Toutatis for server now?

Well, I think I must go for maximum customer satisfaction with Free Software. If I ever start a real business that will be my guiding principle.

Your in a hard spot. I'd probably go with Debian stable. Debian shines on the server and the kernel is already free. Just don't add the non-free components. The main issue with Debian I believe is its endorsement of non-free software (website has a lot of information on how to add non-free software). There are some other issues with firefox I know.. you won't need those though. Debian is easy to upgrade so I wouldn't be too concerned about security.

You could plan to move to the server version of Trisquel when it is released.

В 13:28 +0200 на 11.10.2012 (чт), name at domain написа:

>
> Alright, I have finished my bachelor's thesis. Very surprisingly my (sucky)
> thesis about Sage as a replacement for Matlab in higher education rose
> interest in the teachers on my school.

Well done! You might have heard about it, but just FYI, Octave is
another Free Software alternative to Matlab. It missed some
functionality few years ago, but I've personally used it to do many
projects in my university years.

> -Debian: Either stable or testing.

> The bad thing about stable is that it will
> be soon replaced with current testing version and hence not supported

There is always upgrade. You edit /etc/apt/sources.list and replace the
old stable release name with the new one. If "stable" is used instead of
release name transition would probably be transparent. I do not remember
did I encounter new stable release while I was on Debian.

Next:

sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

sudo aptitude full-upgrade

Of course it could break bad, but for that you should prepare a backup.

> The bad thing about testing version is that it
> is testing version and possibly not so secure.

Not so sure about that. There are constant updates and security updates
as well as far as I remember. I've spent almost two years on testing
+unstable on a desktop machine and it broke badly only once. I think
I've used testing for a server available on the Internet.

If it is going to be stable soon, then I would expect it to have minor
issues or no issues at all. Debian after all has very long cycle for
marking something stable.

>
> -Ubuntu:

Not an option for me for philosophical and technical reasons. I'm amazed
Trisquel is relatively stable while it is based on Ubuntu.

> Trisquel: Toutatis is the only version of Trisquel to consider.

> However, Toutatis is not ready yet,
> and even though there might be no differences between packages on the server
> installation without X-server between Toutatis and ubuntu LTS, is it too
> risky to make the server of Toutatis at this point? Is there plans to support
> Toutatis for the same time as curernt Ubuntu LTS is to be supported?

There is always upgrade. As in the Debian case I've mentioned above.

A week or so ago I've upgraded a server from Taranis to Brigantia. Only
two packages required hacking of dpk scripts to install and unblock the
migration process. There were bug reports about those exact packages
with proposed solutions. If I were you I would either install Brigantia
and upgrade to Toutatis when released or install Toutatis and upgrade to
the next release when available. And keep upgrading to every future
available release. This theoretically should provide smooth transition
and no breaking like in my case from Taranis to Brigantia.

Hey and thank you very much of the suggestions, much appreciated.

I know of Octave. Years ago I had plans with a mathematics teacher to do my thesis of Octave as a replacement for Matlab.

Now we talked about GNU Octave too, but then I found Sage, which is a very interesting alternative in mathematical analysis and what not in schools because of the web browser interface, server/client model, feature to share and publish worksheets, individual user accounts with disk space for worksheets, and because Sage uses Python by itself.

Sage has gathered and united nearly 100 Mathematical Free Software programs under one and same user interface, which means you can in theory do tons of stuff by just installing one package. Among those are GNU Octave, so you can actually use Octave from Sage, if there is a reason for that.

My job is now to install and configure Sage for the school and educate the teachers how to use Sage. Next month I will have to get a new job xD So I am not maintaining Sage on the school, and that's why I want to make them a system which is running without problems after 5 years. Thus upgrading the OS after a year or so is not a choise.

Edit: Ooops, Sage does not include GNU Octave, but it can use GNU Octave if it is installed. A slight correction.

The problem with Trisquel being used in a corporation, school, or government is the lack of support options. Plus, with it being a one man show, the releases are 6 months behind schedule. If a company or large organization invests in Ubuntu, they have some security in Canonical being a real company and provide paid support. Trisquel relies on free and u.predictable help in their documentation and forums.

That is why Trisquel isn't considered a option for servers right now.

The only problem with Trisquel for this server is will the server in sources.list address exist next 5 years. If I could be as sure of that as I can be of that ftp.fi.debian.org* will exist next 5 years there would be no probs.

To get some knowledge of that I would have to know better who exactly is maintaining current Trisquel mirrors or the official Trisquel server.

* Edit: And security.debian.org.

Awesome, a thesis for what course?

I am a control engineering student and did not even think about making a thesis out of free software in engineering. I once spoke to the course coordinator about the research lab he works in and he told they usually work with free software, but what he meant was free software developed in-house, not the actual tools they used. I asked if they used Windows as a development platform there (rhetorical question, but I thought it sounded more appropriate than being straightforward in such situation), he replied "The majority of us yes, but you can use 'Linux' if you want, but I never used it myself and I don't know how to use it (yes it is a redundancy)".

When one thinks of software related engineers, she might think that they know all the tools available and choose the best one. However, there is, actually, a dearth of information/interest about/in alternatives rather than alternatives themselves.

As of now, I am far from being the most compelling spokesman for freedom in engineering, but if I can make a degree out of that, I have a greter purpose in this job. Stuff is kinda boring like it is now.

I am not sure what it will be. It has been information technology and computer engineering.

I actually did not have plans to do a thesis related to Free Software either at first. I had other plans more into economics. It would had been highly theoretical and 100% fun project for me. But then I spoke about GNU Octave with one Mathematics teacher who taught us basics of Matlab. Later we talked more and he said that maybe a thesis could be done of GNU Octave. I agreed right away.

Thank you (moilami) for posting this :D I was about the post almost the same question (I wanted to stop relying on Ubuntu LTS for my personal server and I was looking for an alternative, with the idea that, if I can't find a good Free alternative, I would go for Parabola as a Server (like I used to have at home my Arch Linux as a server).

But I have a question for the community (if you (moilami once again) allow me to do this). I was thinking about Debian as my server OS, but then I thought.. it this a good idea ? I mean how easy it is to install non-free software ? Is there only a simple repository that makes the different between those two or are there non-free packages already included on an original and non modified debian installation ?

PS: I have time to edit and change everything on my server at anytime, but I also want something to rely not only for now, but for the future (if, by luck, I grow as a developer with a good infrastructure).

Thanks in advance for all the answers :D

No probs, and be free to derail and hijack as much as you want threads started by me. I am a child of Usenet/Sfnet in my Internet life, hence I am not bothered at all who talks what and where. In Sfnet someone started a topic, some people maybe talked about the topic but usually very quicly several people were talking OT as much as they wanted. If someone would had said "this is my thread" people would had laughed so hard that several of them could had died of heart attack.

As an update by my side I can tell that I at first installed Ubuntu LTS to the school because I noticed Toutatis still have packages named *ubuntu*, which would had meant that every single package would had been upgraded at some point. I however very quicly became pissed of Ubuntu as each time I booted the machine I saw some "manage this server in "landscape.ubuntu.com" login greeter. The final thing pissing me off was that I had to write a custom init script, and I read that Ubuntu uses Upstart. The benefits of Upstart were mainly for desktop machines, IMHO, so I thought fuck this shit gimme System V init or GTFO.

As a result I installed stable Debian and was very happy. Seriously, for important servers I rather play it as safe as I can. One failure on the server is simply too much, if it can be avoidable with different OS. So, goodbye support for 5 years and hello maximum performance with Free Software.

I think Red Hat Enterprise or Cent OS could be alternatives for Debian, but since I am so much on the .deb camp in general I don't have to make things more difficult by considering them. Debian GNU/Linux should be 100% free without non-free and contrib repositories, which are not enabled by default.

Anyway, in my opinion Parabola GNU/Linux people have done the best job. They are not saying "it is upstream bug lol no can do" but have done impressive job in making Parabola better than the distro it is based on. I have used Parabola as a server in my home, and it worked like a charm. I would not use Parabola for anything serious though because it is rolling releases. For serious servers things are best to not change untill they must change.

For those (like me) interested in this. I created a page in the Wiki showing how to turn Trisquel into a Server :

https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/server

For now I only have the Installation page but with time (maybe tonight) I will create the GLAMP, OpenSSH, GitWeb, Drupal etc... tutorial since they are quite easy to understand and reproduce.