Re: what Linux to run

>>
>> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
>> on. This machine would be dedicated to the database only.=20
>>
>> I'd like a recommendation for both a GUI hosted version and a non-GUI
>> version. I haven't used Linux in the past but did spend several year s
>> in a mixed Unix and IBM mainframe environment at the console level.

I run PostgreSQL on Fedora Core 16 64bit and have never had problems, now
or before.
>From that point of view I can recommend FC, but I don't know how it compares
performance-wise to other distros.

I have been using the FC series since they split from the "RedHat Linux"
distribs at about "RedHat 9",
perhaps 10 years ago and have never missed anything, and seldom noticed
troublesome behavior.
My main criticism of FC is that the distro updates to a new version quite
often, 1-2 times per year,
and upgrades are seldom as smooth as they are supposed/advertised to be,
but they have become
much better.

Beyond that, the FC series have about everything you need for
development or anything else,
like running PG

You can use FC both with GUI and without. It comes by default with GNOME.
It also has
KDE, which looks (and works) similar to Windows. Both Gnome and KDE run
atop X.
FC has the usual Unix shells like bash (default), sh, ksh, csh, tcsh ...
and if you need
to connect to your host, there are several 3270 emulator available, for X
and also text-mode.

Two components which do not mix well with FC are Java 7 (1.7.0x) and Oracle
RDBMS 11g.
For Java, stay with the 1.6 series until the problems of 1.7 are fixed. If
you need to use the RDBMS
besides PG then FC is not your OS. Instead, look at what systems they
(Oracle) "support".

I hope this helps you with your decision.