Re: what Linux to run

[Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/03/12 09:49, John R Pierce wrote:

On 03/03/12 2:55 AM, Gavin Flower wrote:

My knowledge of Debian is via friend's (an extremely competent and experienced Unix guy who got me into Linux & who still runs Debian) comments and what I've noticed on the web.  For a Desktop development machine, I currently prefer Fedora, but for a server I need to be more conservative.  One place I worked used Ubuntu, but I quickly switched my machine to Fedora, when I found Ubuntu lacked the desktop things I relied on!

So I would interested in the answers, also I would need to be able to install JDK7.

the server equivalent to Fedora is, of course, RHEL or CentOS.    CentOS 6.2 is working very well for us for a range of stuff.

JDK7, I dunno, we're still using JDK 6 and trying very hard to stay away from bleeding edge proprietary features.  I sure don't see anything here we need for our work: http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk7/features/

but, any version of java can be installed on most anything... JDK's just need to be untarred somewhere (we'll put unpackaged ones in /opt/something)

Yes, I'd probably lean towards Centos (RHE if there is the budget).  Not only for the reasons you mentioned, but that the site seems to like Centos for some servers – even though the standard Linux desktop is Ubuntu.  Though I'm trying to keep a relatively open mind about the choice of server O/S (so long as it is Linux, of course!).

By the time my project is in wide use, JDK7 will no longer be bleeding edge.  However, hopefully way short of EOL!  :-)

The project is in fairly early stages so I have a wide latitude of what software I use.   I may go for pg9.2, as the covering indexes and other performance improvements may well prove very useful (possibly nearly essential, for one possible sub project).

I expect that once (about) mid year has passed, I will have to switch to a much more conservative approach to new versions.

The project is for training and to aid research, so there is more tolerance of errors and other problems, than systems that deal with financial processing.  Though obviously I am aiming for a perfect system that is totally reliable!  Though in practice: 'good enough', does the 'required job', and is 'sufficiently responsive' are closer to the mark.