[buug] Hello, I'm new.

[f.johan.beisser]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Bonkers the Evil Admin (Matt Bockman) wrote:

> Umm... Well... My friend says that the only operating system thats worth
> installing for a server is FreeBSD.

out of the BSDs, FreeBSD is one of the best documented, and easiest to
install and handle. the installer takes very little work to understand,
the documentation is copious.

> He's attached to it, yet he's never installed or used any *nix-like
> OS's.

he has, sort of. if you mean he's not installed another BSD, i don't see
why he should. if you find something you like, and it does everything you
want and need it to, why shift?

> He says Linux is a poor excuse for a desktop, and that Unix is the only
> way to go. He wouldn't know though.  I think I want to make my own Linux
> (via LFS) and use that.

again, you need to see what meets your needs. if some variant of linux
does the trick, use that. if FreeBSD does it, use that. if OpenBSD does
it, use that. if you just want to try a bunch out untill you find "what
works best for you", do it. there's no harm in trying stuff out. that's
why there's so many choices.

> Now that I think of it, FreeBSD is Unix-Like, so is Linux. Which is most
> effective for a server that hosts 1 email account and 1 website that
> gets 100 hits a month?

really, any will do. the trick is if the OS meets your personal needs for
everything you intend to do.

> Oh, and I run SSH. I just wanna host a good server with a perfect or
> almost perfect uptime, and I want it to be secure so I protect its one
> user. heh.

uptime is fairly irrelevant. the real issue is that the machine not crash
or reboot when you don't expect it too. the stability of the OS is fairly
directly involved.

to secure any OS that's connected to the rest of the internet, you should
shut off any and all unused and unneeded services. if you don't use LDAP,
don't have an LDAP server installed. if you aren't using popmail, don't
have a popmail service installed. very simple. then, if you don't need
anything started by inetd, don't run inetd. again, this is fairly simple.

-------/ f. johan beisser /--------------------------------------+
  http://caustic.org/~jan                      jan at caustic.org
    "John Ashcroft is really just the reanimated corpse
         of J. Edgar Hoover." -- Tim Triche