Nick Reinking wrote: Well, I'm buying a replacement for geoffrin today (or tomorrow), so I have to make a decision right away. It seems imperative for our application to go with a 64 bit solution rather than RH9.

Nick Reinking wrote: Well, I'm buying a replacement for geoffrin today (or tomorrow), so I have to make a decision right away. It seems imperative for our application to go with a 64 bit solution rather than RH9. --Jimbo

The OS is basically a commodity, to the extent that it works and is reliable. Our main services (apache, PHP, MySQL) are mostly installed from source or distro-independent binary tarballs, so beyond basic system configuration it shouldn't much make a difference. The other machines have generally been Red Hat, and it's good to stay consistent on the Apache farm. The database server is different though, so it can be different. Is there any compelling reason to use a non-rpm distribution, either? What does the package format have to do with anything? As far as SuSE (which has had amd64 releases in the market for a while), SuSE Professional 9.0 for amd64 is a mere US$119.95, we don't need the expensive support contract. I've gotten the impression that Debian isn't really mature on amd64; there's no stable release. Has anyone used it *on amd64*? Would you recommend it for a production server? -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Brion Vibber wrote: You're right; it doesn't. However, APT (the Debian packet manager) is addictive - in practice, it reduces administration overhead more than most admins can imagine. Want to stay up to date with the bleeding edge? It's one command. Prefer rock-solid instead (Debian is known for being extremely conservative about their stable releases) - one command. Install any/all security updates automatically? Also one command. I've been dabbling with Linux since one of the earlier 1.1 releases in 1994 (not very seriously back then, however) and have probably tried every distribution under the sun. Debian is my hands-down, leaves-everything-else-in-the-dust favorite for servers. Debian is not mature on AMD64. But as I mentioned - we're trying to squeeze out every last bit of performance on this box anyway. Gentoo, even if the bootstrapping takes a while, is designed precisely for our situation, and AFAIK is stable on amd64. Again, please do not hesitate to let me know if I can be of help with any of this. Cheers, Ivan _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Brion Vibber wrote: You're right; it doesn't. However, APT (the Debian packet manager) is addictive - in practice, it reduces administration overhead more than most admins can imagine.

Debian is not mature on AMD64. But as I mentioned - we're trying to squeeze out every last bit of performance on this box anyway. Gentoo, even if the bootstrapping takes a while, is designed precisely for our situation, and AFAIK is stable on amd64.

I apologize if this has been discussed, but is there a compelling reason to use a rpm-based distribution in the first place? I swear by Debian, and for the high-performance needs that wikipedia has, even looking into Gentoo would not be a bad idea. I'd be more than willing to lend a hand with any aspect of either of these distributions that needs clarification.