Interesting conversation, so here's my $.02. I work for a small ISP. We're migrating from Windows to Linux (don't blame me for the NT, I'm moving us to Linux as fast as I can...) and I've played with RedHat and Mandrake. (I very breifly played with OpenBSD, but the install was over my head at the time and I didn't have time to research just the install, so...) The RedHat "server" install seems to install just thhe most common servers and have it just about all active from the get go. It didn't have some of the software that I thought would just be standard (what am I the only one who thinks ntpd should be run on every server?!) and it seems to leave several apps wide open with poorly secured default settings. (sendmail should never just be started without someone going over it carefully.) Not bad, but not great. I've installed Mandrake (7.2) a couple of times, now, and I really like the expert mode server install with high security. Lots of neat stuff got installed. And nothing (NOTHING!) was active to start with except what was needed to reboot the machine. Plus with out-of-box support for the ReiserFS, the time savings and reliability boost are very valuable. Are their security holes anyway? I'm sure. But for an easy to get started with server it was very nice. I'm testing the reliability out on both my home "server" and a test machine at work. I haven't rebooted either yet. (Both are subjected to some moderatly heavy stress testing since they aren't high end boxes.) I think my only comment about the install process on mandrake is that it needs to be a little more keyboard freindly. I usually run my boxes headless and I don't always have mice to hook up for the install. (My server at home is an ATX MB with no serial ports attached.) I was able to get stuff installed without the mouse, but it wasn't pretty. (A confirmation window would lose focus and I couldn't get back to the dialog until I hit the next dialog. Trying to install when a big window covers the center of the screen sucks!) The most important part in choosing the distro for production is what do you need it to do. If the apps you need/want are only available for Red Hat, well you run RedHat. After that I'd go with what you know/like. Sure, Free/Open BSD may be slightly better for one reason or another. But you have to weigh your costs in learning and additional admin time to get up to speed. A lot of shops don't have the time for that. If you're Yahoo!, fine you can spend the bucks on custom development and training. If you're a small co already familiar with Linux, go for it. Get and read the TrinityOS docs and keep your eye out for security patches and you'll probably be fine. Chris Cioffi
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