best OS for web management ?

Question

anonymous · Answer

Ubuntu. In my opinion. :)

anonymous · Answer

all

anonymous · Answer

probably red hat

rsmith6559 · Answer

Any *nix, properly configured is a good choice.  Any *nix improperly configured won't be any better than Windows or OSX.

Just for the sake of fair time:  many people swear by openbsd.

We're a bit SYS5 centric here.

farmdawgnation · Answer

So, I would disagree with rsmith's answer here. Not all Linux distributions are created equal. Each have their own flavor.

I would recommend Ubuntu for a Web Server. It's system packages are kept very up-to-date, unlike CentOS or RedHat.

farmdawgnation · Answer

Additionally, I found that apt or aptitude (the package managers for Ubuntu) are a little bit easier to work with than yum (CentOS's equivalent).

rsmith6559 · Answer

The webserver is probably going to be Apache, so that's distribution independent.  Databases are probably going to be MySQL or Postgres, again distirbution independent.  Programming languages, most distros have plenty.  The only language that I really think may be inherently insecure is PHP ( it has WAY too many webapps listed at all times in my security newsletter ).

After all this, it's the programmer and administrator that are going to make or break a webserver.

anonymous · Answer

it's not the language who makes website insecure, it's programmer who don't know how to use language :D
and most of people use PHP for server side programming so most of invulnerabilities is also caused by it

farmdawgnation · Answer

rsmith6559, you're right in saying that those applications run on all the platforms - but they aren't always running the most recent versions. CentOS 5.5, which is still in wide use, only has full support for PHP 5.1 - which is antiquated to say the least. (Packages exist for 5.3, but they break PEAR.)

Additionally, it's an assumption to say that Apache will be the webserver. nginx is gaining ground fast, and CentOS 5.5 doesn't have a native package for that either. Nor does it have a native package for Ruby 1.8.7, which is the minimum required to run Ruby on Rails apps.

You can compile all these yourself, of course, but I still contend that using Ubuntu will get you more recent packages with much less fuss. Especially for beginners.

farmdawgnation · Answer

All this to say, which distribution you pick *does* matter. ;)