Hello everybody,

I'm not very familiar in administering linux for a long period. That's why I don't know much about update strategies for software packages and so on.

Well, I want to set up public webserver (Apache, PHP, SSI, Perl, MySQL ...). First I thought of installing SuSE. Via YAST it isn't hard to update the system. But the updates SuSE provides, are security patches and critical updates only.

What about upgrading a software component, f.e. if I want to upgrade from PHP 4.2.3 to PHP 4.3.6 or 5? Now I also have to upgrade several libraries to solve dependencies. I think that's very complicated and costs a lot of time, isn't it?

Can anybody give me a few hints how to keep the system up-to-date as easy as possible? What distribution should I use?

It would be very kind if you could help me.

Thanks a lot

I had to deal with that problem too for a long time. I first used RedHat up to 9 but for some reasons I got in trouble with updating from redhat need to register etc. etc. And also only security patches.

After a while I moved to debian, and I will asure you they have the best package / updateing system ever!! The only disadvantage is that it's community driven, there is no Company behind it. Every month I run a comple of commands to get my system up-to-date.

Debian has three types stable (mostly for servers), testing and unstable. For example in stable there is only apache 1.3 and testing contains apache 2.0. If you're running a server I would suggest stable and if you're running as workstation I would suggest testing or unstable.

installing, removeing and switching is really easy with the apt-get command. If you're going to use debian don't try to compile programs from scratch if they need to be updated frequently because debian can't do that for you

The big disadvantage of debian is that it's not a easy system to learn linux, a little linux experiance is required!

Red Carpet???? www.ximian.com - look at Red Carpet - this is commercial software.

Thank you for your hints.

I will first try to get Debian work. I have never worked with it, so I'm looking forward to experience something new ;-)

Regards,
Hypernetics