Linux flavour advice

[RexDrax]

Well here I go again.
I want to run apache with MySQL and PHP the proper way. But before I get to those steps I need the right linux flavour. Basically I am looking for advice on which to get and why I should get that one. The free'er the better .

Also if anyone knows of a good book that teaches you PHP I would be intrested in hearing about it, especially if it has in the appendix how to install apache with MySQL and PHP properly. I already know how to do it improperly.

Any advice/suggestions will be welcome.
Thanks for your time folks
-RexDrax

[Dante Hicks]

The O'Reilly book on PHP was pretty good imho (but most of their titles are). There's also one for MySQL & PHP (on building web databases).

[NEWSBOT3]

i'd go with mandrake, we use it at work, and it seems easy enough to get started with (as linux goes)

[wu_trax]

debian, maybe its not all that easy, but once you started using it you dont want anything else. best package-management EVER.

[meglamaniac]

Debian net-inst is where its at.

You download a 30mb CD image, boot it, it autoconfigures your network card, asks you a few questions about your location (so it can find the fastest download locations) and then downloads and installs the basics.
Once that's done you have a machine that will boot to a BASH prompt and run stuff. You then use dselect to choose what packages you want (so you'd want things like KDE or Gnome, apache, mysql, php...) and it'll ferret off and download those and install them and then its ready to go. You don't even have to reboot.

The best bit is it has all its dependency trees sorted out. If you have much linux knowledge you'll know that KDE/Gnome rely on any number of libraries and packages, not least of which is the x-server. You don't need to worry about any of that, as it'll download anything your selected package requires, and you only have to do minimal config as its already set up for debian.

Quite cool really.

[RexDrax]

Debian might be easy, but I want to do everything myself, ie not have to hunt for the config files for apache. I have Mandrake 7 or 8, cant remember which and it was fine. However what I didnt like is that when I installed apache and some other files, I couldent find some config files. It put them somewhere and I absolutly hated looking for them. I want a linux flavour with basically the OS and a GUI of some kind. Probably KDE. It will of course have C on it as a basic and shell clients. Then I want to be able to download apache, MySQL and php from the appropiate website and install them myself. Later on get perl as well and finally get an FTP server running and/or Samba. Samba is not too bad, I have done it before, but never under linux so it will be an intresting expierience.

[Vaio]

Just so you know, when people say Debian's package dependancy thing is wonderful and you can't go wrong etc they are fibbing, It is as easily breakable as Mandrake's urpmi, and it's a complete pig to install.

for beginners it is not

~Vaio~

[wu_trax]

you can always download source-codes, compile them and then do a make install, but it will be difficult to delete/replace them later. id rather use some package-management system (and apt is the best there is ) maybe you wont have the latest release, but at least you know that you can delete it and that every other package you need is also installed.
in debain all config-files are in /etc (/etc/apache, /etc/php4, /etc/samba and so on), so you wouldnt have to search much.

[wu_trax]

Originally Posted by Vaio

Just so you know, when people say Debian's package dependancy thing is wonderful and you can't go wrong etc they are fibbing, It is as easily breakable as Mandrake's urpmi, and it's a complete pig to install.

for beginners it is not

~Vaio~

i am a beginner, still with some reading i managed to set up all i needed

[Vaio]

like Mandrake and Fedora/Red Hat

~Vaio~

[RexDrax]

I have never used any sort of packaging program but have heared of others using it. What exactly are the benefits of it? When I installed anything I usually downloaded the binary files or some other file, untarred/unzipped it and then used the "make install " command with the right options. When I found mistakes or things I wanted to add sometimes I managed it while other times I didnt. I also encountered problems with compatibility issues with certain versions not working together and upgrading was next to impossible sometimes.

How is package managing diffrent and is it a nicer setup?

Btw, thanks for all the responses so far. I think I will be going with either mandrake if there is no benefit to package managment, if there is I am willing to try Debian, anyone got the link handy of where I get it? Also when I install it is it dual-boot supported? I still want to run win98 on that server for other reasons.

[Jester]

Package managing is nice because

65 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 97.2MB of archives.
After unpacking 922kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

It took me one line plus an enter to upgrade 65 packages (including mysql, php and apache) to their newest (available versions.) Now consider downloading and doing 'make install' for all those manually...

Incidentally, you don't really need to upgrade unless there's a new security patch out. For a distribution like that, check out Slackware. Install the latest version from CD, get whatever security upgrades you need. Then wait for the next version before you upgrade anything else.

There are other advantages to not doing 'make install', the primary one is saved time.

For a server, debian is far superior to mandrake. For a desktop machine I'd probably recommend mandrake. As for your problem locating config files, debian keeps a list of the files in each package online. Generally configuration files are found in /etc and have reasonably logical names. On my (debian) box, they can be found here:

/etc/apache/httpd.conf
/etc/mysql/my.cnf
/etc/php4/apache/php.ini

Not too hard to figure out.

To install apache properly on debian:

# apt-get install apache

If you require apache 2, simply replace 'apache' with 'apache2'.

# apt-get install php4

will get you php4.

# apt-get install mysql-server

will get you a mysql server. You might want to install mysql-client as well. Debian shows some recommended packages when you install, worth reading and checking out. Incidentally, if you install mysql-client first, debian will install the server for you.

# apt-get install php4-mysql

will give you the necessary libraries to use your newly installed mysql server with php.

As you can see, not everything is reduced to one magic step with package handling. However, it's very difficult to **** up. In addition, apt-cache can give you much information about each package (including the aforementioned recommendations.)

If what you really want is to learn to compile apache, php and mysql with the correct options, it really doesn't matter what distro you choose.

[wu_trax]

nothing more to say to that, except that you get it from www.debian.org.
that page also has a nice search-engine for all the packages (the offical ones that is) and lots of documentation. you should download the net-install and unless you need that server in a productive enviroment you should pick the testing distribution, the stable one might be a little out of date (testing doesnt mean its not stable, these guys just VERY cautious with what they call stable.)
you can also build packages on your own. i dont have any real idea about how that works, i only did it once for gmplayer (btw, best movieplayer EVER ) and that was already set up, i only needed to copy and paste a command out of a readme-file. youll probably never need that though. there even is a bittorrent-package for example.

[Epcylon]

Since nobody has mentioned it yet... gentoo! \o/

Portage is (in my experience) the only package system that rivals apt-get, and in some cases I'd say it's better. Typically when you want the latest and greatest..

On simplicity, a clean gentoo install will give you exactly what you asked for. The os itself, and the very minimal set of utilities you need for working with it. Whatever you wish to install after that is up to you.

[RexDrax]

I think jester sold me on debian with his post so will give taht a shot and see how it goes. Thanks for all the advice/suggestions folks.

[hyfe]

Originally Posted by Jester

As you can see, not everything is reduced to one magic step with package handling.

Hah!

apt-get install phpmyadmin

That'll install and setup apache, php and mysql in one single blow

[Jester]

Yes, but who the **** wants phpmyadmin installed?

[NEWSBOT3]

me?

[wu_trax]

would you rather create data-bases, tables and users with the shell-client?? there is nothing better than php-admin, besides you could easily uninstall it afterwards

[Jester]

I create databases and users with the shell client, but generally make my tables by running sql scripts. Then again, none of those are things I do often, and they're good things to go through because they demonstrate a lot of simple syntax.

I'm of the opinion that pushing buttons on adminware can be bad for your health when you're only adminning for yourself.

Naturally, if you're a multiuser admin that's an entirely different matter.

[DMZ]

Remember that virtually all RPM and DEB based distros have (third party) apt available for them, so any Mandrake/SuSE/Redhat/Fedora-alike can be made to apt-get.

Having said that, my recommendation is "not Fedora"

[morrowyn]

install Freebsd go to /usr/ports/www/mod_php4 or mod_php5 type in : make install clean
click some nice plugins you want , sit back, wait on the compile and enjoy, after that, goto /usr/ports/databases/mysql and make install clean

now you have apache, php4/5 and mysql running

or install some packages from a linux distro, i prefer slackware for linux, but grab the distro you like.

greets

[flikman]

Ill be installing fedora 3 later, having ran redhat 9 and fedora 2 before and hated them, so I'll let u know what I thought.