Re: what Linux to run

On 02/03/12 01:25, Ivan Voras wrote:
> On 28/02/2012 18:17, Rich Shepard wrote:
>> On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, mgould(at)isstrucksoftware(dot)net wrote:
>>
>>> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
>>> on. This machine would be dedicated to the database only.
>> Michael,
>>
>> There is no 'preferred' linux distribution; the flame wars on this topic
>> died out a decade or so ago.
>>
>> From what you write, I would suggest that you look at one of the Ubunutus
>> <http://www.ubuntu.org/>. Either the KDE or Gnome versions will appear
>> Microsoft-like; the Xfce version appears more like CDE. Download a bootable
>> .iso (a.k.a. 'live disk) and burn it to a cdrom and you can try it without
>> .installing it. If you do like it, install it from the same disk.
>>
>> The Ubuntus boot directly into the GUI and that tends to be more
>> comfortable for newly defenestrated users. If you like that, but want the
>> more open and readily-available equivalent, install Debian. The ubuntus are
>> derivatives of debian.
> One interesting thing I've discovered recently is that there is a HUGE
> difference in performance between CentOS 6.0 and Ubuntu Server 10.04
> (LTS) in at least the memory allocator and possibly also multithreading
> libraries (in favour of CentOS). PostgreSQL shouldn't be particularly
> sensitive to either of these, but it makes me wonder what else is
> suboptimal in Ubuntu.
>

I think if you are going to select a member of the Debian family, I
would strongly recommend Debian itself. I have the impression that the
Debian community is more serious about quality than Canonical (the
company behind Ubuntu).

Given a choice between RHEL, Centos, and Ubuntu. I would recommend
either of RHE or, Centos - the former if you have the budget for the
support & piece of mind. Red Hat has won awards for its quality of User
Service - and Red Hat contributes vastly more effort towards maintaining
the Linux kernel than Canonical.

In a about a year I will be setting up a server for a JBoss/PostgreSQL
based application. Currently I'm thinking of using either Centos (RHEL
if we get sufficient budget) or Debian, but I will defer the actual
decision to nearer the time. I use Fedora for my development box, and my
current test server runs Ubuntu (not my choice, but I see no significant
reasons for changing it at the moment, though I'm tempted).

Cheers,
Gavin