Most stable OS ?
 

Hi there
im goin to order new server and these are OS setup options

1. Fedora core
2. CentOS enterprise linux
3. Debian
4. FreeBSD

Im just runnin a major vBulletin forum with ~130k members, ~100 k daily unique visits and more than 1500 concurrent online users with 3000 at peak over lighttpd/fastcgi

is there any major difference in server stability and performances and security bewteen RH linux based OS with *BSD or Debian??

They will all serve you well, regardless of which you choose. Although I (personally) prefer a RHEL-based variant, such as CentOS mainly because I am most familiar with it.

:up::up:

Another vote for RHEL from myself.

Well, for the most part the ones you listed are all stable, its a matter of optimization and the ability to compile programs, with a RPM based system, you wont have that option, as rh or centos the rh ripoff use rpms, so unless you know how to build your own rpms or use custom rpms from other places or you know how to compile programs from source, you will be limited to whats on/off in stuff like php, were as rh/centos turn on a bunch of crap you dont need to use to run a vb site.

To fully optimize the server OS and its programs and get the most out of it, rh/centos is not the way to go, if you want to get the most bang for your buck.

But out of all the ones you listed, id have to go with debian or bsd.

I myself prefer Gentoo and its own package manager, highly optimized out of the box and one of the easier managers as it makes use of a make file to set flags.

I'd have to pick centos or rehl. I compile everything myself. I don't use rpms very often.
Don't get me wrong all those listed are stable and capable of handling very large boards. But when it comes down to it I like to manage my server with a form of red hat. I've been using red hat since 1997.

Now if I were to pick a desktop os it would be a debian based distro. :-)

Most systems I had were installed on CentOS and I didnt have any problems!

I once had 2 servers running on Fedora, and there was always something buggin!

i vote CentOS

I personally perfer FreeBSd as it tends to be the fastests OS and is just as stable as the others.

CentOS, my host was using it on their shared server and I am now using it on my vps.

Debian & Fedora for my self, used them two for years cant go wrong there :)

Definitly. Great OS.

For some reason, I've heard CentOS is the best for web hosting and most of the hosts I've seen have been using it. I'm not too sure why CentOS lends itself well to that though :)

I personally use Ubuntu for all of my server stuff, but I'm just fiddling around and learning at this point.

I personally use Centos 5 on my servers. The company I work for also uses Centos on their servers as well (a couple Fedoras in the mix - only a couple).

I've never had any issues with Centos on any of my servers.

Debian has always outperformed RedHat/CentOS/Fedora in my experience.

debian here

and stats I've read, back up that debian is a very popular (if not most) OS for web server applications

I'd love for you to show those stats, because I could show you stats completely opposite.
Debian may be good, but as far as 'widely used', or 'the most widely used'? I'd have to say not so much. BSD has a better shot at 'most widely used', but that still belongs to the redhat crowd, as evidenced in the poll here.

A breakdown of the options above:
-- Fedora - Unstable, because it is redhat's testing bed . If you're comfortable running a test os on your server, by all means, head there

-- RHEL / CentOS - The same exact thing, released by two different companies at two different cost levels. My own personal choice though,

-- BSD - Too 'security minded', not end user friendly at all, from what I've seen. There needs to be a ballance between security and usability, something that the BSD crowd has completely forgotten about.

-- Debian - Not bad, but not widely used at all

CentOS - I use it at home as well :) Call it a pre-deployment environment.

sorry I didn't see your response earlier, and I have in the meantime changed to the mandriva server setup, and I like it, for now

but it seems, by far ubuntu wins with debian a far second, as listed here
but even these numbers will change in the next few months

^Where does it state that it is the most used OS for web servers as thats what it seems you were discussing and what he was replying to. Being the most widely used overall does not equate to widely used as a web server. Debian based systems use that RPM installer package that make it user friendly and great for users coming from another OS such as windows, I would say a large portion of those statistics are desktop systems and not web servers.

agreed

and I got sidetracked into reading up on stability of OS, not servers

sorry, will continue reading

thank you