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OS choices for decicated servers?
So i am working on some internal project for a control panel for managing dedicated servers (remote power control, automatic reinstalls, such things). I was wondering - what OSes do people want and use on Low End Dedicated servers?
I was thinking about these initially:
- Debian 6
- CentOS 5
- CentOS 6
- Ubuntu 12.04
What else do people want? Of course we could be adding more options later, but initially would prefer to keep it simpler.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Note: we are NOT considering windows as an option. Only open source / free OSes would be supported.
Comments
PXE ?
Yep.
@rds100 good starting list assuming the default is 64bit for a dedi
gentoo
Indeed, the lowest would have 4GB RAM probably, so not worth it dealing with 32 bit OS.
It will be 64 bit only.
More fun: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart
@kuro I'm a gentoo (hardened) fan too - guessing that's a phase 2 or 3 item for his list
Arch Linux or Gentoo are great for low-end dedicated servers and VPSs because you can just do everything and make it fit with every hardware
.
Arch is really picking up popularity.
Debian and Ubuntu for me.
Of course, would like to see Debian MINIMAL as an option.
Yes, i was thinking that all installs would be basic system with sshd only, the user can install whatever they want later.
And Arch linux... don't know. Sounds too fragile for my taste (judging from my experience with updating and fixing the OVZ template). But we will see.
About time
I am tired of carving out SAMBA, Apache2.annoy and rest of ready to annoy things that roll out typically in default Debian x64 installs on OpenVZ.
what no love for freebsd #swag
freebsd, there is an OS you don't hear much about these days.
@justinb frankly i have no experience with freebsd, not sure if it has some way for auto/unattended installs. Could be considered if there is an easy way to automate it and if there is sufficient interest.
while we're at it, scientific linux 6 + why not dump centos5 already
@rds100 - why not Windows? Maybe you can consider an option of uploading own ISOs?
+1 for own ISOs. Haven't used any provider yet that facilitates such. But I'd love the option, cause the make once and deploy over and over model would save me tons of time.
@gbshouse because i don't like it
And there is licensing. And there are viruses, etc. These are things i prefer to not have to deal with. Especially on a cheap dedi.
as if an unpatched windows install is as bad as a linux system with root password set to password open on port 22
in other news, wow, been on LET for over a year now
Own ISOs are only option for IPMI install. There is no way we can automate the installation from your own ISO.
Btw i am talking about Atom class servers here, hope nobody wants to run windows on an Atom
I found it working pretty well. First time i put XP on an atom was on an N270 and it worked well.
My main computer I writing this from is a win7 with 8 GB ram running on an E-350 dualcore bobcat CPU
M
Nothing wrong with Atom based machines. Nothing wrong with even lowly ARM processors.
Now highly shared environments, that is a different story though
Heck I remember when a 33Mhz machine was quite expensive and all the rage. Well I remember 1 Mhz and below machines though too.
Well yeah but to be fair...you weren't running Windows 7 or server 03/08 on it
You wanna know what I want to see happen? A Raspberry Pie host with PXE for Automatic OS reinstalls.
@Jeffrey if you convince the PI to do PXE, why not. Considering it's an USB Ethernet card - not very likely.
My first one was 3 Mhz. I feel young again :P
M
Hey, we even produced computers at that time. Pravec 82 (Правец 82) - a clone of Apple II
rds100, if you want to include OpenBSD, NetBSD or FreeBSD then im up for brainstorming.
FreeBSD "livefs" image is dirt-easy to install and maintain.
Namely from FreeBSD-8.3-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img
Hope youre using rsync and tftp.
Dont forget to erase packages and release info. Thatll save 600M
I am doing that on my MKS2G server, I have a N2800 @ 1.86GHz but if I had a single core atom I would not dare :P