Ultimate server box OS, What's out there? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: bentomo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2017, 07:30:24 pm
content: So, as of recent I find myself getting into more and more projects and development. Mostly personal stuff but I've been able to sell some of my work as well. I also run my own little webpage with a domain and a couple servers for some friends. Nothing very heavy on the processing side but managing it all can be a pain.I usually run between 3 windows machines and use teamviewer to go between them. I use dropbox to store my files and currently have no version control on my code. My setup is pretty silly how it's all hacked together, it works ok but I'd like to turn up the professional level of it all. While still being close to free.I've got a decent desktop at home that I would like to run everything from that and have vnc setup for remoting to it.I'll be using it for assembly programming, HDL design and simulation, KiCAD, 3D modeling, file hosting, git server, and web server hosting all while staying secure.Everything except for the 3D modeling is pointing to linux but I'm not sure what distro to go with. I'm partial to the KDE environment so I threw Kubuntu on an old laptop motherboard to try out. But I don't really need all the "frills".The 3D modeling I'll probably have to use fusion 360 on a VM. I've never found a good parametric modeling program that comes close to the solidworks student I'm used to. I don't expect to be making money hand over fist with it so Fusion 360 seems like my best option. I don't like FreeCAD and solvespace looks cool but with no modeling tree I'm not really interested.So my question is what do you guys like to use for a Linux distro for doing your work on? Kubuntu will probably work fine honestly but the less configuration the better.

author: whitevamp
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2017, 08:01:59 pm
content: I use Debian, and Ubuntu.

author: David Chamberlain
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2017, 08:57:15 pm
content: I'm thinking for low traffic web sites you could pay less offloading them to a decent web host in the cloud for less then your paying in electricity, cpu resources and so on in house.Why do you need three machines? I just use a single decent workstation and laptop that does everything I need (although I'm not doing 3D modeling).Currently am just using Windows 10 as a primary. I have Ocacle VirtualBox for Ubuntu, CentOS and other Linux distros specifically just for server related stuff (work related)For code control I'm using SVN - I know it's not cool anymore.I could but never have the need to RDP in to my home machine and anyway I never leave anything powered up when I leave my home - fire paranoid.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2017, 09:55:14 pm
content: Slackware is always the answer. Once you Slack you don't go back.

author: iainwhite
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 09, 2017, 10:13:44 pm
content: I use Centos 7. Very stable, but a bit back-level on some software versions. I'm very happy with it.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2017, 11:21:10 pm
content: Not Linux but for the server functions, I would use OpenBSD. "Secure by Default"https://www.openbsd.org/

author: bentomo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 10, 2017, 01:33:29 am
content: It's not that I need 3 machines but I use 3 different machines on a given day. And I already have the desktop running all the time. For how much I pay for power it would be about the same to have someone else host it than just let my machine run, plus I can use it for other tasks.

author: dSolder
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 10, 2017, 06:19:44 am
content: Quote from: iainwhite on May 09, 2017, 10:13:44 pmI am with iainwhite on this one. We use Centos 7 for webservers, load balancers, proxy's and sftp servers. They are very stable. For desktop I use Centos or Fedora.

author: flynwill
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 04:13:30 am
content: I will add to the votes for Centos, but if you want to run KiCAD you will be in for an adventure, you would probably want one of the more "bleeding edge" releases to support that.My suggestion is Centos for the host, and then use VirtualBox and create VMs for what other OS's and applications you need/

author: theatrus
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 04:17:19 am
content: Fileserver? FreeBSD with ZFS.Everything else? CentOS if you want to stay stable, Fedora if you don't mind revving every 6 months and want really new stuff.

author: Muxr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 04:21:48 am
content: Debian or Ubuntu is what I prefer, but mainly due to having used it for so long. Centos is fine as well.

author: moz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 04:59:27 am
content: Quote from: iainwhite on May 09, 2017, 10:13:44 pmNote that WINE and Mono are not supported. Some people have hacked them to work after a fashion, but it's very much "you're on your own and good luck with that".I use Centos at work because our Windows SysAdmin prefers it. The big limit is for DBAs or other database users. You can't easily run MySQL, and the only DB GUI tools that run natively on Linux are for MySQL (and explicitly not for MariaDB, the MySQL fork that Centos uses). But the refusal to allow WINE means the Windows tools can't run either.As well, Centos is strictly 64 bit only. It also lags quite significantly behind Redhat, so if you are chasing the latest features Centos is not for you. Even EPEL doesn't fix all the problems of availability and lag (I am still waiting for a gcc bug fix that's been in release for a year now).That said, if you can run your Windows software in a VM and prefer stability over newness, Centos has been rock solid for me.Personally I would run Fedora or Mint on a desktop, and Debian or Raspbian on a server. Unless you need significant processing power or more than 10TB of disk space (a single disk, in other words), I'd look at one of the tiny computers like the Pi. But realistically, if you want a GUI most of the tiny computers lack the grunt.

author: iainwhite
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 05:26:34 pm
content: My Centos server runs MariaDB and I use the MySQL workbench on my Windows machine to manage it remotely (or the command line if i do it locally).I do accept that Centos has it's limits. I also use FreeBSD for a storage server. I am also thinking of building a desktop workstation with Fedora to see how I get on with it.

author: bentomo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 07:14:00 pm
content: Quote from: flynwill on May 11, 2017, 04:13:30 amThanks for mentioning that, KiCAD will probably be the primarily used program on it and I was leaning toward CentOS until you mentioned that. Work is going to be my primary use for this machine so it would probably be best for me to run the server stuff using post-installation software rather than using an OS dedicated to it. That being said it looks like I should use an Ubuntu variant. (I'm not as familiar with Debian)

author: stj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 07:39:48 pm
content: Quote from: theatrus on May 11, 2017, 04:17:19 amis the only real answer, because you DO want ZFS for a server, and i have not seen any Linux flavour with native support yet.

author: theatrus
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 07:43:22 pm
content: Quote from: stj on May 11, 2017, 07:39:48 pmUbuntu decided they would be ok with a creative interpretation of GPL vs CDDL and will be shipping it.But ZFS is miles above anything else if you want reliable storage.

author: hendorog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 08:24:22 pm
content: Quote from: theatrus on May 11, 2017, 07:43:22 pmYeah that was what I thought too :-https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Reference/ZFS"...comes fully supported in Ubuntu Xenial 16.04..."

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 08:56:19 pm
content: Quote from: moz on May 11, 2017, 04:59:27 amWhich are those? Workbench should work fine with MariaDB, Navicat works, am I missing something?QuoteThis is a problem why?

author: stevelup
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 09:51:30 pm
content: Consider sticking VMware ESXi on there first before installing any OS... it's free and gives you an awful lot of future flexibility.

author: moz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 10:07:57 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on May 11, 2017, 08:56:19 pmMaybe I am. When I tested NaviCat a couple of years ago they only had Windows executables and their "native Linux app" was a windows executable bundled with WINE and Mono (it appears that that is still the case). I couldn't get that to install on Centos, but was assured that if I installed all the dependencies myself their installer would leave those alone and just plop the Windows exe in, so it should work. Running their tool on Windows I discovered that they don't support version control, and their version of "round trip engineering" is to delete everything and re-import from the modified database. Which is worse than useless, in the sense that they claim something that is false so I wasted time evaluating a tool that was never going to work.MySQL Workbench cannot cope with MariaDB Unicode stored procedures, it will always change utf8mb4 to utf8 and will otherwise silently break them in ways that require tedious manual fixing (importantly, you have to manually dump the stored procedures to check and fix the encoding before it's safe to run them). If you stick to single byte character sets you should be ok (I have not tested this). But really "does not work with unicode" is a pretty severe bug in this day and age. Except that as far as the MySQL people are concerned it's not their bug because it doesn't happen with their database. As far as MariaDB folk are concerned it's not a bug because who would use Workbench when there are much better tools available. I reported it to both sides and both agreed that it wasn't worth fixing.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 10:15:41 pm
content: Quote from: moz on May 11, 2017, 10:07:57 pmNavicat being a commercial product I haven't tested it myself. As for Workbench, that is problematic, but that's also an issue if you use utf8mb4 with MySQL - just because MariaDB does the right thing in the firstplace..This seems like it shouldn't be hard to fix.QuoteAh, no multilib? Good. Anyone still providing only 32-bit binaries needs to get smacked anyway. Condolences if you're forced to deal with that.I sometimes forget people are stuck in stupid situations, I make an absolute point of not being backed into proprietary corners. Much less stressful.E:QuoteIt's not a MariaDB bug because utf8mb4 is correct and utf8 is broken - MySQL don't apparently think it's a bug because they're a bit dense. Hence why we have MariaDB. afaik Workbench works fine if you explain to it nicely that things are encoded in utf8mb4 (every single time you connect...). If there are more issues behind that, well, one more reason to burn Workbench (and MySQL).Boy are we off topic now. I'm not going to make any suggestions though - I don't really align with 'easy' and 'minimal configuration'.

author: moz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 10:26:22 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on May 11, 2017, 10:15:41 pmI reported it to both sides, they both agreed not to fix it.Once it was clear that my only options were installing WINE and Mono on Centos to run Windows DB tools, or running Windows, I decided to live with needing Windows for DBA work. That meant re-evaluating all the tools and paying for DBForge. It's a far superior tool and to date that have been very responsive with bug fixes (albeit in one case it took 12 months to actually get a fix for one minor but difficult bug).

author: julian1
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 10:34:37 pm
content: Quote from: stj on May 11, 2017, 07:39:48 pmI've been using ZFS on Debian for the last year or more. Initially I manually compiled, but now use mainline apt-get packages to do the work.OP could consider getting an AWS or other instance provider account. For headless stuff - it makes it very easy to run-up various flavors of *nix - FreeBSD, Ubuntu, RH/Cent-OS and play with them for a few hours/days - without the need to invest in hardware first.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 10:46:27 pm
content: Or just use any modern reasonably capable computer and do it without the latency and expense.

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 11:02:48 pm
content: I use CentOS on servers and workstations. Laptops get OpenSUSE, either Leap for older ones or Tumbleweed for brand new ones that have bleeding edge hardware. As was mentioned above KiCAD and CentOS don't really get along, KiCAD needs close to the latest versions of many libraries, you're better off putting it in a VM. I have an OpenSUSE Tumbleweed VM I keep around specifically for running KiCAD on my CentOS boxes, every once in a while Tumbleweed fights with VirtualBox, but it's rarely a big issue.

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2017, 11:05:12 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on May 11, 2017, 10:15:41 pmCentOSabsolutelysupports multilib, quite well in fact, much better than many other distros. I don't know what 32-bit problems he's referring to...CentOS doesn't have a 32-bit version available for installation, but it most certainly can run 32-bit binaries with multilib without issue.

author: moz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2017, 12:00:31 am
content: Quote from: suicidaleggroll on May 11, 2017, 11:05:12 pmIt does kind of amuse me that two years ago when I was having these issues all I could find was "recompile it in 64 bit you useless loser" and "what sort of moron even thinks about running 32 bit binaries" type responses, but now the solution is almost offensively obvious.I'd summarise it as: what Centos does, it does very well. It's rock solid, updates almost never break things, and it is well documented. But if you're used to a responsive distro you will be sadly disappointed. New features take a long time to percolate through (by design) and bug fixes have to be very, very important to be back-ported (Heartbleed, for example, where there's a retro-injected fix build with not even a trailing letter increment (1.0.1e IIRC) instead of the official fixed OpenSSL versions. So a naive user looking at Centos will conclude that its OpenSSL build is a vulnerable one).You just have to live with the religious weirdness aspect of Centos if you decide to go with it.

author: boffin
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 12, 2017, 12:38:00 am
content: Lots of comments about this thread#1 it looks like you're looking for a desktop, not a server. Quite a different animal; with servers focused on high reliability (dual PSU, multiple channels,quad eithernet, ILOs etc), and desktops generally lacking those, but having more advanced graphics systems.#2 CentOS is basically redhat compiled from source. Generally if it's in Redhat 7.x. it's available for CentOS 7.x (excluding some proprietary RH clustering/HA stuff)#3 for Storage, just install FreeNAS on a standalone box. It's a very easy to  manage FreeBSD/ZFS/management distro. Pretty damn bullet-proof. Only issue I've seen is that it doesn't play well with some hardware RAID controllers, just stick to JBOD and stitch everything together with ZFS. We have a few Supermicro 6048-E36 boxes loaded with 5GB drives, and running FreeNAS off a USB stick.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2017, 01:15:09 am
content: Quote from: suicidaleggroll on May 11, 2017, 11:05:12 pmShame.

author: Molenaar
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2017, 07:24:59 am
content: My vote goes to Debian + XFCE. Stable, light and fast.