don't have any data that could tell which among the Linux distributions are widely used or preferred. If you ask me, here are some of the best and perhaps popular distro for web servers:
Slackware
Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution so there are no doubts about its reliability. It aspires for design stability and simplicity, using plain text files for configuration and making as few modifications to software packages as possible from upstream. As they say, there is no better, more customizable, standard distro than Slackware.Gentoo
Gentoo is a highly flexible and fast distro that is built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It describes itself as a metadistribution, "because of its near-unlimited adaptability". Unlike a standard software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen configuration in Gentoo. Its package management is designed to be versatile, modular, portable, easy to maintain, and optimized for the user's machine.Debian
Debian is a strict advocate of the free and open source philosophies. It is known for amplitude of options like its support for a wide range of computer architectures that ranges from the Intel/AMD 32-bit/64-bit to the ARM architecture. Some of the others notable features of Debian are the APT package management system, repositories with large numbers of packages, and the high quality of releases.RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)
When we talk about Linux web servers, we shouldn't fail to include RHEL. It is released in server versions for x86, x86-64, Itanium, PowerPC and IBM System z. Though it's proprietary, it costs less than Microsoft's web server software. RHEL is also known for its excellent technical support and service.CentOS
If you want to get all the goodness of Red Hat Enterprise Linux but don't want to spend a dime, then CentOS is for you. CentOS is based on RHEL and aims to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream distribution. Technical support is mainly provided by the community through its official mailing lists, web forums, and chat rooms.But don't just limit your choices from my list, as there are other distros that are as capable as the above mentioned.
How about you? What do you think is the best Linux distro for web server?
http://www.contribs.org
This front end portal really does great injustice to smeserver, pity, but it includes a lot of knowledge, howto's to enable you to expand on the server.
For hundreds of webservers I would probably go with gentoo.
The only reason I use CentOS is because I have a semi commercial app that I am supporting (zimbra) that insists on it.
The big issue with RHEL based distributions, and ubuntu is that you spend a lot of time uninstalling things that you don't need, and if you don't need it it needs uninstalled from the webserver.
easy setup and rock solid
Uncle Ed
Cheers!
Beginners buying a VPS for fun or personal web hosting - Ubuntu for ease of use on top of rock solid Debian. I've heard from a VPS hosting company owner that CentOS/Yum is not good for smaller VPS servers (<=256 MB). I prefer Debian's APT anyway.
Centos + Apache = Perfect Webserver
I think my home dns/hosting server will probably run slack though (if I can summon the courage to stay away from Ubuntu - apt just calls to me, I can't help it)
in fact, onces i've recompiled the kernel last year, added to the rest of the binaries, i must say that no other distros can match the performance you get when you install a custom tailored GENTOO. think of it as this. Compiling all your binaries for your specific machine will optimize every process, and save much CPU time all over. I usually can run 30% more load with the similar machine when recopiling everything.
FreeBSD a lot like Slackware in terms of pros and cons. Finally Arh Linux if you like the idea of Gentoo but don't have the time and are using x86 architectures
Here is the PDF tutorial
http://www.khup.com/keyword/centos-nginx.html
Our clients purchase the hardware and we install. I'm now finding that Debian won't install on a lot of newer systems because it has no driver support for newer network cards, scsi interfaces and such so I end up either using a backports kernel, or custom compiling drivers which defeats the purpose of Debian (stable, battle hardened, well tested drivers and kernel). I've been looking at Unbuntu lately to see what it offers. Still interested in staying with a Debian derivative.
Btw, u don't have to pay anything for Red Hat Enterprise Linux cause it's Linux! Only if u want support+system updates(security updates are important for a web server) u need to choose a subscription...
Once deployed I spend almost no time maintaining them, aside from the web application updates. They have been down just two times during these 6 years: when I decided to upgrade the kernel.
If you are a good sysadmin, and if you know Linux well you can choose pretty much any distribution and make it fit your needs. In this regard, I think Gentoo makes advanced Linux sysadmins comfortable because it allows fine-grain tailoring and it's easy to set policies and automate server management.
Also, having our own portage overlay allows us to easily distribute our own patches to some apps we need.
BEST OPERATOR SYSTEM EVAR
Web server and minesweeper server
hehe... Millenium.. that was the only windows I've liked since I used dos and well 3.1 was ok since it was the first windows gui I tried. hehe. Have a sense of humour :p
I am stuck between going Debian and CentOS, (will try out some tests and lay-outs in vm's I guess). Want to run a small business network with one *old* server box and 3 'modern' hardware boxes (one laptop). Office suites, web server, intranet, internal mailserver and networked fax/copy/print. All development will be on linux (one Ubuntu, one Arch Linux and one Fedora) + an optional WIndows Xp/WIndows 7 VM (two licenses valid for that laptop). CentOS-Debian..CentOS..Debian :)
Oh, and Rh I do not like that much simply because 10 years ago I wa son Mandrake and RH and back then it was a nightmare at times some of the porting... so I am a bit 'ouch' to rpm systems.
Rock solid, 1 solid thread, no inet so you are absolutely secure ! Cheers !
That's the only build packaged linux with a support of 5 years on LTS with easy update (apt-get update && apt-get upgrade), nothing is broken at each upgrade only fix.
Debian is only 3 years, nothing is broken, only fix.
Cent OS: 7 years but need upgrade each time
OpenSUSE: 4 years but need upgrade each time
Slackware: ??? difficult to find any infos.
http://forum.gwan.com/index.php?p=/discussion/525/nginx1.0.6-vs-lighttpd1.4.29-vs-g-wan2.9.30-rpscpuram/
Server ................. requests per second
-------------------------------------------------------
G-WAN .............................. 749,574
Nginx ................................ 207,558
Lighty ............................... 215,614
Debian was missing some features ( i had to install the xen kernel myself, i had to make modifications to be able to login as root - (not sudo) etc, centos was too poor, just had the necessary, i had to install many apps my self, it could recognise ntfs volumes out of the box etc, ubuntu distribution was small, everything had to be downloaded from the internet, opensuse was the best, it had everything i wanted so i decided to use opensuse.
Cheers
Mike
I haven't tried CentOS yet, but in memory consideration, would CentOS be less RAM consumption than Debian?
Look like most readers here also go for Debian? Great I will try CentOS too and give a review about them.
Regards