At 06:30 AM 9/09/2003 +0800, you wrote:

>Hi,
>
>without wanting to spark a big debate, can I get an indication of
>what people see as the main considerations for changing from Windows
>to Linux for a Firbird server?
>
>Should I expect to see a huge performance boost?

Huge - no. However, if you have SMP servers, you will be able to utilise them.

>I develop with Delphi. What degree of dificulty should I expect in
>converting


>my NT services

Quite major, if you are a Linux newbie. It's a different OS so this
"conversion" will be a "re-do". On Linux you can write daemons in a shell
language. You have choices of shell languages with variations but most
people use the bash shell. It's a fairly comprehensible language, kind of
C-like or javascript-like (sorry for the insult, you bash-lovers). Shell
scripting is a lot more powerful than Win service apps though.

Or, if you have Kylix, you could write console apps in Object Pascal. How
you work these out depends on what your NT service apps actually do...

> and UDF's?

Linux versions are available for ib_udf and fbudf, along with some other
libraries. If you have custom UDFs, you will need to convert them.

>Is there a preferred Linux version or distribution to use?

This is a religious topic! :-) I can say that my top 2 are Mandrake and
Red Hat, for ease of use and availability of written docs. The Europeans
love SuSE. Personally, I've had a lot of trouble with it but I'm sure
that's my fault. You can't get SuSE free anywhere so, if you have sites
that are expenditure-conscious, it may be an issue in
Australia. Euro-to-AUD$ isn't often favourable.

>My typical configuration is 5 to 10 users with a highly interactive
>Windows client and occasional long queries.

For sites, the difference really comes in the stability of the server and,
once you get the hang of it, the flexibility of the console for doing
background jobs. Oh, and being able to reconfigure things via a text file
is a big plus for me. (though you can do it through the GUI tools if you
prefer).

There's no need to commit to anything. Just grab a distro and install on a
machine that has some spare disk space. Taste and see.

Helen