What is my best choice of Linux server distro?

Question

I will mainly run JBoss AS 5 on this server and I am just started to learn Linux. So which Linux distro is both easy to learn/configure/manage and runs JBoss well? Any advice/hints is appreciated.

Answer 1

Well, RedHat (RHEL) would be a "natural" choice (as JBoss is a division of RedHat). CentOS is another option. But, to be honest, JBoss would run nicely on Ubuntu Server too (that you might want to choose if you like debian based distros).

Answer 2

I would say that any distro is good except that you might want to uninstall the default Java that comes with your distro. OpenJDK is very commonly installed with all the main distros. What I do is download the Oracle/Sun java .bin installer and then I use the etc alternatives system to reconfigure the path environment for the newly installed Java.

This script , which needs modification, might give you some hints on how to do it:

#  run this from the jboss/bin directory
# Set the JAVA_HOME variable
function set_java_home {
  if [ -z $JAVA_HOME ]; then
      echo "Using default value for JAVA_HOME: /usr/java/default"
      JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/default
  fi
  export -p JAVA_HOME
  echo $JAVA_HOME > java.home.config
  sudo rm /etc/alternatives/java
  sudo ln -s $JAVA_HOME/bin/java /etc/alternatives/java
  echo "JAVA_HOME variable set to $JAVA_HOME and /etc/alternatives set."
}
if [ -f java.home.config ]; then
  JAVA_HOME=$(<java.home.config)
else
  JAVA_HOME_CANDIDATES=$(find /usr -type d -name '*jdk1.6*')
  echo "Found the following candidates for JAVA_HOME. Pick one: "
  echo "---"
  echo $JAVA_HOME_CANDIDATES
  echo "---"
  read USER_SUBMITTED_JAVA_HOME
  echo "You chose $USER_SUBMITTED_JAVA_HOME ."
  JAVA_HOME=${USER_SUBMITTED_JAVA_HOME}
fi
set_java_home
## then optionally, execute jboss
## $JAVA_BIN $JAVA_OPTS -Djava.endorsed.dirs=$JBOSS_ENDORSED_DIRS \
##     -classpath $CLASSPATH org.jboss.Main $JBOSS_OPTS $1 $2 $3

Answer 3

I like CentOS for servers. Because it's built on RedHat Enterprise, the packages they include and choices they make are all aimed at the enterprise server market (as opposed to desktops like some other distros).

Answer 4

This is such a personal choice and there is no one answer fits all.

Personally, I find Ubuntu server edition the easiest to get on with as it comes on one cd and easy to get.

Other choices include Debian and CentOS amongst MANY others