RE: debian for ISP use

[Michael Roark <roark@metter.org>]

Chad,

Here is my take on Debian Linux in an ISP environment.

I admin'd for a company that managed a number of local telco ISP's (5 to be
exact). Each company had their own box that handled radius authentication,
email (both local and virtual), corporate websites, personal websites, ftp, and
dns. We were running the following: Dec Unix, FreeBSD, RedHat, Suse, Solaris,
and Debian. As far as uptime was concerned, the Debian machine was the hands
down winner, followed closely by Suse and FreeBSD. Performance was not really
fair to judge, as each machine was very different hardware-wise, but I felt
that the Debian machine performed admirably (running on a 200mHz Micron
Millenia w/256 MB of RAM). Installation was not a problem, nor were upgrades
using dselect (though it is very different, not harder, than RPM). I had no
problems compiling packages that I didn't install using dselect (a custom
hack of radius, for example). 

The reason, in my opinion, for the surge in RedHat popularity is basically
visability and marketing. Over a year ago you could walk into a software shop
and find the Redhat distro. It has been a recent development to find Suse and
Caldera in a shop (Bestbuy for example). Also, their install was more visually
comforting than Debian (from the 1.x days).

I say all of that to lead to this -- as you do not claim to be "very
technical", I would be more concerned with supporting the OS than anything
else. Performance differences and package availability (at least as far as an
ISP setting is concerned) is not really an issue. You can get what you need on
any of the main distro's available. You need to be able to get help when you
need it. If you find that you can no longer authenticate your dialup customers
at 3 a.m. and you don't have anyone on staff that can help you, where are you
going to turn? This list is helpful, but you will, in all likelihood, need
something more immediate. There are a number of companies that offer support
per incident. LinuxCare is the primary organization that comes to mind. They
support Debian specifically.

As far as Debian specific training goes, I don't think that it is important.
You need training on Unix, and Linux specifically, not necessarily distro
specific training. If you are comfortable on a Unix cl you should be fine in
front of Debian. Things may be in different places, but they are mostly the same
things.

All in all, Debian is a wonderful distro with a committed group of people
working on it, making it better, and fighting the Linux fight. I believe that
it would serve you well and reliably. 

Michael


On 28-Jun-99 Chad A.Adlawan wrote:
> (Redirected by Jude Ramas <jamr@i-mailbox.net>)
> Greetings !
>   My first post on this list and I hope you can help me on this.
>   We are an ISP presently running on slackware34 w/c is pretty much breaking
> up.  It was installed for us years ago by some tech guy and we need to
> rebuild it.  We already have contact with someone whom we'll hire on an
> install basis to do our dial-in, DNS, mail, etc linux server and he is
> recommending Debian GNU/Linux.
>   May I ask what ISP's are presently using Debian and how widespread is its
> use ?  If possible can you supply me with URL's because most of the talk we
> see on the net is re RedHat.
>   We are not a very technical group, but we pretty can manage when given an
> already running system.  What about Debian training, what options are there ?
> Thanks for your time,
> Jude
> 
> 
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        |------------------------|----------------------------------|
        | Michael Roark          | "We are what we repeatedly do.   |
        | Tech Specialist        |  Execellence then is not an act, |
        | Candler County Schools |  but a habit."  -- Aristotle     |
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