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please suggest some good linux servers for home

 
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I'm looking to setup a tomcat server and hosting a based web based application on that at home to learn and gain more knowledge.
Can you please suggest me some good linux designed for servers?
 
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Hi Vinod,

In my opinion, if you want to create a web application for your own learning (in short : if concurrent users of the application are less than 10 and you are not planning to keep it running for 24x7), I don't think there is any necessity to install a special 'server' Linux distro. Any descent OS (which you already might have been using) would be enough. You can always install TomCat on it. I personally did same thing while studying for SCWCD (installed TomCat on Debian with Intel P4 mono-core, 2.4GHz and 512MB RAM).

But that apart, if you anyway want to install server OS, below are some choices:
1) CentOS : It is a popular server distro based on RedHat (and pretty similar to Fedora). Being a descent distro, it does have considerably large package repository and very good support community.
2) Debian : Not a dedicated server OS, but gives lot of server related options(e.g. DB server, Mail server, Print server etc.) during installation. It is having good support community and the largest package repository among all Linux distros. Further, it works on almost all architectures (Intel, AMD, SPARC, Power-PC etc.). A highly stable OS.
3) Fedora : As long as 'server' is concerned, this is younger brother(or sister) of CentOS. Good thing about this distro is : it is equally nice to use at normal home OS.
4) Ubuntu Server : Not much different than Ubuntu itself. To me, Ubuntu Server = Ubuntu + Server packages.
5) Open SuSe : Not a dedicated server distro, but possesses considerably large package repository. A good and stable choice for server and normal usage.

All above mentioned distros can be used as normal usage as well (apart from CentOS : which is not much popular as 'home' OS. People tend to incline towards Fedora instead of CentOS). So, basically, choice depends on factors mentioned in first para (i.e. number of concurrent users and desired uptime). In real life, majority of people prefer CentOS or Ubuntu Server (for their good maintenance support) and performance also depend on choice of hardware (btw, I'm talking about free distros here, otherwise, in real life, the most popular choice for server distro is RedHat Enterprise Linux).

Hope this helps.
 
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Vinod Vijay wrote:I'm looking to setup a tomcat server


Doesn't need a linux server. Can be installed on Windows too. And if Linux, again it doesn't have to be a Linux Server.

Vinod Vijay wrote:and hosting a based web based application on that at home


That would require configurations. You may have to deal with IP addresses and networking/routing stuff, everything to be done manually.


Vinod Vijay wrote:to learn and gain more knowledge.


Learn java? Learn Linux? Learn hosting? or learn "Hosting-java on Linux server"?
 
Akhilesh Trivedi
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http://distrowatch.com/ - A linux distributions site.
 
Vinod Vijay
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Akhilesh Trivedi wrote:Learn java? Learn Linux? Learn hosting? or learn "Hosting-java on Linux server"?


To learn all
 
Akhilesh Trivedi
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Vinod Vijay wrote:To learn all


My personal experience, you are at the right place.
 
Vinod Vijay
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Akhilesh Trivedi wrote:

Vinod Vijay wrote:To learn all


My personal experience, you are at the right place.


Thanks
 
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The "server" distros are enterprise-oriented. Which is to say that they include extra packages such as GFS file system, High Availability services, extended Virtual Machine monitoring and control, and so forth. For 99 out of 100 cases, the stock "consumer" distros are fully capable of running everything a production server needs straight out of the box - although for licensing reasons, you have to get your own copy of the Java JDK, and (usually) Tomcat.

The line between "server" and "consumer" is blurry in the best of cases. Fedora generally serves as the proving ground for technologies that will end up in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
 
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You Can try Ubuntu Server if you are hosting in Linux
 
Rancher
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I much prefer Debian (with X-windows) over Ubuntu server. YMMV
 
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Point is: just about any OS can run Tomcat, but you should not run a server you intend to be publicly available from your home network.
 
Vinod Vijay
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Tim Moores wrote:Point is: just about any OS can run Tomcat, but you should not run a server you intend to be publicly available from your home network.


Honestly, I didn't understand this. Why I can't host it publicly in future from my home network from linux server? Is that because of just techinical feasiblity or something else? What I know is that linux is free even linux servers too except red hat enterprise edition but still can't I host publicly?
 
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There are several reasons why running a web server from your home network is not a good idea.

Most of us run home networks that have routers between the home network and the outside, and those routers come preconfigured with firewalls to allow network traffic out (thus we can reach internet sites) but disallow network traffic from coming it (noone on the internet can access any of the computers on my home network). If you want to run a server in your network, then you either have to open your firewall to allow this, or you have reconfigure your network topology (using two routers would be the easiest).

As soon as your server is available on the internet, it will be attacked. You will have to spend a lot of time making sure that your server is locked down tight, and that your code is foolproof, and you will constantly have to monitor the server to make sure it is not hacked.

Additionally, most ISP home-user agreements disallow you from hosting web sites. You would have to sign up for a business-user agreement with your ISP, which is course costs lots more money.

In the end, you might just be better off running your web app in a hosted service.
 
Vinod Vijay
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Peter Johnson wrote:There are several reasons why running a web server from your home network is not a good idea.

Most of us run home networks that have routers between the home network and the outside, and those routers come preconfigured with firewalls to allow network traffic out (thus we can reach internet sites) but disallow network traffic from coming it (noone on the internet can access any of the computers on my home network). If you want to run a server in your network, then you either have to open your firewall to allow this, or you have reconfigure your network topology (using two routers would be the easiest).

As soon as your server is available on the internet, it will be attacked. You will have to spend a lot of time making sure that your server is locked down tight, and that your code is foolproof, and you will constantly have to monitor the server to make sure it is not hacked.

Additionally, most ISP home-user agreements disallow you from hosting web sites. You would have to sign up for a business-user agreement with your ISP, which is course costs lots more money.

In the end, you might just be better off running your web app in a hosted service.



Thanks very well explained
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