Ask YC: Which OS are you using on your app's server(s)?

[rob]

I'm just curious as to what OS everyone is using for their app (e.g., CentOS, Debian, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, Ubuntu) and did you have any particular reason for choosing that OS?

For me, I just have a 'play' VPS right now that I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 on. I like Debian-based distros.

[ichverstehe]

Definitely Debian. Had some adventures into the world of FreeBSD, but I have been using Debian for many years, and I know where everything is located and it's pretty solid and stable, if you know your deal. I'll probally stick around for a while.

Does anybody have experience with Ubuntu Server? While Ubuntu is a great distro for people new into the linux-world and people who just need something that Work's Out Of The Box, are there any advantages over Debian, with the server edition, that is?

[st3fan]

"""Does anybody have experience with Ubuntu Server?"""

Ubuntu is great. We decided to go for Ubuntu because at the time we made that decision, Debian was still at 3.1 and very outdated. They have played catchup since then and 4.0 is much more modern (i'm mostly talking about more recent versions of popular stuff like postfix, postgres, mysql, gcc, etc.).

We standardized on 6.06/LTS but I've been also been playing with the 8.04/LTS release that is coming up. Looks very nice and we will probably switch to it. For new installations. Old stuff still runs rock solid.

[bretthoerner]

I use it (in production), and the only real advantage to me are more current packages.

[cstejerean]

the advantage is that you have the same software running on your server as you do on the desktop. i can't tell you how frustrated I've been in the past trying to deploy some code i wrote only to find out I need to upgrade half the libraries on the system for my code to work.

most people agree that it's good to develop on the platform you will run in production, but they take it the opposite way (run outdated server software on their development environment).

[craigbellot]

If you asked me what the restart command for debian is, I wouldnt be able to say. That's how stable it is.

[sonink]

Debian etch

[SwellJoe]

I've written at length about this:

http://www.obsceneart.com/?p=30

Our software runs on millions of servers world-wide running every OS imaginable, and so I'll self-righteously claim the exclusive privilege of making bold pronouncements and expecting everyone just to go along with them.

[RyanGWU82]

I use CentOS on my server, mostly because I'm the most familiar with Red Hat-based distributions. I like Ubuntu a lot more on the desktop. If I was using an Ubuntu desktop full-time, I'd certainly consider using Ubuntu on the server as well.

[bretthoerner]

In my opinion you should choose what know best, assuming what you know is at least a semi-popular production server OS, especially if you have some decent experience already with said OS.

I recently looked into (Open)Solaris for DTrace and ZFS, but unless I want to put in a lot of time understanding the differences between Solaris and what I'm familiar with (recent GNU/Linux), I don't want to be in an "oh god what do I do something is wrong?!" state. In the end, I don't see enough value in DTrace/ZFS to relearn everything, because in the end it's just infrastructure.

[yan]

FreeBSD.

Makes most sense to me, but I have nothing against other oses. Just what I started with and what I keep coming back to.

[extantproject]

I also found my way back to FreeBSD when I wandered -- so often, in fact, that now I don't use anything else except OS X on my PowerBook.

[lux]

Seems like Debian/Ubuntu is the popular choice around here. Same with me. OS X on my dev box, Ubuntu on our backup server and Debian on our live server. I've used Fedora/Red Hat for a while as well, but just don't like/trust the package management like I do with apt.

[sant0sk1]

I run Debian exclusively on my servers. I don't have any great reason why it's better than any other distro, it's just what I learned first and I know where everything is.

[underscore]

FreeBSD (6.3) on one, OpenBSD on another.

Both choices were made mostly for the fact that I'm familiar with them, and they seem trustworthy (reliable, lacking gaping security holes out of the box, though I'd hope the latter is the case for most Linux distros as well). While I'd probably enjoy spending time improving my sysadmin-fu, it wouldn't have been a wise way to spend time for either of these projects.

[Hexstream]

I use Ubuntu Server since I already useUbuntu as my desktop so there's no learning curve (besides using the console instead of X).

[st3fan]

Ubuntu. But I would love to deploy more on Solaris or Open Solaris. When you have to deal with performance issues then Solaris is king. It has so many excellent tools to figure out what applications are doing. Standard linux can't even show on a per-process basis what is causing disk io for example. Stuff like that is a no-brainer on Solaris.

[chrisbolt]

Slackware and Slamd64 on ~190 servers, stripped down to 120 megs. Downloads root filesystem with netboot and runs it in-memory.

[ken]

Ubuntu.

We used CentOS when I started (because it was the EC2 default back then or something), but as we grew everybody seemed to know Debian better, so we switched. I find it's much easier to find and install packages for Ubuntu than it was for CentOS, but I admit that may well be because I'm an idiot (esp. w.r.t. RPMs).

[ubudesign]

I use fedora but striped down to the core. I like to build the webserver and other tools so that I can customize.

[thorax]

CentOS, SuSE, Fedora, Windows Server 2003.

I've had the most enjoyment (surprisingly) with SuSE because of AppArmor's ability to cover holes in flaws for open-source PHP software we used early on. yast is also kind of handy for some of our non-Linux gurus.

[dmpayton]

For my personal stuff, I run Ubuntu 7.10 because Ubuntu was my first experience with Linux (in May '07), and it's what I'm most comfortable with.

At work (I work at a startup), we're using CentOS 5 because that's all that (mt) offers.

[modoc]

Another vote for Debian. I've been using it for years, so I know how to secure it really well, it's solid, easy to use, all that jazz. I run OS X for my local development machine, but in production I use Debian everywhere.

[spydez]

Linux. Debian on my shared server and Ubuntu 7.10 on the laptop and dev server.

I've been looking into Solaris (for ZFS), but debian-based distros is what I know, so it's what I'll use for now.

[JackDanger]

Gentoo - it's what I know.

[culturestate]

CentOS 5.1 - we started on a hosted LiquidWeb box (they were installing CentOS4 at the time), and since it worked near-flawlessly for us, decided to standardize on it as we grew.

[bap]

In my wanderings I see CentOS more than anything else. A lot of people here mention Debian which I haven't run across at all and of course Ubuntu is pretty frequent as well.