Hi all - it's time I asked for some help. I'm ready for a new server distro.<div><br></div><div>As background, my introduction to Linux was Mandrake. I used to joke with my friends that we needed to start a usergroup for those who refused to compile anything, and Mandrake mostly avoided that. After playing with Knoppix as a desktop for a while I was introduced to Ubuntu and stuck with it until around the time Unity was introduced and performance on my particular configuration became unacceptable. I now use Mint for my desktop and love it. </div>
<div><br></div><div>I have continued to use Ubuntu server with good results until today when I upgraded to 11.10 and had yet another upgrade-introduced issue.</div><div><br></div><div>My needs are relatively simple. I run the following:</div>
<div>-SAMBA and NFS</div><div>-MPD (Music Player Daemon)</div><div>-Linux Virtualization (virsh)</div><div>-Completely headless - no X installed or required at any point</div><div><br></div><div>All of my remaining functionality is running on virtual machines, and I'd like to leave those as-is for now, although I might move them in the future. These include relatively simple tools like Apache and Dansguardian.</div>
<div><br></div><div>One of the things I like about about a distribution like Ubuntu is that, in theory, I can run apt-get upgrade and update all of the packages on the system. And, in theory, these have been tested to work together. I always expect a minor issue with an upgrade but not something that prevents the system from successfully booting. What I did not like about Mandrake years ago was the challenge of dependency hell that seemed to come with RPM-based systems of the day. However, at this point I'm open to about anything.</div>
<div><br></div><div>My knowledge there are probably four basic choices:</div><div>-Gentoo (fun, resolves the upgrade issue, but probably overkill)</div><div>-Fedora/Red Hat based </div><div>-SuSe based</div><div>-Debian based</div>
<div><br></div><div>I've never worked with any of the "upstream" solutions. Is it time for this technically middle-of-the-road geek to take one of them on? If so, what is the overwhelming recommendation?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div><br></div><div>Josh Kite</div>