Newbie question - Which Linux?

as far as i know they're all pretty much the same when talking about db
compatability. here's my take on the two i've dealt with:

suse really easy, but if you have trouble,
a great deal of the help online is in
german

redhat a little less stable in some areas,
for some reason they insist on using
the VERY latest kernel. but their
use of "rpm's" makes everything real
easy, and the mailing lists and help
online is mostly english.

_________________________________
daniel a. g. quinn
starving programmer

without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony
- lau tzu, "tao te ching: chapter xxxii"

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Stanfield" <matthew@propertyknowledge.com>
To: "PostgreSQL General Mailing List" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 8:55 AM
Subject: [GENERAL] Newbie question - Which Linux?

Hello

On Thursday 21 March 2002 19:27, daniel wrote:

as far as i know they're all pretty much the same when talking about db
compatability. here's my take on the two i've dealt with:

suse really easy, but if you have trouble,
a great deal of the help online is in
german

redhat a little less stable in some areas,
for some reason they insist on using
the VERY latest kernel. but their
use of "rpm's" makes everything real
easy, and the mailing lists and help
online is mostly english.

Oops? Thought it was the other way round? At least I had some trouble with
Suse 7.3 and its 2.4.10 Kernel (until i decided to ignore SuSE's warnings and
made my own 2.4.16 Kernel :-) , whereas i recently read a statement from
RedHat that they'll "stay with 2.4.9 until the new kernels pass their test
suite". Alas, building a homegrown Kernel is always good fun....

Greetings
Andreas

Sorry for the newbie question. I'm going to install Linux primarily to run
PostgeSQL. Is their any version/flavour of Linux that comes highly
recommended for PostgreSQL? Or are they pretty much the same as far as
PostgreSQL users are concerned?

I don't think it matters much. The main thing to keep in mind is that you
want a distribution of linux where you can easily trim down the system. I.E.
you don't want to click the "install everything" button. You want to remove
unecessary services & other software.

I personally use debian. It's really a matter of preference, since most
distributions will allow you to remove software easily. I hear slackware is a
leaner distribution than most, but I've never used it.

Make sure whatever you pick is mainstream enough that postgresql packages are
available close to the main releases. With debain it took a couple weeks to
get 7.2 packaged (thanks to Oliver Elphick), I don't know about the others.

Regards,
Jeff

Sorry for the newbie question. I'm going to install Linux primarily to run
PostgeSQL. Is their any version/flavour of Linux that comes highly
recommended for PostgreSQL? Or are they pretty much the same as far as
PostgreSQL users are concerned?

I've personally used Trustix secure linux in some of our servers here. Trustix is very compact and the distro is mainly used for
boxes that act as servers. It has been optimized for security and and size, i.e. it doesn't have the X-windows and an "everything"
install would include the basic compilers and everything you need to run a web, ftp, and database server--no more, no less.

You could get more info from http://www.trustix.net.

Best Regards,

Carlo Florendo
NEC Telecoms
fcarlo@ntsp.nec.co.jp

Debian is reputated to be a ***very*** clean distro.
Other distro should be fine, your main point is basically your kernel
& security related settings :-))

thomas,
--
Thomas SMETS
rue J. Wytsmanstraat 62
1050 Bruxelles
yahoo-id : smetsthomas
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Stanfield" <matthew@propertyknowledge.com>
To: "PostgreSQL General Mailing List" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: 21 March, 2002 5:55 PM
Subject: [GENERAL] Newbie question - Which Linux?

Matthew Stanfield wrote:

Hi,

Sorry for the newbie question. I'm going to install Linux primarily to run
PostgeSQL. Is their any version/flavour of Linux that comes highly
recommended for PostgreSQL? Or are they pretty much the same as far as
PostgreSQL users are concerned?

Why limit your choices to Linux distro's? You could have a look at
FreeBSD as well. Or if your setup doesn't require SMP support OpenBSD
comes highly recommended. Secure by default saves a lot of time on
setting up a machine.

Jochem