Linux flavors

[bow-wow]

Is there anyone else that would like to see serverbeach offer other flavors of linux, like Gentoo or Slackware? I mention those two because they are my favorites. I just discovered Gentoo last year and I absolutely love it. I just "upgraded" my desktop to the latest version with two commands: "emerge sync; emerge -u world" forget downtime, forget dependancy/compatibility issues. It's really cool how easily I can keep my desktop up to date, but it seems like it would be even more beneficial on a server.

As for Slackware, I admire it's simplicity. It runs most of my development servers and my servers at home.

I am pretty new to Debian, and although I can appreciate the power of apt, I am frustrated by the fact I am stuck using such old versions of core applications (to me) like apache, php, etc. Yes I know I could go to testing but I probably wont because of the ominous warnings against doing so with a production box, because of the lack of guaranteed timely security fixes. I guess I kind of have a love hate relationship with Debian at the moment.

Does anyone else second calls for Gentoo or Slackware servers? What are your feelings?

[brent]

My gut feeling is SB wouldn't bother to do that. Linux is linux is linux. I would imagine their argument would be that it would make their service offerings too complex and muddy for (essentially) a discount provider. I could be wrong though. I would have liked to see them drop Redhat. I hate it when a company takes its ball and bat and runs home to mommy. Fedora will go the same route. Afterall, a prostitute in a wedding dress is still a prostitute.

[bow-wow]

Originally posted by brent
I hate it when a company takes its ball and bat and runs home to mommy. Fedora will go the same route. Afterall, a prostitute in a wedding dress is still a prostitute.
You are speaking in riddles and I have no clue what you're trying to say.

[knightfoo]

Offering every Linux flavor under the sun would be nice, but the maintenance needs increase exponentially with every Linux flavor that is added to the system. Red Hat and Debian were choosen because they are commonly supported distributions. Yes, Linux is Linux, but many applications are built against a particular distribution and installing that application on a different distribution may not be a walk in the park.

Red Hat and Debian are well-established, well-maintained, mature distributions that have methods to automatically update software. Slackware has been around for a long time, but only seasoned admins would be able to properly maintain a Slackware server. Gentoo does have a nice package management system but it is still relatively new and occasionally runs into major problems. Many of the other distributions are either too esoteric or too specialized to be useful or usable in a dedicated server environment.

You also don't want to spend time and resources to maintain a distribution that 1 person out of 1,000 might use. Doing this would slow down development for the other 999 customers who, for example, need the latest version of Plesk. We can't please everyone all the time (companies who try frequently go bankrupt), so we try to do what is most beneficial for the largest number of customers.

-knightfoo

[bow-wow]

I understand the arguments against too many flavors, I just thought I would throw it out there to see if anyone else would be excited to see slack or Gentoo on a dedicated server :) I'm certainly not naive enough to expect anything to come of it.

Honestly I can't say that I've even seen dedicated Slackware servers offered myself, although I did see a few where places you can get Gentoo.