Servers? UNIX? Where to start?

A unix based OS is great for what you are looking for. For the OS Linux would probably my first choice but the different BSD versions available OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD, Others? are also very good, another avenue is Solaris from Sun they offer a developer version of Solaris for a very reasonable cost (Like $40 or something or possibly even a free download). Any of these OSes will support the various forms of java you are interested in either right out of the box or with a free download or 3.Apache is the web server of choice and you can be supporting JHTML and JSP without much problem at all. Check out freshmeat.net or sourceforge.net for additional software.
All of the above (minus perhaps Solaris) is free software and can easily be obtained with an internet account. As for books there again are many great sources of info on the internet that are free of charge. Check out the HOW-TO on www.linux.org for a quick Linux/Unix primer, and any web search should be able to bring up some info on JAVA based programming. One word of caution, make sure you have a properly configured firewall before attempting to host any internet sites on your own. An unsecured Unix box on the internet is an inviation to trouble that rarely goes unnoticed by hackers for long.

I would strongly recommend Solaris. It's free for both personal and commercial use as long as your server has no more than eight CPUs (I wish). YOu can download it from www.sun.com or you can buy a media set, which includes documentation, for about $70. If you do that, you also get some development tools and environments, and it comes with iPlanet product licenses too.

Solaris can be installed on Intel-based systems, like most other Unix flavours, which means you can use a standard PC forit. I've done it and am very happy with the result.

There are lots of self-teach books for Linux and Solaris, but I've never looked at one so can't make a recommendation. There's lots of Solaris administration and setup documentation online at www.sun.com/bigadmin

HTH
William

Solaris is a good, well-documented choice. While you can download it for free, paying for the media kit is probably money well spent. Check out sunfreeware for public-license software that will run under Solaris. The various Linux distributions are probably cheaper but may require you to learn quite a bit of unix before you get them running well (anybody that can refute this statement, please do so). SCO also offers a free kit (cost of media and shipping) but I would not suggest using it. SCO has a tendency to go their own way with Unix and you will find better support for other flavors.

If you plan on using a PC you already own, be sure to check the Unix vendor's hardware compatibility list before you buy. Video cards can be especially tricky to configure and having the correct driver is a must. Check your network card too.

That said, if you have compatible hardware and a good distribution, you should be able to load Unix in a couple of hours. Jump right in!

Dear Friend,

I feel the Solaris is the Best Choice. Even u can down load it from www.sun.com also u will get verious books in PDF format on site : http://docs.sun.com

Even HP-UX Manuels are available on http://docs.hp.com but my feeling is that volume group funda is bit difficult to understand and to administration.

If u want to learn the jeneral UNIX then there is one book "UNIX Unleashed" by techmedia. it is very good book all kind of readers.