Re: what Linux to run

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.