Just wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of which would be better to learn with? I just picked up a Poweredge 2650 and would like to run those services and also learn as I go. If LAMP is the better option what distro would be recommended for this type of server/services. Thanks for anyones insight.
Kind of pointless to run open source software on a closed source OS…but hey, I am an open source kind of guy.
I would go with a CentOS 5 server 
CentOS is based off of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is the industry leading Linux Distribution. Basically, if you want to run linux professionally, you should be running RHEL or CentOS…Again, those are only my opinions.
Edit: I hate when people refer to this is as LAMP/WAMP
Also, what will you be doing on this box, building a PHP based website?
The real question is what you are familiar with. If you have no Linux experience beyond installing it and using YUM/APT-GET then you may have a horrible time trying to troubleshoot the problems you get on the OS and where to look.
I personally think its 100x easier to trouble shoot server based applications that started on a *NIX based OS on that OS. All my servers run CentOS.
yep…all of those services were built to run on unix/linux architectures
I have a bit of sql and scripting experience but nothing with running apache or php… or all 3 together to work as one. I am fully a network,telecom guy (level 2 network analyst for a living) but would like to learn some server side and expand my knowledge.
picked up the poweredge for super cheap (with decent specs) so I figured why not start plugging away thanks for the direction guys. Sounds like CentOS it is
Just go the CentOS 5 route like already suggested
Do you know anything about Linux?
Are you just trying to learn servers?
Generally, without a working application to actually run these services against, you wont learn anything except how to install an start/stop them. You really need to put them to work to get to k owthem. For example, MySQL is dead simple to get up and running, but performance tuning it for specific apps is a bit more difficult.
inb4ilovelamp
:word:
You can have all this up and “working” in 25min
When you start adding modules and a lot of custom config it gets tricky.
Agreed I got some projects in mind and some old DB labs from RIT I want to re-fresh on. I was merely just wondering what my best option for a platform was to run this.
Edit: I think you guys think I’m clueless but I am really not haha. I graduated from rit with a network/sys admin degree… just went the network concentration of it with the basic sys admin classes, would like to expand on the server side now
Ha.
I assume everyone is an idiot until I am proven wrong.
Gets me through my days.
You would be better off getting a server you can run ESXi/Xen on and build a few VMs.
Ubuntu Server
Apt > RPM
Ubuntu server is for n00bs
+1
I know of ZERO companies that run Debian based servers