Florent Georges wrote: First issue is that latest ubuntu, released on October only provides mediawiki 1.13.3, while latest stable version is 1.15.1. The 1.13 branch was released in August 2008 and has ended its one-year support from mediawiki developers. Sure, the package maintainers keep it secure by patching the security issues (in fact they backported to a custom version the mediawiki security releases 1.13.4 and 1.13.5). You are given an outdated version, for no real security benefit, since in the event of a bug, the fix would be first released from mediawiki, and then backported there. That needs the admin to keep an eye on it instead of relying in the package manager, but the steps for upgrading mediawiki are just download and extract the new files in the folder and -if it's a major upgrade- run the maintenance/upgrade.php script (which would have to run manually also if using apt). Since it's written in an interpreted language, it doesn't have the issues of compiled binaries. Installation of MediaWiki is done via a friendly web page on both methods. Apt does add mediawiki to the web space for cherokee and apache, but that doesn't make the install significantly easier since you can directly extract mediawiki in the web folder of your choice. On the other hand, they move the mediawiki files over the filesystem, so instead of having "everything in one folder", it's spread in /etc/, /var/lib/mediawiki/, /usr/share/doc/mediawiki/... Any documentation will refer to the official location, so this redistribution often results in a user unable to locate its files. Also, your users will likely want the features they see on wikipedia, which runs the bleeding edge mediawiki version (currently, 1.16 alpha). If they were added on a more recent version, you are out of luck (some people even have their wiki running in trunk). You are also likely to want to install mediawiki extensions. With an old version, you are restricted to the extension version which existed with your mediawiki was released (or check if you are lucky and a more recent one also work). Extensions will need /some/ manual supervision since neither your package manager nor mediawiki-announce will notify you (although ubuntu has a mediawiki-extensions package with a few extensions, perhaps you don't want any other one). Running old software also the inconvenience that when you ask for help, the regulars like to begin the answers with "You should upgrade" :) Finally, if you already have the wiki installed, as seems to be your case, downgrading isn't supported by mediawiki so if the package version has a major version different than the version you have installed, you should stick with the newer version (on contrary, upgrading is a well-supported path). Am I biased? Probably :) I'm not against FHS, but the default mediawiki structure (needed for people which doesn't have root access) works correctly. Mediawiki packages have historically given some unhappy customers. They are fine if you are ok with the above limitations. But given how easy it is to keep it up to date, and being MediaWiki such a robust software I don't find them worth.

Florent Georges wrote: My fault, I thought I was checking the version of Ubuntu 9.10 but was instead seeing the version at 9.4. It's nice to see they updated it. 1.15.1 is a bugfix over 1.15.0 so if they independently fixed their version, it's ok I guess. MediaWiki trunk is very stable. But I don't recommend to blindly run it on a production site. Create the database and insert there the content of maintenance/tables.sql (read the comments at the beginning). You may want to take care on the collation when you create the tables. You can use (or require) a base LocalSettings and change just the dbname and paths. The only things to backup in MediaWiki are the database, the images/ folder and LocalSettings.php The webserver only needs write access to images/ math/ and, if using the web installer, config/ (which can be completely deleted after install). That's funny. :) Use whatever fits you better. You are welcome.