Which distro for a non-web server (I read the stickies)

[Daniel_B]

I am looking to put together a workstation for high demand processing tasks (generating rainbow tables, ect). I have all the hardware I want but I am a little lost on the software end. I know enough about linux to know that I want it for my purposes, but I only have experience in desktop varieties which are of no use to me here. I am looking to SSH in and have it do tasks. I am quite comfortable in a command line environment so a GUI is not needed, at least not one running all the time. I did some research and all I could come up with is desktop stuff; my priority is processing power. What distro would I be looking for?

Thanks,
Dan

[reed9]

RHEL is probably the most popular server distro, but does require a paid license. There are a couple of RHEL clones that are free of charge, these being Scientific Linux and CentOS.

Debian is also highly regarded and relatively easy to setup without a GUI.

Or you could go with Ubuntu Server Edition.

[PTrenholme]

The GUI i optional in every distribution. Your processing power depends on your hardware, not the distribution. Bottom line: If I understood your question, there is no meaningful reply possible.

[Mudgen]

Distro isn't going to make much difference in processing power. Centos or Debian are fine if version stability is important, Fedora if cutting edge packages outweigh that. Make runlevel 3 the initdefault to cut out the GUI/X overhead and look closely at lsmod and use the modprobe configuration files to blacklist default modules that you don't need. Learn to use "linux rescue" mode to get in and fix things when you've made it unbootable by leaning things up too much.

[Schmidt]

and of course use 'chkconfig' to disable unnecessary services at system startup

[neildomo]

I second greyhairweenie: the kernel and memory management are very similar(identical?) across the distros. I'd go with CentOS, as it's a clone of RHEL which is the most popular and supported OS for industrial(?) purposes. runlevel 3 won't run X by default, so you can focus your processing power and memory on the task at hand.

[oz]

I am quite comfortable in a command line environment so a GUI is not needed, at least not one running all the time. I did some research and all I could come up with is desktop stuff; my priority is processing power. What distro would I be looking for?

Hello

Arch, Crux, Debian, and Gentoo should all be easy enough to setup a simple base install, and then you can add only those apps that you really want/need. As already indicated, power doesn't come into play here.

[Daniel_B]

Thanks for the suggestions, I've configured Debian as a virtual machine and it looks like it will do the job great when I get the hardware.