[Asterisk-Users] Advice on OS Choice

[Ray]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 02:10:54PM +0100, Alex Barnes wrote:

> I am currently trying to decide what Operating System is best to go for on
> a customer site.  Server will only be running Asterisk / MySQL / Apache /
> PHP but nothing else.
>  
> I have only tested Asterisk on SLES 8.1 however I do have experience with
> RedHat 9 as well.

Personally I use Debian for servers.  The main things I like about it are:

1.  Predictability.  Pretty much anything you could want has been packaged
for Debian by official maintainers and following Debian policy.  This means
that when you install some new package you know where to find config files,
docs etc.  You also know that dependancies have been sorted out for you and
you arn't going to break some other package.

2.  Safe security updates.  Within any give release updates are strictly for
security patches and the package maintainers take care to make sure nothing
breaks.  The last thing you want is to make unnecessary changes to a working
stable server.

3.  Stubborn licensing policies.  Lots of people think Debian is too anal
about requiring that all official parts of Debian meet the DFSG.  If you
are distributing Linux based systems their pickiness is an advantage since
you don't have to worry that you might accidentally include some propriatary
or "free only for non-commercial use" application.  If it's Debian then you
KNOW you can distribute the thing.

4.  Long term upgradability.  I have several Debian boxes that have been
upgraded 3 or more times over the years without incident and I've never had
an upgrade from one stable release to another end in requiring me to
re-install from scratch.  My impression is that the success rate of most
other distros is not as high.

I've never been real happy with RH, at first due to bugs and idiosyncrasies that wasted a lot
of my time and later because of their licensing.  If I were looking for a
commercial distro I'd probably go for SuSe or Mandrake.

-- 
Ray