7 replies to this topic

[mirrorshades]

So I have this somewhat older Pentium III laptop with 512megs of RAM that has a burned out screen. At the moment, it's just sitting in a closet collecting dust... which is... unacceptable. (I hate to see a perfectly usable computer being perfectly unused.) I've got some space on my network for another server, and was thinking about making a web server. Just looking for any recommendations on OS or software to use.

I am assuming Apache is the gold standard, and so some sort of *AMP setup is in order. Plus I think that's what most pre-rolled CMS setups expect to see; not to say that I'll be using one necessarily, but if I decide to it might make sense not to use some obscure wierdo software configuration.

So, any recommendations for what to run? Is Linux + Apache the way to go, or is there some combination that's the new LAMP?

[NodeRazor]

You can try Ubuntu 8.04 Server.

[friendless]

I'm all with LAMP... I havn't heard of many good alternatives could be some decent ones out there though... also there's plenty of support and documentation on it.

[riscphree]

I'm all for apache, but I've been recently playing more and more with lighttpd. The memory usage is just insane. Apache will take 100 some odd megs of ram on my box whilst lighttpd will take around 5-10mb. Check it out as an alternative if you want to try something a bit leaner (but still fully capable of anything apache can do) http://www.lighttpd.net

[mirrorshades]

I'm all for apache, but I've been recently playing more and more with lighttpd.

I actually was reading up on that one last night after I posted the message. Looks very slick, I think I may give it a go.

There don't really seem to be any other big "players" in the field; Apache and IIS seem to be the big guns. Would be interesting to try something new, I think.

You can try Ubuntu 8.04 Server.

What about it specifically makes you recommend it? (Or, why should I pick it above dozens of other linux distros?)

[jnash2001]

You could also try OpenBSD. Efficient on system resources, stable, security conscious and already comes with httpd (forked from Apache 1.3) with chroot, SSL.
There's also lighttpd on ports.

[mirrorshades]

I have OpenBSD running on my network already, and I have tinkered around with the httpd server. It is actually up and running, I've just not got anything in it yet.

May do something involving both. :)

[Tenchi]

I find Debian and Apache (with MySQL and PHP) an almost perfect combination for me, but Light HTTPd has crossed my mind on many an occasion. LAMP setups are very well documented on the web, and you're guaranteed to find tutorials/manuals/scripts/packages with that combination for little or no licensing cost.

*AMP content management, blogging, gallery, forum and 'you name it' scripts are so popular, I suspect it takes longer to evaluate the options than to write one yourself I say dive in and start coding, its too much fun.

Tenchi