trskopo wrote:

> I am considering moving from windows to linux, but not sure if it is a good idea.
>
> Any one can give me a hints about this matter?

Most of my previously windows only customer sites have now allowed us to switch
the servers to linux. These are using currently Apache/PHP/Firebird and that is
all that runs on the servers.

> Is it Linux better than windows on the same hardware, regarding performance/security/etc?

With the FLAP stack, things are around 2.5 times faster on Linux when moving
from XP on the same machine. With windows 7 the advantage is even greater but
I've never used 'server' versions of windows so can't comment if they are any
faster than a stock windows install.

The improvements in performance on Firebird on it's own are not quite as
advantageous since Firebird does a good job on most platforms. It's the talking
between packages that seems to let Windows down? And certainly Apache/PHP works
a lot better on Linux.

> And if it's better, what distro should I choose and what file system for database file?

That is where Alexey's comment perhaps comes in, but nowadays stock Linux
installs are a HECK of a lot easier to manage than windows ones and I actually
charge customers more for maintaining windows. I can configure a new linux
machine completely up to date in an hour or so, while a windows machine can be a
days work - just waiting for updates to install.

I've run SUSE for many years, had a couple of spin-offs to Madriva and Debian
but am currently back on SUSE. However new installs will be Fedora as it has the
current Apache and PHP available. One of the 'pitfalls' is getting suitable
support in the distro.

File system is another pitfall ... Rule one in my book is to disable 'LVM' which
seems to be the default on all distros nowadays? Can't see the point since there
is simply no way to recover material if there is a hard disk problem. I run a
pair of disks one with the OS and programs and a second currently running EXT3
with the databases and material such as images and files rather than storing
them in blobs in the database. The original system used the database for
everything, but simply maintaining files and thumbnails as files is a lot faster
in a web setup.

So the question should perhaps be ... what are you using with Firebird?

--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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