Discover the best Linux distributions for your web server
The administration of a dedicated or virtualized server always starts with the installation of the operating system. If you have chosen to set up your server with linux, you will be immediately confronted with the distribution. Three distributions have been successful over time: ubuntu, debian and centos. Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses, although very light. Before detailing the renown of these three distributions, consider noting that ubuntu, or precisely ubuntu server, and debian are very close since the ubuntu distribution is installed on debian.
On the other hand, these two distributions are developed by a good team. On the contrary, centos is compiled from the source of red hat enterprise linux, developed by the red hat company. Generalist distributions these different ‘flavors’ using the linux kernel as a base offer a wide choice of software.
They can be used both directly (by manually installing one of the necessary ones for your requirements and payment capabilities) and as a basis for other distributions (for example, ubuntu uses the unstable branch of debian when the development of a recommended term begins).
Some of the distributions are only pre-installed packages available in their repositories. Centos centos is a gnu/linux distribution mainly intended for servers. All its packages, except the logo, are compiled from the sources of the linux distribution red hat enterprise linux ( rhel ), published by the red hat company. It is therefore almost identical and is 100% compatible from a binary point of view.
With 30% of linux web servers using it, this makes it one of the most popular distributions for web servers. Sme sme server is a linux distribution based on redhat. In this case, the base is reduced to a minimum to ensure the work it is ordered to do, i.e. server and possibly gateway. Being a redhat base, it is of course possible to add features not supported by default. Sme has three main operating modes that you can define during the installation, in the server console.
Server only : in this mode, sme doesn’t manage any connection to the internet ; it’s usually the other system (gateway and firewall) already in place which is in charge of it. At the level of functionalities, sme does not manage the network security and offers only its server functions, i.e. web server, mail server, file sharing (by ftp, samba or through the information bays), etc.
Antonio Gordinodigua administrator
About the author