Debian VS CentOS

LivingSouL · October 2011

I've just noticed most of you guys here are using Debian (well at least on OVZ and Xen, I don't know on KVMs). Does that mean Debian is a more preferable choice than CentOS?

NordicVPS · October 2011

Debian is quite popular in Europe and I find it easy to use :)

CentOS is used to be more popular in US back in the days.

I think today most prefer to play with Ubuntu/Debian or CentOS,

You may find Ubuntu easy to use if you are new to Linux as it is very easy to find many tutorials online and getting started.

Other than that, both are Linux and only noticeable differences are their package manager: yum vs apt-get / aptitude and their release cycle.

mrm2005 · October 2011

Hi,

the main thing is ram usage. in a 64/128MB LEB , you usually can't run yum, but debian package manager is fine even with 64MB Ram.. usually debian needs less ram than CentOS.

miTgiB · October 2011

mrm2005 said: usually debian needs less ram than CentOS.

Only for the package manager, rpm still functions properly in minimal installs.

TigersWay · October 2011

I tried centos twice, with just 2 fingers honestly ... and I found it "bloated" compare to Debian.

And the second thing, is that in the thousands or millions of tutorials/helps/guides most are/were for centos and wrong.

Not exactly a fair judgment, but is there any? :-)

LivingSouL · October 2011

I find Debian easy to use too but when I first started OpenVPN, the only tut I had is for CentOS, then eventually I finally had it working with Debian. So I might use Debian from now on on OpenVPN installs...

Basil · October 2011

CentOS vs Debian is mostly just personal preference.

Personally I think a sizable number of young(er) people started out with Ubuntu and just want to stick with something similar.

jhadley · October 2011

I won't use anything except CentOS unless I really have to.

JustinBoshoff · October 2011

Before YUM was around rpm was a lot of work trying to find all the dependencies. I'm talking DeadRat 6 and 7 days and deb based systems where a pleasure to work with.

Xeoncross · October 2011

Since Debian is the lighter, more secure parent of the most used Linux OS in the world (Ubuntu), you can count it to be the most installed server OS after Ubuntu.

I can get Debian down to 11MB RSS a lot easier than I can ubuntu.

LivingSouL · October 2011

Xeoncross said: most installed server OS after Ubuntu.

Interesting... :)

danielfeng · October 2011

CentOS is like dead. Try Scientific Linux if you do prefer the so-called "secure" yet out-dated system.

Debian is okay.

Arch is my favorite. On OVZ, Arch only used ~5MB RAM by default. On KVM it's only ~10MB. But using up-to-date Arch on OVZ is quite challenging - you need to know some tricks to make it work properly, since it has latest packages and sometimes you will have trouble if you upgrade. But once you know it, Arch is the best distro in my opinion.

I have 3 OVZ, 1 KVM, and 1 DockStar, all with Arch installed. I'm happy with Arch.

danielfeng · October 2011

jtodd said: I won't use anything except CentOS unless I really have to.

CentOS? The out-dated distro that hasn't released 6.1 yet, also without (timely) security updates? Man, you should try Scientific Linux.

LivingSouL · October 2011

danielfeng said: Arch is my favorite.

Arch is kinda nice too. Have you tried OpenVPN on it?

danielfeng · October 2011

LivingSouL said: Arch is kinda nice too. Have you tried OpenVPN on it?

Not yet, but it is easy. Arch has a good wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OpenVPN

On OVZ, PPTP may have some problems (depending on host settings) but OpenVPN should be fine.

LivingSouL · October 2011

will try Arch with OVPN soon.. :)

danielfeng · October 2011

LivingSouL said: will try Arch with OVPN soon.. :)

OVZ or KVM? KVM is much easier for Arch. On OVZ with old kernel (.18) you need to do some work: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VPS_Repo

And also modify /etc/rc.sysinit to fix tty (caused by udev) issue. If this is what you are going to do, let me know, and I can send you details.

LivingSouL · October 2011

I don't know of any hosts offering Arch on OVZ, so I might go to KVM :)

danielfeng · October 2011

LivingSouL said: I don't know of any hosts offering Arch on OVZ, so I might go to KVM :)

BuyVM, Uptime, eNetSouth, they all have Arch for OVZ. But KVM is recommended. Also remember to ask them to get the latest installation ISO, as the old one may fail if you do a netinstall: http://www.archlinux.org/news/20110819-installation-media/

I asked BuyVM to update the ISO and they did it in a timely manner.

Kairus · October 2011

I second Arch, it's pretty quick. Pacman is nice as well, and you've got to love having recent versions of software. It was pretty annoying to get MySQL 5.5 on Ubuntu without issues.

tux · October 2011

Kairus said: It was pretty annoying to get MySQL 5.5 on Ubuntu without issues.

I running latest stable MySQL on Ubuntu without any issue.

Kairus · October 2011

tux said: I running latest stable MySQL on Ubuntu without any issue.

How did you install it? Using alien to convert rpm? It's almost a year since its release, and there's still no package under Ubuntu, kind of lame.

tux · October 2011

apt-get install mysql-client mysql-server

I use this PPA.

danielfeng · October 2011

Kairus said: How did you install it? Using alien to convert rpm? It's almost a year since its release, and there's still no package under Ubuntu, kind of lame.

From 3rd-party PPAs or source. Not only is MySQL out-dated, but also a lot more on most distros. For example, it's a joke to have the so-called "secure" CentOS installed but need to compile tons of packages from source even with EPEL enabled - and you are supposed to install them under /opt. I know sometimes RHEL/CentOS/SL may have more driver support though.

I am always wondering how can a person ensure the system is "safe" unless he/she RTFM in detail of EVERY package that needs to be compiled and knows EVERY single parameter passed to configure? Even if it's doable it's still like a monkey patch, and it's a shame for the distro's package management system.

livingvirtual · October 2011

I have heard a lot about CentOS seems like many people use it..but I couldn't get my emacs working in it. So I think I might give Debian a try or might move on to Fedora.

kiloserve · October 2011

You basically have the 2 main distro families:

RedHat Distros (RHEL/CentOS/Fedora/SL/CloudLinux) Debian Distros (Debian/Ubuntu/Linspire/Xandros)

Debian dominates the desktops and probably alot of non-webhosting servers. RedHat distros dominate the webhosting servers and VPS nodes.

Debian is probably the easier one to use and learn and has more polished desktop GUIs. Redhat is a bit more odd but has wide hosting/VPS support due to major apps like cPanel and SolusVM only running on Redhat distros.

LivingSouL · November 2011

@danielfeng said: I asked BuyVM to update the ISO and they did it in a timely manner.

Maybe I should ask 123Systems to update their Arch as well. They still have 2010 version of Arch. sigh

luis123456 · November 2011

My favorite Is CentOS, mainly because it runs Kloxo and can be tweaked to run on as low as 12 MB RAM.

Francisco · November 2011

@LivingSouL said: Maybe I should ask 123Systems to update their Arch as well. They still have 2010 version of Arch. sigh

Many of our templates are custom created, including our 2011 ARCH OVZ template.

Francisco

thekreek · November 2011

@LivingSouL good luck with that one, ever since I got my vps with 123Systems I asked for a Debian 6 template, and it took them almost a year to bring it. According to their support they only use SolusVM provided templates, so no custom templates for us.

Joel · November 2011

@LivingSoul: Maybe I should ask 123Systems to update their Arch as well. They still have 2010 version of Arch. sigh

123Systems is complete junk. I have an account there, been waiting 5+ months for Debian6. They just sent an email out about updated distros, in short I didn't even waste my time with them after being told quarter after quarter that "we will review distros end of each quarter" or some rubbish like that.

In short, a month ago they still only had Debian5, my VPS spends more time offline or randomly ends up offline than it does online.

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Debian VS CentOS

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