Running server on Linux vs WinXP

[thepoetwarrior]

Im currently running a server now for the last 6 months on WindowsXP and considering installing Linux OS to run eqemu server. I could use some advise here.

Right now the server running on windows has about 25 users online during low peek times, and 50 users online during high peek times. A lot of people leave behind ghost, probably from /q. After about 24 hours, the server needs a reboot or else everyone will start lagging. Another problem are zone crashes, which obviously zone restarts itself up.

Specs are 2 internal HD's at 250 gig each, 1 Gig Ram, WinXP, and high speed cable @ 15meg/down and 1meg/up.

Would running the server on Linux be better? Less buggy? Obviously faster since Windows takes up more resources. Would ghost and zone crashing be fixed, or at least reduced? Which version of Linux would one advise? I know of Red Hat, seen it at school 8 years ago, but never had that OS on my PC's before.

Would appreciate some intellegent advise here. :)

Thanks

[sesmar]

In my experience Linux runs the EMU faster and more stable than Windows; however, there is a learning curve involved. There are plenty of guides on the wiki and in the forums on how to set up the server under linux and even a few posts on how to make it more secure but you will still need a basic understanding of linux in general beyond the emu in order to have a well run server.

As for which distro is the best, that is all a matter of opinion. I personally like Gentoo but I would not recommend it to someone that is new to linux as its installation process can be rather lengthy and a little involved. Debian is another good choice with great documentation and an active community. It is easy to install and you could have a server up in running in less than a day. I have tried Mandrake and later Mandriva as well as Redhat and Fedora Core, they are all good distros with extremely easy installations; however, in my opinion they might be a little more bloated than what you are looking for in a server. You can find a list of many different distro at http://distrowatch.com with links to download each one. If you are new to linux you might want to go with one of the RPM based distros such as Redhat, Mandriva, Fedora Core or SUSE. They are all very well established distros with a wide user base and easy installations.

Well, I hope that this helps in some way.

[sfisque]

linux will give you the following, if you're moving from windows:

a) better security options (you can run the emu as a low security user, and even chroot it if you're extra paranoid).

b) better remote access options (ssh requires much less resources than remote desktop, but steer away from telnet and ftp since they send passwords in plain text).

c) arguably, better resource management (you can generally run anything under linux with less resource requirements than windows).

AFAIK, the code base is virtually the same between linux and windows (i'd guess the differences are handled via #pragma style directives since i havent tripped over any wintel specific files. with that said, you will probably see the same or similar issues under linux. i know on my linux server i see zone crashes from various known issues, like bard songs, damage shields, etc. the nice thing about linux is you can do all sorts of things to the machine and NOT have to reboot, which is a major annoyance under windows for me.

as for linux flavors, i'd go with a distro that comes with a book to start, like gentoo, red hat, etc. i run slackware which is the oldest distro currently maintained (well over 15 years and running), but its not as polished and more geared for someone who wants to run linux without all the bells and whistles (aka: i just want a rock solid server, period.)

a good start would be to build a linux box on some spare hardware if you have some (even an old crappy 486 or pentium 1 will suffice). once you have it up and running, experiment with rebuilding the kernel (most default kernels are bloated and contain crap you never need for just a vanilla server). once you feel comfortable with the installation and running, build a server on your dedicated box and enjoy.

== sfisque

[Bishop4351]

My two bits I'd say if you have a linux server and you're some what comfortable then go for it but if not it might make a good development environment until you get situated with first.

aka: Don't bet the farm on it if you're a newb ;)

[narcberry]

bet the farm, go ubuntu.

If you got spare space to partition, you could play around with a dual boot system. if it works for you, remove your windows partition and commit the box to certain awesome.

[thepoetwarrior]

Thanks for the advise, it was helpful. Im pretty confident in my computer skills to get a linux server up and running, how to use it, and setup the eqemu on it. I've currently got 3 desktops already, and the one hosting eqemu has two 250gig HD's with only the first HD being used atm.

Being that I never installed Linux before, I was just curious if it was worth my time for the eqemu server, and if so which type of linux is good to install. Since I used RedHat a bit in college, I might just go with that. I also been hearing a lot about Gentoo so I might look into that too. I did google search a bit and there are a lot of guides, especially for noobs, how to install, use it, etc. So that part I can do myself. Im looking for something basic and stable for the eqemu server.

Thanks again for the help. :)

[thepoetwarrior]

i run slackware which is the oldest distro currently maintained (well over 15 years and running), but its not as polished and more geared for someone who wants to run linux without all the bells and whistles (aka: i just want a rock solid server, period.)

Thanks, thats what Im looking for, and will try that first. Downloading already the Slackware 12.0 which is 3.62 Gig.

[Bishop4351]

Centos makes a good server OS as does gentoo.

[jimbabwe]

bet the farm, go ubuntu.

If you got spare space to partition, you could play around with a dual boot system. if it works for you, remove your windows partition and commit the box to certain awesome.

I would have to agree. Ubuntu is so easy a monkey could use it. I've installed it on my newest box, and was able to get the emulator working rather easily within a few days with absolutely no linux knowledge whatsoever.

I got the standard version of the OS and if I were to do it over I'd probably get the server version instead as I hear it's a leaner installation.

[Knightly]

I'm jumping into this pretty late, but I run both Linux and Windows Servers.

With Windows XP the resource management is poor for running applications of this nature. There's also a lot of extra services that can cause some resource issues. That said, you can turn most of those off (disable indexing expecially) and close some of that up. As a general rule of thumb, linux will run it better.

However, if you put Linux against a Windows Server running this type of application, the differences dwindle and become mostly personal preference. Headless installations (installations that don't have a Graphical User Interface) will run it the same on both. However, it's much harder to manage a headless windows server than a headless linux server. In my case, I use Gentoo for almost all of my Linux installations any more since I can tailor it to exactly what I need. After you run through the Handbook a couple of times, it is a piece of cake.

All of that said, it again goes back to personal preference if you have access to Windows Server. The security issues, perfomance issues, remote access, etc, are all pretty moot.

[castlusion]

there is a couple links that have debian specific setting debian is easy to down load get what you want from/for server and nothing more and a good community as for stable.. there is a reason there are so many distros based on it;) in any case when i ran a server that what i used. im setting up on a better machine now so we will see how it goose and ill repost here. im wonderring if i could do a eqset up disc for DEB then people would just have to update files for mysql ....hmmmm a mind is a scary thing .....:D

[LargoUsagi]

there is a couple links that have debian specific setting debian is easy to down load get what you want from/for server and nothing more and a good community as for stable.. there is a reason there are so many distros based on it;) in any case when i ran a server that what i used. im setting up on a better machine now so we will see how it goose and ill repost here. im wonderring if i could do a eqset up disc for DEB then people would just have to update files for mysql ....hmmmm a mind is a scary thing .....:D

hell they could host the install files and apt-get is life if you run a deb Linux box, i have used countless distros for Linux and nothing stands up to DEB + KDE, (sorry gnome is full of fail, and f4 for a console as a default setting is just great) i have ran a Debian server for many things for years and nothing i have used measures up, i would just like to figure out why my zone program isnt working properly but thats another thread all in all for servers

hell i havent shut down my linux server since i had to move it a month ago, and it was on for 3 months without a reset before that, try that one with a windows box
(ANY LINUX BUILD HERE) > ALL