UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi guys,

I never thought I'd be here. I've got my MCSE and I was a die hard Windows guy. I've been working with UNIX and Linux sense the middle of summer. I'm looking for server OSs. UNIX or Linux, preferribly the easier of the two. MY goal is to get UNIX and Linux into the company I work for now. I'm an admin for a company and I feel Windows is very expensive and so on, I'm not bashing. My question is, is there any free server side Operating Systems, I have to do this with my own money and research it before I can bring it in. I've looked all over for Linux and finally bought if off ebay for 2.00 bucks. I feel like I' stealing. Also can anyone refer me to a good reference book or website that has an overview of installations and what not. I've had Red Hat 8.0 (I think) installed on a w/s at home for quite sometime. Hope I didn't ramble for to long. I look forward to talking with many of you.

Thanks, Craig

any linux or bsd distro is suitable for a server OS. that is their primary function any way, you have networking built in to the kernel, and every concievable server daemon is available for almost all unix os's. id say when chosing between linux or a *bsd, try both. decide whether you like a system V style unix, or a BSD style unix. after that you can get into which one is more secure "out of the box", if that is a concern. if you have weird hardware to run things on, netbsd has always been good for hardware compatability. there is a myriad of choices.

Most Linux and *bsd distributions are both free for download. There is plenty of documentation on getting a server set up on either platform. Personally I prefer to run LAMP servers (Linux, Apache, Mysql, and Perl, Python or Php depending on your prefernce). Try OnLAMP for additional information on lamp servers.

Thanks guys.