Am 28.01.2010 um 17:08 schrieb Mauro Calderara:
Hi
Thanks for the info.
Just running "normal" ISP services like dhcp, dns, webserver and so on. Main focus is the long support, maybe I'll wait for 10.04 LTS - so I got support to the year 2015 :)
If you are going to pick Ubuntu because of the more predictable and long-term support[1], make sure the packages you need are in the repository 'main' and not in 'universe'. If you have to use packages from universe, I'd be careful. They do not have official security support for the same time but are 'supported by the community'. I've seen very sad states of packages in Ubuntu 'universe', there were even known broken kernels released in 'universe'. 'Main' is generally very nice, though.
I think this is the most important thing to consider. I have an LTS Version of Ubuntu something or other running (How does one get the version out of this thing, certainly not with uname(1)), actually it is 6.06.1 LTS aka dapper.
Almost all of the things which I use on this box (Web, Mail, FTP Server) is not in main, but in universe, and might get updated and might not. Stuff like clamav, postfix, amavisd-new, pure-ftpd and loads of other goodies are in universe.
On Debian all packages are officially supported equally good or bad by the security team, but generally for a shorter time.
Long story short:
If you can cover your needs with Ubuntu 'main', go for Ubuntu. If not, I'd rather use Debian.
Definitively true, I ended up getting debian packages for clamav, patching them, and then compiling them, since there was no up-to-date clamav on Ubuntu.
You can check in what repository a given package is by searching for it on http://packages.ubuntu.com
Just my 5 cents
I think you are selling your experience short.
Cheers, -daniel (New year's resolution: update the ubuntu box and change its IP Addresses, if any spare time is to be found somewhere, update it to freebsd)