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Converted at last

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by roger99a

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I have finally been converted, thanks to Ubuntu and Debian, to Linux. I've been a Windows guy for 10 years but could never get the hang of Linux. Redhat was useless and confusing to me. Debian rocks! I'm running Ubuntu from home, no big accomplishment, but what I did at work I think brings me into the Linux world. We needed a "nix box for a project I dreamed up. It needed to be secure and familiar to my database guy who works on FreeBSD systems. The FreeBSD guy at work was unavailable for this project so I decided to build a Debian box. With very little assistance (mostly "What program do you use for" questions) I setup the Debian box, Apache-ssl, OpenSSL, FTP, Mail and it all works. WOOHOO! I think I'll start replacing those BSD boxes soon.

26 replies

by bfilmfan

I am just starting to pick up on Linux myself, as it looks like a nice complimentary skill set to cram into my big ol' AD-infected head. I will have to see if I can scrounge up a copy of that at work. Should have one as we have at least 10 flavors of Linux and Unix the last time I asked about for Redhat.

by jaqui

red hat is the worst in my opinion.
not a bad installer, but the worst ditro.
even thier fdisk is bug ridden.

then, I've had it not be able to mount root partition.
in partition structure it created.

no interest in using it at all.

by choppit

That's the beauty of Linux, if you don't like a particular distro, there's plenty of others to choose from.

by roger99a

I actually built and used a Red Hat server before with Squid. The KDE desktop stayed locked up all the time. Left a bad taste............

by apotheon

I loathe Anaconda (the installer RH-based Linuxes use). It's bloated and slow, and it installs far too much crap by default, even when you choose a "minimal" install.

by jaqui

it is a better os.

now to get you up to speed on it so you can get into a real linux distro.
linux from scratch.

build everything from sources, configuring every little detail.
no automatic anything.
):)

by choppit

I can appreciate the benefits & personal satisfaction to be gained from building your own, but is it really worth it unless you're planning a large roll out?

by jaqui

on usage.
since most distro's customise the apps to suit thier prefferences, even in a small way like the autmount coding for each distro, it can be better to use an lsf station as a development platform.
you are working with original sources, no customisations, thereby making your apps more likely to be portable across distros without needing more than a configure tweak.
( mandrake's menus in x are stored in a different place in the filesystem, they alter the design of them also )

I build my system lsb compliant, just to reduce an extensive set of requirements that may not be on all distros. if I need a non standard lib, I make sure it is available with the app, so no searching for it.

lfs isn't actually meant to be a new end user distro, it is targeted at experienced users wanting to learn more about the setup of a linux box. what the minimums are for any given functionality requirement. to roll it for use in an enterprise environment is a lot of work, depending on actual requirements for the enterprise, I may say it's better to use a major distro. ( for most cases this is true )
if you only want a webserver, with minimal modules or not, then maybe going lfs is better, as you don't have extras added to suit the distro prefferences.

by apotheon

Actually (as Jaqui hints in his answer to your question), I'd say that large roll-outs are exactly when you should NOT use LFS. For enterprise deployment and other large-volume system installs, my recommendation is definitely Debian, simply because it's about as stable and easily-managed as Linux gets. The combination of native apt support with the exhaustively tested, extremely numerous packages in the Debian apt archives makes Debian pretty much ideal for production use as a server, or even a desktop.

LFS, as Jaqui notes, is best for an instructional tool, software development, and other implementations where a "plain vanilla", highly granular, very involving installation is desirable. Some users find it to be perfect for setting up their personal desktop systems, too, because they get everything set up the way they like.

I'm planning to look into DFS (Debian From Scratch -- like LFS with Debian configurations) at some point, myself. What I don't already know about the Debian distribution, that will certainly teach me.

by roger99a

I don't want to know that much about anything. I just want it to work, and easy and flexible maximize my time. Besides, I can't write code. I'm just a mechanic.

by apotheon

You chose well with Debian, then. You might find that you'll develop issues with Ubuntu (I emphasize "might" here), because its configuration is subtly different from vanilla Debian and it runs on its own apt archives. In my experience, any Debian knock-off with its own archives (including MEPIS, Knoppix, and Ubuntu) tends to develop software compatibility issues eventually, if it's installed to the hard drive.

No distribution has the same extensive availability and rock-solid reliability of the Debian apt archives. Debian knock-offs that screw with that do so at their own peril. I'd really like to see something like Ubuntu that just uses the official archives or, possibly, just mirrors them. I might eventually end up having to create such a distro myself.

by choppit

I chose RH9 to start with, which I've now been running in a production environment for a little over a year. I've been playing with Fedora 3 for a few months, but I'm intrigued to try Suse 9.2 )if I can ever get the live eval to work)

by craig herberg

Admittedly, it's been a while since I lived in the Linux world, but I recall using Q-mail instead of sendmail, for security reasons.

Craig Herberg

by apotheon

I don't think I'll ever understand the mindset that requires a huge, bloated GUI on a server.

By the way, I deal with squid servers on Fedora at my datacenter job. Something the devs and I have noticed is that the squids on Fedora Core 3 are less than efficient. They ran much better on FC2 than they do on FC3. We're currently theorizing that it has something to do with the custom kernels that RH installs use, and we're planning a possible simultaneous performance test of FreeBSD and Debian.

If I'm sufficiently subtle, maybe I can get everything moved to Debian. In the meantime, at least I might get to start learning more about FreeBSD.

by jaqui

a server doesn't need a gui at all.
the console tools are more than enough to administer it.
if you want, you can use webmin, from remote workstation.
but I like using ssh for remote if I don't have ready physical access to the server.

by apotheon

It's all SSH for remote administration for me. The CLI tools are more powerful and flexible than any GUI tools out there, anyway.

by apotheon

Since Roger99a is using Debian (and Debian-based Ubuntu), I'd recommend searching for software using the "apt-cache search" command at the shell. You'll find more stuff more quickly, and can get functionality summaries of the packages using the "apt-cache show" command. Then, of course, it's a simple matter of using "apt-get install" to download and install it.

Yes, I do so love the benefits of being a Linux user.

by jaqui

I prefer to use lfs.

while graphic installers are great for people new to linux, they do install more than needed.

even with debian, and the bsd installer based distros, you get some dependancies from thier customisations that you may not really need for your use of the machine.

by apotheon

That's true: even with Debian and *BSD you'll get some not strictly necessary stuff installed. It's a negligible amount, though, and with a minimum install to begin with the few extra things are all slim little command-line utilities.

It's a more than equitable trade-off for me, to get the legendary stability of Debian and the awe-inspiring breadth and depth of available software in the apt archives, to say nothing of the extreme ease of software management with native apt support.

So, yeah. You can have a very slim system with LFS, but I get lean and mean enough for my needs with Debian and I get a lot in exchange for the little bit of cruft that lurks within. Of course, Debian doesn't have the GUI installer bloat that distros like Fedora have, and for that I'm grateful.

by jaqui

I use lfs for the vanilla code, and for strict lsb compliance to develop on.

but I generally use a major distro for servers, as the minimal extras when not installing x server aren't worth worrying about. the additional functionality of the code base with modules for apache etc makes updating, increasing capability on the server box simpler.

by roger99a

I agree that a GUI on a server is added overhead, but it may be needed for certain users. I used it on the Squid/Red Hat system because it was a learning tool. I didn't learn much except that GUI's don't belong on Linux servers. The new server I built doesn't have a GUI. I'm using SSH and the Database/Web guy is using Webmin for some stuff he does.

by apotheon

"I didn't learn much except that GUI's don't belong on Linux servers."

Hah! That's funny.

Next up: scripting for system administration. You'll probably want to start by learning shell scripting (which is absurdly easy: it's about as easy to learn as batch scripting for DOS, but roughly a thousand times as powerful and flexible). After that, if you're still going, is Perl scripting. There hasn't been an enhancement to system administration capabilities that compares to Perl scripting in power and flexibility.

Because all the system essentials in unix are essentially plain text, and Perl is [b]the[/b] text manipulation tool to reckon with, Perl is the ultimate unix system administration toolkit. It has been referred to as the "Swiss Army chainsaw" because it'll basically let you do anything you want to, including (metaphorically) cutting off your own limbs. As a unix sysadmin, you know you've arrived when you find yourself doing everything with Perl scripts without even thinking about it.

Note: Perl is so flexible that it will actually allow you to read data from anywhere on your hard drive into a variable, change it, then write it back where you found it. This means that you could, conceivably, patch your OS kernel in one line of Perl. This would be an insanely impressive thing to do, and a generally insane thing to do as well: it is not an avisable task, but it's cool that the option is there.

In any case, good luck. Have you joined a LUG mailing list yet? It's the best tech support you'll ever find.

http://www.linux.org/groups/

by apotheon

If I ever get into serious, in-depth application development on Linux, I'm sure I'll want to start working with LFS or something equivalently "vanilla" (I don't know what flavors of vanilla will be available by the time I get to that point). What coding I do on Linux tends to be related to command-line scripting and small utility writing, at present, so the plain-vanilla design doesn't really affect me: bash is bash is bash.

Debian is one of the most LSB-compliant distributions out there, and the Debian dev teams have been consciously making it more LSB-compliant. This is definitely a Good Thing. LFS can get you more compliant, but for my needs at present, "more compliant" is irrelevant. Again, if/when I get into serious application development, I'm sure that'll change.

It sounds like you've picked LFS for all the right reasons, functionally speaking. I figure I've done the same with Debian. All that's left is the philosophical reasons, and while I have some minor issues with the GPL, that applies to all Linux distros. Anyway, we could probably argue philosophical issues until we die of asphyxiation, and it wouldn't make a whit of difference in a technical discussion.

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