A few weeks ago, we setup a new production LAMP server to host a few of our client’s sites, medium size eCommerce websites. I wanted to share our experience as we came across the three big (and free) Linux distributions while we evaluated and setup the machines. We have previously setup Ubuntu Server 7.04 for our development and staging environment while researching the related family of North American Linux distributions: RedHat, Fedora and CentOS.

I’ll start with the positive: in the last few years Linux distributions in general have become main stream OS and most of the installation process is user friendly. Almost each distro offers the ’server’ edition of the OS which comes mostly configured with what a production LAMP server needs to have installed already. The installation packages are clearly labeled for i386 or x64 bit, and most even offer a net install which in CentOS case only requires downloading about 7MB of ISO file and the rest is done on the fly.

Now, let’s delve into the differences that affected our decisions, labeled according to key points and in order of importance to us:

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