OS selection help please

[Golthar]

Hi there,

At the moment im working on some serverside work and am close to putting this online.
The providers I work with will usualy provide Redhat, Windows 2003, Debian, xBSD.

For this server side work im using Java (of course).
Now looking quickly on the Sun site, I see that the only option with a future will be Windows 2003...

Fedora isn't really an option (as it's not offered anywhere) because you have a forced bleeding edge upgrade cycle.

The application in question is important enough to warrant a stable system, but not enough to warrant me buying an 300$ Redhat enterprise licence.

PS: We are getting a real sh*** deal with Redhat here..

[cfmdobbie]

What are your requirements?  If you've got some Linux expertise in-house, do you need the Entrerprise cover from RedHat, or would a standard distribution do?

As for Win2K3, that depends what kind of future you're talking about.  It's got more of a future than Win2K, but less of a future than Win2K4/5/6.  You have to buy something at some point, and that will eventually go out of cover, but that's life.

I don't understand why you balk about a $300 licence from RedHat, but still consider Win2K3, which has a base price of $999!

[endolf]

I've been running java under gentoo for a while now, i've not had any problems, just cause it says you that only redhat is supported doesn't mean that you won't get any help should things fail, I got bugs in and fixed that were reported under gentoo (was a forte bug, not jdk, but still got accepted and eventually fixed).

HTH

Endolf

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[Golthar]

Well the thing is, that I will be running this box from a datacentre.
They offer Redhat 9, FreeBSD and Win2003 for the same price (MS probably gives them a nice deal)

No mention of Redhat enterprise from them.
Also, I'd have to buy a licence and have somebody install it for me as well (you can't install an OS remotely)

I need a solution that is stable, can be maintained (redhat was easy with up2date) and is affordable.

I might give Debian a whiz

[endolf]

Hi
 you might be better off with redhat 9 than debian in your case, odds are that if they are offering it, then they will atleast have someone there who knows something about it if/when the box stops responding. Is this a box that they provide and you hire, or do you hire the bandwidth and rack space, and provide the box/setup yourself?

Cheers

Endolf

[Golthar]

It's a complete rental.

I have decided to run with Redhat 9 for now (despite of the EOL in 6 months)
If there is no good replacement by that time, I'll go with win2003