8/2     I'm in charge of setting up the software infrastructure at a
        small company and would like advice/pointers on which LINUX
        distro is best for small, internally used compute/database servers.
        I want something which is stable, easy to maintain/upgrade, and has
        commercial support available for purchase. I've been happy with
        Debian's ease of maintenance/upgrade/install via apt/synaptic, but
        I've heard good things about Ubuntu and Fedora. Thanks for the advice.
        \_ I use Centos. Ubuntu is a desktop OS and fedora is too bleeding
           edge for a server.
           \_ Thanks. Any thoughts on pros/cons of Debian?
        \_ If you're interested in purchasing commercial support, you
           might as well use RedHat.  In no case should you use Fedora
           in production.  Centos is fine, but is more or less equivalent
           to RedHat without support.  -tom
<<<<<<< Other Changes Below
           \_ Thanks. Can you buy support for Centos from RedHat or will they
              refuse unless you buy the official RHEL?

=======
        \_ apt-get uber Alles! That said, what the rest of everyone is saying is
           true. RedHat or CentOS are good if you're of the .rpm persuasion, and
           if you want the closest Linux to a BSD mentality, try Slackware (seeing
           as this is an internal site we're talking about). Under no circumstances
           should anyone touch Gentoo (even for a desktop).
>>>>>>> Your Changes Above
        \_ apt-get uber Alles! That said, what the rest of everyone is saying
           is true. RedHat or CentOS are good if you're of the .rpm
           persuasion, and if you want the closest Linux to a BSD mentality,
           try Slackware (seeing as this is an internal site we're talking
           about). Under no circumstances should anyone touch Gentoo (even for
           a desktop).  [formatd was here]
        \_ "Commercial support" is a reasonably useless phrase.  For Redhat
           it mostly means you pay them a fairly large chunk of money to get
           access to their "up to date" patch system.  To be fair it is a
           pretty decent system but it requires no less clue and often more
           clue than other systems to get setup well.  What exactly does your
           management believe they're getting for their "commercial support"?
           As Tom said you are limited to Redhat if "cs" is a requirement.  If
           management isn't that stupid then choose whatever you and the rest
           of the technical staff are most familiar with.  What you know best
           is what you'll run best.  It's common sense.  Under the hood the
           distros are all the same.  It's the same kernel, the same network
           stack, the same filesystems, etc.  The distro differences are
           meaningless for common use.
           \_ Thanks, that's pretty much what I thought. The reason I'm
              asking about "commercial support" is that management gave me
              a free hand to setup the tech/software end the way I thought best
              and I want to be able to get quick help with any problems.
              I've used linux for over 8 years and it's definetly better for
              our plans than Windows. But if we went with Windows and had
              problems, they wouldn't question my judgement since everyone
              uses Windows. If problems come up with linux, I want to get them
              fixed quick so they don't wonder whether it was the right choice.
              \_ The safest choice is definitely paying for RHEL.  Not only
                 is there a company backing it, it's also the reference
                 standard for Linux, so third-party applications will
                 definitely work with it.  -tom
              \_ It sounds like you want RH.  But don't just fill out the
                 forms and start installing.  See what they'll charge to
                 send one of their in house consultants over for a day to
                 talk to your about your needs and help you design the right
                 thing.  This will get you off on the right foot and give
                 you leverage with them later if something goes wrong. "But
                 this stuff was setup by your guy!!!" breaks down a lot of
                 support barriers when you need help.
        \_ So, we use RedHat at my work, and we seem to at least get the
           ability to hassle them when something goes seriously wrong.
           Support does not seem to be just limited to patches, although
           we are a really big user and may have a non-standard contract.
           Also, RedHat does not seem to be the same as all other distros
           under the hood.  Redhat seems to have added non-standard
           extensions.  About 2 years ago on RedHat Enterprise 3 they
           tweaked the scheduler in some way to "improve database
           performance."  Unfortunatly, it also killed interactive and
           build performance.  (What we use it for.)  It didn't seem to be
           a problem in Linux at large, just RedHat EL3.
           \_ Broken to a degree that most people would notice or you had to
              profile and time it to see the difference on a large build?
                --just curious
              \_ WE certainly noticed.  Our build times tripled.  They
                 went from 1.5 hours to ~5 hours.  And the system wasn't
                 very useable when building either.  I'm not even really
                 sure how this was possible, the both CPUs were still
                 mostly idle.  It was pretty much awful.
        \_ We use SuSE. Great full support, site license didn't cost huge
           amounts of dough, and they actually do QA before pushing distros
           out, unlike RedHate.
           \_ I second SuSE. don't buy redhat, they should not be rewarded
              for their fedora BS.
        \_ I use Microsoft Windows 3.1. -proud American