My home server (hosting this site) runs fedora, and my work machine runs gentoo. Running your own net-exposed shop in your (very precious) spare time means…1) you have to keep your system at least *fairly* up-to-date or you WILL get hacked
2) you don’t want to spend all your time keeping everything up-to-date manually
So I auto-update fedora (using yum) and gentoo (with portage, of course).
But deep down I know it has more to do with a craving for the newest, shiniest, l337357 shiznit. I don’t just apply security patches to the software I use, I grab newer versions with newer features I’ll never use, I grab any new stuff that comes along that sounds intriguing, and the dependency tree continually grows. Unlike applying security updates, installing new bells and whistles is directly counter-productive to the goal of running a safe, secure, and stable server. There’s no way I can resist the call of the sirens, though. I guess I just need to accept that, and move on (to the next self-induced interdependency update problem).
So which distro feeds my need for auto-updates of everything under the sun with as few headaches as possible? I often find myself bitching about how often fedora is borked by automatic updates via the hodgepodge of repo’s I (have to?) use. But recently, I bumped up gentoo apache and mysql and php versions, and they all had their share of hurdles. The gentoo docs are great – better than anything else I’ve seen – but with the last round of changes I had to google my way out of my jams just like I often do with fedora.
I think my criticisms have been levelled in the wrong direction, if criticism can even be considered appropriate. It’s the speed at which open source development moves, coupled with the complete lack of dictated direction. It’s this big beautiful blazing amebic ball of gooey goodness. Some of the bigger parts are yummy and tasty, while others are past the expiration date and emitting oozing stinky liquids and noxious odors. And ya just gotta roll with it! Pull out the rotten, route around the damaged software. I think it’s safe to say that with the kernel and gcc and apache and perl and php and mysql and cvs as drop-forged tools that you can really rely on, the higher layers can come and go. With me having complete ownership of my own data (and this is what drives me to run my own servers in the first place), it’s just a matter of an occasional SQL session to carry over data from one app to another.
I think I’m hitting my open-source stride. And I think I’m really starting to enjoy the ride. Now I just need to write a cheesy theme song that matches those corny lyrics… which has me wondering what kind of open-source MIDI and sequencing software is available… and here we go again…
