[Wikitech-l] Maybe we should try to reach a consensus

Nick Reinking wrote: Let's consider the leading alternatives: SuSE, Debian, and Redhat: 1. SuSE - Well, the server is being built by the Penguins at PenguinComputing now. It will come pre-installed with SuSE Enterprise Server 8 for AMD Opteron: http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/server/sles/amd64_landing.html This sounds state-of-the-art to me, in terms of being 64-bit ready. An additional plus for SuSe is that it's turn-key, since it's pre-installed. When Jason gets the machine delivered, he can run some quick tests to see that it's functional and then drive down the very next day to install it for us. 2. Debian - I like the idea of using Debian, however... According to this: http://www.debian.org/ports/ and this: http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/ and this: http://personal.bgsu.edu/~inathan/amd64/Debian-amd64-FAQ.html It sounds to me like Debian for AMD64 is not quite ready for prime time. 3. RedHat - according to their website, Redhat Enterprise Linux AS and Redhat Enterprise Linux WS both support AMD64. WS is cheap, AS costs a fortune. Looking at the feature set, I'm not sure why, but anyhow WS seems fine for us. (It looks like AS has support for >2 processors, and more free stuff with it, but hey, free stuff is *free*, right, so why pay more?) I'm not sure what the advantages of going with RedHat versus SuSe would be, since both are RPM based, and both have everything that we would need. Since both SuSE and Redhat respect the LSB stuff, I think they are so similar that in practical use we'd hardly even notice the difference. (I had one slackware server, and it drove me nuts because everything was different and just wrong.) --------------------------------- MY CONCLUSION: Debian is not ready yet, and there's so little difference for our purposes between RedHat and SuSE that we should just go with the pre-install. But... what's your opinion? --Jimbo