Re: Hosting advice

[Neal Murphy <neal.p.murphy@alum.wpi.edu>]

On Friday, November 01, 2013 01:46:26 PM Celejar wrote:
> I'm curious: how important is getting updates fast in the context of a
> server? I understand that for desktops, some want the latest features,
> or support for new hardware, etc. but servers? Doesn't it make more
> sense to just run something like Debian *stable*?

You're right; a server generally needs to be stable more than it needs to have 
the latest and greatest versions of software. Because Debian stable uses 
somewhat older versions of software, it tends to be quite stable (more 
reliable, requires fewer updates); security and bug fixes are the order of the 
week.

I run Debian stable on my desktop. My computer is a tool that must work. I 
almost never need the latest versions of software. Granted, my platform had 
problems with kernel panics and GPFs with the previous Wheezy kernel (it would 
crash when RAM--8GiB or 16GiB--was filled and cached disk blocks needed to be 
dropped). But the latest kernel eliminated the problem. I don't know if it was 
really a kernel problem or if some kernel files were corrupted on disk; if no 
one else ever had the problem, I must assume the latter.