From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2007-02-07T18:19:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Linux OS

On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 02:32:11PM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> So I will stick with my recommendation: the vast majority of 
> non-professional servers are better off with Fedora than any other Linux 
> distro.

Just remember that if you are running Fedora, you are acting as an unpaid
alpha-tester for a commercial product (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). Also,
there is little support for older releases, so you will find yourself doing
full version upgrades quite often.

If you like the idea of running "stable" Red Hat code, or you work in an
organisation that also uses RHEL for servers, consider CentOS:
http://www.centos.org/
You'll find yourself stuck with a 2.6.9 kernel though.

Otherwise, it's hard not to recommend Ubuntu. Ubuntu 6.06 has long-term
support (until 2009 for desktop, and 2011 for server), and it's a breeze to
install and keep up to date. Sure, the default install is rather bloated in
terms of the amount of stuff it installs, but disks are cheap these days.

The ruby installation is broken into a zillion sub-packages, but 'apt-cache
search ruby' will generally find the bit you're looking for.

Just my 2c.

Brian.