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

• initself 19y ago
  Slackware. Call me crazy.
• nuggien 19y ago
  ubuntu 6.06 LTS. I will probably upgrade to the next LTS when it becomes available.
• jasonlbaptiste 19y ago
  os x tiger
• sant0sk1 19y ago
  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.
• dazzawazza 19y ago
  FreeBSD 6.2 I've deployed it before, it's rock solid, secure and the ports system rocks.
• spydez 19y ago
  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.
• konsl 19y ago
  RHEL -- wanted Linux and our host doesn't offer many other variants. OS X on dev though ;)
• rms 19y ago
  CentOS, because it seemed best supported by VirtualMin Free
• kirubakaran 19y ago
  Debian Stable. It is called "stable" for a reason, you know.
• chuchurocka 19y ago
  gentoo, I'm a control freak...
• kashif 19y ago
  1.Debian 2. CentOs Debian is more stable and just holistically better in my opinion...
• entelarust 19y ago
  Debian and RedHat
• dmpayton 19y ago
  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.
• JackDanger 19y ago
  Gentoo - it's what I know.
• aleo 19y ago
  FreeBSD 7.0 on dedicated server, Ubuntu 7.10 on 512mb RAM VPS.
• ichverstehe 19y ago
  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?
  • bretthoerner 19y ago
    I use it (in production), and the only real advantage to me are more current packages.
    • davidw 19y ago
      Another advantage is that, since the desktop version is pretty nice and easy to use, you can get all your developers using it on their desktops, so that they're running the same system as the servers. In the last company I worked for, we were set up like that - Ubuntu everywhere. It made things easier to keep track of, as well as cheaper because no one had windows, except for a few machines where it was indispensable for running various program.
  • craigbellot 19y ago
    If you asked me what the restart command for debian is, I wouldnt be able to say. That's how stable it is.
  • cstejerean 19y ago
    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).
  • sonink 19y ago
• deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
• lux 19y ago
  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.
• bretthoerner 19y ago
  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.
• bap 19y ago
  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.
• ezmobius 19y ago
  gentoo on ~1800 virtual machines.
• attack 19y ago
  Gentoo on Xen host.
• RyanGWU82 19y ago
  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.
• thingsilearned 19y ago
  ubuntu 7.10 on EC2. Chosen simply because of familiarity, excessive documentation and the ease of apt-get.
• culturestate 19y ago
  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.
• ubudesign 19y ago
  I use fedora but striped down to the core. I like to build the webserver and other tools so that I can customize.
• ken 19y ago
  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).
• SwellJoe 19y ago
  I've written at length about this: http://www.obsceneart.com/?p=30 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.
• bayareaguy 19y ago
  rPath Linux. I used the public rBuilder to create a recipe and then build both an EC2 AMI and a local Xen DomU image with everything I needed in a day.
• tlrobinson 19y ago
  A mixture of Ubuntu and Mac OS X.
• thorax 19y ago
  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.
• thehigherlife 19y ago
  debian, ubuntu, novell netware, mac os x, win 2k3
• underscore 19y ago
  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.
• brianr 19y ago
  Fedora 7 64-bit.
• chrisbolt 19y ago
  Slackware and Slamd64 on ~190 servers, stripped down to 120 megs. Downloads root filesystem with netboot and runs it in-memory.
• kogir 19y ago
  Windows Server 2003/2008, Ubuntu 7.10, CentOS 5, and FreeBSD 6.3/7 I'm hoping to move to Windows 2008 and FreeBSD 7 or Ubuntu 7.10 everywhere.
• modoc 19y ago
  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.
• yan 19y ago
  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 19y ago
    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.
• Hexstream 19y ago
  I use Ubuntu Server since I already useUbuntu as my desktop so there's no learning curve (besides using the console instead of X).
• flashgordon 19y ago
  mate try and experiment with a couple - i know it is easier said than done. I am currently using Fedora 8. for an intermediate user like myself, it was not too packed and at the same time not too stripped so I could configure it as I learnt more and more.
• dous 19y ago
  Only Debian.
• xenoterracide 19y ago
  Test server is gentoo, production may vary.
• st3fan 19y ago
  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.