Which distro

[StrangeWill]

I'm thrown between Debian and Ubuntu Server, I want to keep it minimal, and was keeping Debian as a console only server.

I'm planning on using it for MythTV, VMWare Server 2.0, development and storage.

Any opinions?

[bigtomrodney]

Both are very close...if you haven't much experience with hardware troubleshooting you might swing towards Ubuntu. In this particular case you are picking two that are so close it really wouldn't matter a lot.

The one thing in Ubuntu's favour is that there is so much documentation, particularly aimed at new users that it might be easier for you.

[StrangeWill]

Both are very close...if you haven't much experience with hardware troubleshooting you might swing towards Ubuntu. In this particular case you are picking two that are so close it really wouldn't matter a lot.

The one thing in Ubuntu's favour is that there is so much documentation, particularly aimed at new users that it might be easier for you.

I have used so far SuSE 10.2/10.3 and Fedora9, I'm dropping Fedora9 due to software compatibility issues (VMWare Server 2.0's webUI doesn't operate properly, VMWare says they've had trouble getting it to work right with Fedora, and never could get MythTV working right).

Because I'm dealing with TV capture cards, I may be interested in running Ubuntu server as you said because of hardware compatibility, so when we're talking about the server we're not going to be seeing any real bloat caused by Ubuntu, correct?

[bigtomrodney]

I'd agree with that. Remeber though that you can pull out as much as you like until you're down to a barebones system that does just what you need. It might be easier to install 'restricted' drivers in Ubuntu so I'd go that route myself.

[kostasan]

I installed Ubuntu Server and it did not even have Gnome. It is pretty barebone i believe.