[sclug] Spring cleaning

[Ian Michell]

Hi all,

It is that time of year again, now I am faced with a few items on my new 
agenda for my home network. I am about to install my old 120GB ATA 100 
HD into my server box. It currently runs whitebox linux, now as you have 
probably gathered from previous posts, I am no longer that much of a 
redhat user and have migrated all my desktop machines away form Fedora 
and Redhat, I plan to be RH free before within the next few days - a week.

What to do, first off I need to choose my new Server operating System, 
the choices are:
GNU/Linux, a BSD Based distribution, or move to Solaris.( uh maybe not!).

If  I stick with Linux what should I run out of the thousands of distros 
out there,
1. Debian (currently top of the list)
2. Stick with Whitebox
3. Slackware
4. Go the whole hog and have gentoo on every machine in the house (can I 
really be arsed to do it?).
5. Migrate to SuSE and run cool novell stuff ;)
6. other

If I go with BSD the choices are:
1. FreeBSD
2. GNU/Darwin
3. NetBSD
4. OpenBSD

If I go with Solaris
1. Shoot self in head, for running proprietry software

My requirements are simple. I need a machine that can be a webserver, 
cvs server, storage device, firewall, VPN client and a VPN Server and 
finally a database box. I have to choose wisely because I want to have a 
system that will take the least possible effort for patching etc (gentoo 
and debian come to mind here). I am also paranoid about security so I 
need something that can facilite those needs (BSD comes to mind here 
too!). I am not sure how fast the debian folk are at updates (haven't 
used debian in well over a year!!) and even though the machine itself is 
a suck ass little box (only a 466 celeron) I may be tempted to run a 
private UT2004 server....

So what will it be, I am sure we have quite a bit of direversity in the 
LUG to decide ;)

Rgds

Ian