I've been using Debian stable as a server for the past 8 years. The stability has been top-notch and I actually prefer having a distro that doesn't update very often. The less time I can spend updating a server the more time I can spend delivering value to my customers.

Your not the only one, I've heard very good things about Debian as well.

Debian or Ubuntu LTS releases are fine. Avoid the usual Ubuntu releases, as their lifecycle is too damned short. Likewise for Fedora (if you like Red Hat based free systems, CentOS will do).

I wrote an article about this based on my experience with thousands of Webmin/Virtualmin/Usermin users:

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

Thanks man this article should be very helpful!

All linuses are supposed to be rock-solid on a server. I went with Ubuntu because I figured it's not going away any time soon and because there seem to be more documentation available online.

We've been running 6.06 TLS with no problems for almost a year and just recently we moved our staging/production to 7.04 and we (as expected) are seeing no difference. We compiled apache and all libs we needed from source and never used apt-get for anything.

Besides, is it really important? IMO production server is just that: a production environment. You set it up just once and you're not supposed to mess around alot.

"IMO production server is just that: a production environment. You set it up just once and you're not supposed to mess around alot."

That's why you should have stuck with LTS. 7.04 will likely be EOL'ed in the next few months (unless they branch another LTS version of it), and then you'll be forced to upgrade under duress. Long life cycle is probably single most important factor in choosing a good server distribution, because "you're not supposed to mess around alot".

Correction: I wanted to say staging/testing instead of staging/production. Production is runnin on 6.06

That's wise. When they do an LTS version, then bumping to 7.x is sane. ;-)

Hi guys I'm about to configure a VPS for my web app(for testing and learning purposes plus it's my first time to launch a site in my life much less configure a webserver.) And upon recommendation of my webhost(a2b2) Debian and Ubuntu would be the best choice as I only have a small VPS to begin with. So what do YCers think? which should I choose?

Go with Debian stable. It's rock-solid.

I've done very poorly with Ubuntu. I've tried installing it twice. The first time, it installed successfully but then when I rebooted it trashed my RAID configuration and dropped into single-user mode. The second time, which was last week, the installer kept hanging in bizarre places. The whole distribution just seems to be geared toward very simple hardware configurations and chokes at the slightest violation of its expectations.

Also consider a BSD, though.

Thanks for the response I'm definitely leaning on Debian...

I've been using Ubuntu because of the more frequent releases

Or he can use a different distro...like ArchLinux, Slackware or Gentoo. But if it's between just those two, then I agree with you, go for Ubuntu! :D

I'd recommend a distro designed for server use, like CentOS. You'll find its packages are a little out of date because they are well tested and known to be stable. The default install is hardened and security updates are prompt. Also automatic updates are pre-configured and just need to be enabled.

I will second CentOS... it's solid.

What are you using on your workstation? If you are using Ubuntu on your desktop, I would deploy Ubuntu on the server also. This allows you to combine your desktop and testing machines into one. Then, you only need a dedicated staging (virtual) machine and the production machine.

Otherwise, I also recommend CentOS, especially if your hosting provider lets you run it with SELinux enabled.

CentOS is a very common distro for rails production environments. Several high profile hosting cos use it, like RailsMachine for example. Hard to go wrong with CentOS.

Initially I used Debian's "testing" release. With PostgreSQL 8.1 now in stable, I recently switched to "stable". I develop on an Ubuntu notebook and have never had any nasty surprises deploying from development to production.

I've been running Debian on a VPS for about two years and the ease of maintenance and overall sensible default security policies make it a great server OS. I'll always go for an OS where my default system is well-tested, stable, and trivial to maintain. I can then spend some time manually installing the latest versions of the two apps (web server and db) whose latest features I may need.

It seems to me that Ubuntu is pretty much like Debian with a more shorter upgrade cycle. Is that impression accurate? Also, does Ubuntu have any extra overhead that a Debian system might not have?

AFAICT the only extra overhead with Ubuntu is that there are more desktop-oriented packages installed by default. Yes, the upgrade cycle is shorter than debian stable, but it's longer than debian testing. It doesn't sound to me like you'd have any reason to switch your server from debian to Ubuntu.

For the server use debian if you are going to use the server for anything serious, for your desktop you could use ubuntu. There is no reason IMHO that you would want to use ubuntu on a production server.

fedora 7 FTW!