Fedora Core 1 for AMD64 has been released, should I go with that on the new db server, or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64?
The differences seem compelling in favor of Fedora Core:
1. Fedora Core is free-beer, price of $0, whereas SUSE is $767. 2. Fedora Core is GNU-free, whereas I'm not so sure about SUSE.
The possisble downside of Fedora Core for AMD64 is that it's more or less "hot off the presses" as of March 5. (Over a month ago, so I guess if it was a disaster we would have heard by now?)
--Jimbo
On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 08:00:09AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Fedora Core 1 for AMD64 has been released, should I go with that on the new db server, or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64?
The differences seem compelling in favor of Fedora Core:
- Fedora Core is free-beer, price of $0, whereas SUSE is $767.
- Fedora Core is GNU-free, whereas I'm not so sure about SUSE.
The possisble downside of Fedora Core for AMD64 is that it's more or less "hot off the presses" as of March 5. (Over a month ago, so I guess if it was a disaster we would have heard by now?)
Well, I don't know if we want to be spending our limited money on OS licenses ("support"). Perhaps we should just wait for Fedora Core to have a couple more releases to iron out the bugs? No need to rush it.
Nick Reinking wrote:
Well, I don't know if we want to be spending our limited money on OS licenses ("support"). Perhaps we should just wait for Fedora Core to have a couple more releases to iron out the bugs? No need to rush it.
Well, I'm buying a replacement for geoffrin today (or tomorrow), so I have to make a decision right away. It seems imperative for our application to go with a 64 bit solution rather than RH9.
--Jimbo
On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 08:43:44AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Nick Reinking wrote:
Well, I don't know if we want to be spending our limited money on OS licenses ("support"). Perhaps we should just wait for Fedora Core to have a couple more releases to iron out the bugs? No need to rush it.
Well, I'm buying a replacement for geoffrin today (or tomorrow), so I have to make a decision right away. It seems imperative for our application to go with a 64 bit solution rather than RH9.
Ahh, I see. In that case, why do we have to use the Enterprise Server version of SuSE for x86-64, and not just the regular personal edition?
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/x86_64/9.0/
On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 10:59:43 -0500, Nick Reinking wrote:
Ahh, I see. In that case, why do we have to use the Enterprise Server version of SuSE for x86-64, and not just the regular personal edition?
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/x86_64/9.0/
The kernel and possibly libc are the important bits, support isn't really what we need. Those should be the same in both suse versions. On the Debian 64bit list some people report to be using the suse kernel with the Debian libs to get the biarch capabilities. Dependencies don't seem to be a major problem.
Jimbo,
I apologize if this has been discussed, but is there a compelling reason to use a rpm-based distribution in the first place? I swear by Debian, and for the high-performance needs that wikipedia has, even looking into Gentoo would not be a bad idea. I'd be more than willing to lend a hand with any aspect of either of these distributions that needs clarification.
Cheers, Ivan
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Nick Reinking wrote:
Well, I don't know if we want to be spending our limited money on OS licenses ("support"). Perhaps we should just wait for Fedora Core to have a couple more releases to iron out the bugs? No need to rush it.
Well, I'm buying a replacement for geoffrin today (or tomorrow), so I have to make a decision right away. It seems imperative for our application to go with a 64 bit solution rather than RH9.
--Jimbo
On Apr 16, 2004, at 09:58, Ivan Krstic wrote:
I apologize if this has been discussed, but is there a compelling reason to use a rpm-based distribution in the first place? I swear by Debian, and for the high-performance needs that wikipedia has, even looking into Gentoo would not be a bad idea. I'd be more than willing to lend a hand with any aspect of either of these distributions that needs clarification.
The OS is basically a commodity, to the extent that it works and is reliable. Our main services (apache, PHP, MySQL) are mostly installed from source or distro-independent binary tarballs, so beyond basic system configuration it shouldn't much make a difference. The other machines have generally been Red Hat, and it's good to stay consistent on the Apache farm. The database server is different though, so it can be different.
Is there any compelling reason to use a non-rpm distribution, either? What does the package format have to do with anything?
As far as SuSE (which has had amd64 releases in the market for a while), SuSE Professional 9.0 for amd64 is a mere US$119.95, we don't need the expensive support contract.
I've gotten the impression that Debian isn't really mature on amd64; there's no stable release. Has anyone used it *on amd64*? Would you recommend it for a production server?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Hi,
I just bought a new Opteron box. I am installing and testing different OS on it. Available 64bits OS are SuSE, Fedora, Mandrake and Gentoo.
The best result I have so far are with Gentoo. It takes some hours to install it, but it is worth the time (5-6 for a complete distribution - base + KDE + Mozilla + Gimp - for me on a mono processor). For a bi-pro server with just Apache, PHP and MySQL, it would take much less.
I use mainly Debian on my other machines. But now Debian is in the alpha stage of AMD64.
Just my 2 bits. Yann
Le Friday 16 April 2004 20:09, Brion Vibber a écrit :
The OS is basically a commodity, to the extent that it works and is reliable. Our main services (apache, PHP, MySQL) are mostly installed from source or distro-independent binary tarballs, so beyond basic system configuration it shouldn't much make a difference. The other machines have generally been Red Hat, and it's good to stay consistent on the Apache farm. The database server is different though, so it can be different.
Is there any compelling reason to use a non-rpm distribution, either? What does the package format have to do with anything?
As far as SuSE (which has had amd64 releases in the market for a while), SuSE Professional 9.0 for amd64 is a mere US$119.95, we don't need the expensive support contract.
I've gotten the impression that Debian isn't really mature on amd64; there's no stable release. Has anyone used it *on amd64*? Would you recommend it for a production server?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
Is there any compelling reason to use a non-rpm distribution, either? What does the package format have to do with anything?
You're right; it doesn't. However, APT (the Debian packet manager) is addictive - in practice, it reduces administration overhead more than most admins can imagine. Want to stay up to date with the bleeding edge? It's one command. Prefer rock-solid instead (Debian is known for being extremely conservative about their stable releases) - one command. Install any/all security updates automatically? Also one command. I've been dabbling with Linux since one of the earlier 1.1 releases in 1994 (not very seriously back then, however) and have probably tried every distribution under the sun. Debian is my hands-down, leaves-everything-else-in-the-dust favorite for servers.
I've gotten the impression that Debian isn't really mature on amd64; there's no stable release. Has anyone used it *on amd64*? Would you recommend it for a production server?
Debian is not mature on AMD64. But as I mentioned - we're trying to squeeze out every last bit of performance on this box anyway. Gentoo, even if the bootstrapping takes a while, is designed precisely for our situation, and AFAIK is stable on amd64.
Again, please do not hesitate to let me know if I can be of help with any of this.
Cheers, Ivan
I personally think that Debian would make an excellent choice - everything that Ivan has said about it is true. It is very easy to manage. That said, I don't think it would be a good idea to move to the AMD64 version of it yet, especially if they don't consider it to be production-quality. Perhaps we could do just a regular x86 install of it, with bigmem? I know it's not ideal, but it's much better tested.
On Apr 16, 2004, at 3:02 PM, Ivan Krstic wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
Is there any compelling reason to use a non-rpm distribution, either? What does the package format have to do with anything?
You're right; it doesn't. However, APT (the Debian packet manager) is addictive - in practice, it reduces administration overhead more than most admins can imagine. Want to stay up to date with the bleeding edge? It's one command. Prefer rock-solid instead (Debian is known for being extremely conservative about their stable releases) - one command. Install any/all security updates automatically? Also one command. I've been dabbling with Linux since one of the earlier 1.1 releases in 1994 (not very seriously back then, however) and have probably tried every distribution under the sun. Debian is my hands-down, leaves-everything-else-in-the-dust favorite for servers.
I've gotten the impression that Debian isn't really mature on amd64; there's no stable release. Has anyone used it *on amd64*? Would you recommend it for a production server?
Debian is not mature on AMD64. But as I mentioned - we're trying to squeeze out every last bit of performance on this box anyway. Gentoo, even if the bootstrapping takes a while, is designed precisely for our situation, and AFAIK is stable on amd64.
Again, please do not hesitate to let me know if I can be of help with any of this.
Cheers, Ivan _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN
On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 15:06:30 -0500, Nick Reinking wrote:
I personally think that Debian would make an excellent choice - everything that Ivan has said about it is true. It is very easy to manage. That said, I don't think it would be a good idea to move to the AMD64 version of it yet, especially if they don't consider it to be production-quality. Perhaps we could do just a regular x86 install of it, with bigmem? I know it's not ideal, but it's much better tested.
No. MySQL needs 64bit, crashes >2Gb otherwise. Im a debian fan as well, but in this case gentoo or suse seem to make more sense.
On Apr 16, 2004, at 13:02, Ivan Krstic wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
Is there any compelling reason to use a non-rpm distribution, either? What does the package format have to do with anything?
You're right; it doesn't. However, APT (the Debian packet manager) is addictive - in practice, it reduces administration overhead more than most admins can imagine.
Well, APT is available in Fedora too as well as YUM, which seems to be the default. (APT and YUM are a level of abstraction above Red Hat's RPM and Debian's DPKG, which will just complain at you if you haven't fetched all dependencies.) apt-get *is* great, though. I use it on my Mac -- also not running Debian -- to install packages from Fink.
Debian is not mature on AMD64. But as I mentioned - we're trying to squeeze out every last bit of performance on this box anyway. Gentoo, even if the bootstrapping takes a while, is designed precisely for our situation, and AFAIK is stable on amd64.
Performance is nice, but the machine needs to *work* too. Geoffrin was a speedy devil, but she crashed all the time, hence the long hassles with repairs ending in (hopefully) a refund from Penguin. We can only hope than Geoffrin II will be easier to get along with...
I've got a Gentoo box at home (32-bit Athlon). It seems to work well enough, but feels more bleeding edge. I'm not convinced of magical performance improvements, either; it's going to be running basically one major service, MySQL, from either an optimized official MySQL binary or an optimized local build regardless of which distro is used.
Anyone used Gentoo/AMD64 (or Gentoo generally) in a production environment?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Anyone used Gentoo/AMD64 (or Gentoo generally) in a production environment?
Not here, only using Debian boxes for this (on lots of IA32 and some HPPA boxes). Gentoo's update system broke here resulting in an unusable system (on PPC).
I hope this is not ending as a Distri advocacy war ...
Regards Götz
I've postponed the purchase until Monday, so we can discuss this more over the weekend.
Ivan Krstic wrote:
I apologize if this has been discussed, but is there a compelling reason to use a rpm-based distribution in the first place? I swear by Debian, and for the high-performance needs that wikipedia has, even looking into Gentoo would not be a bad idea. I'd be more than willing to lend a hand with any aspect of either of these distributions that needs clarification.
It has been discussed in the past, but in the fast moving world of free software, it's worth revisiting.
1. The last time I checked, Debian for AMD64 was not in existence. http://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-amd64/
seems to indicate that things have not changed much.
2. For practical purposes, it's also a lot simpler to go with an OS that's offered by SiliconMechanics -- they are offering for some reason only SuSe Enterprise (mucho $$$) and Fedora Core 1 for AMD 64 (free). Could they install the less expensive SuSE? Yes, I think so, after all they did it for us before. (It used to be an option in the dropdown box. I haven't talked to anyone to see why not anymore.)
3. The existing systems are all RPM based, and all the developers are familitar with that. I would imagine that all are also familiar enough with .deb packages and apt-get, or that it's easy enough to learn. But that's not really for me to say.
--Jimbo
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