Indigno

I'm completely re-doing my website, and my former web host does not support PHP or MYSQL (Oh, well, it was ad-less and free, what can you expect?). I have two cable modems, so I get two separate IP addresses, which means that it would be incredibly easy for me to set up a web server at home.
The box I have in mind has:
-900mhz
-I'll stuff about 700 mb of ram in there
-and a 3-5 gig hard drive (I might put in a 120 gig drive, but it's not very dependable so I'm kind of hesitant about that)

I was going to take the easy way out with windows, but I realised that this machine is old and might have problems if I ever experience any sort of moderate website activity while running windows. So I'll go ahead and use linux. I have experience with linux, but I have never tried setting up a serious server that's going to be running PHP and MYSQL at the same time.

What I need is a distro of linux (or BSD, etc...) that is easy to set up (preferrably with web services pre-built into it) and dependable enough to leave alone for weeks at a time, and small enough to fit onto a 3 gig hard drive. And if it's small, it needs to have a GUI because I'm not good enough with linux to run it solely off of command line, sorry.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Prm753

You know, sounds like Damn Small Linux might work for you, I think it has server capiblities. It's pretty lightweight, but with 700mb of ram, you could run something a bit bigger than that. I would think that DSL would be reliable enough to leave on for weeks and weeks at a time.

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Marvin

Fedora Core 5 (its graphical and easy), you just have to select the relevent server software during the instaltion. Thats apache, php etc. Then read how to configure them, edit the config files to match your configuration and what you want done.

No need to waste 120GB on a web server. The 3-5gig one should be ok. Dont install stuff you wont need. Just have gnome installed and not mutch else apart from the web server software.

You could still use windows and IIS(comes with 2000/XP Pro/server 2003), or windows and apache. Apache and windows work great. If you have little experience using linux this might be better in a way as you will only have to learn how to config the web server software and not a whole OS.

Im sure a 900MHz box running just apache would not fall over unless its slashdoted(but is there a server in the world that can take that load).

If it were me i would put 2000 or XP Pro on. Install Apache, PHP, MySQL etc and just have them run. Config windows so its not running any background services you dont need and it should be ok. There are lots of tutorials out there for getting apache to work on windows and how to get PHP and MySQL working with it. Its not to hard, even an idiot like me can get it to work.

Edit: Windows is just as stable as Linux if you have a firewall, antivirus and all patches installed.

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Indigno

Cable. But I'm not concerned about ram capabilities, I'm more concerned about Hard disk memory usage. The very largest HDD I may have is about 6 gigs, and I want enough space after the OS to have a lot of pictures, animations, movies, and the database.

Marvin

If you are concerned about disc useage. Windows 2000/xp take about 1.5 gig full install. Firewall/anitvirus ~ 200 MB. Webserver stuff ~ 500Meg(at most). that would leave you 3 gig for content which is tonnes for pics/videoes/animations if you ask me.

Edit: for linux you are looking at a smaller install base for the OS as long as you get rid of stuff you dont need. so you might get another gig out of it.

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OpenLoop

I hosted my website from home on Ubuntu linux for a few months. It was easy to set up and can be left unattended for weeks (60 days until i rebooted for upgrade). It has two installation modes:
1- normal: with GUI
2- server: no GUI

It comes with Apache web server and apt-get package manager so you can easly download php-mod and mySQL.

Prm753

Indigno, DSL == Damn Small Linux (in this case). Sorry for the confusion.

DSL only requires 50-60mb to install to your hard drive, there would be plenty of space for other stuff. If you have a 6 GB hard drive, and only use 60 mb for the OS, you could store thousands (I think) of pictures.

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Marvin

I think it your decision should take into account how much experience you have with linux. I know its cool to say i have a linux web server running but if something goes wrong with the OS its more of an effort to fix it if you dont have much experience. Though you could say setting up a linux web sever is a good way to get linux experience. It all depends on how much you like to use google.

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LOI Kratong

I was considering damn small linux, I read on their site somewhere that they had created an installation that was about 6MB, and contained only the components that Apache needed to run. Obviosuly that is ridiculously stripped down, and doesn't include PHP and MySQL, but you get the idea of what you can do!

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Indigno

The other problem is that with the whole genuine advantage thing going on, all of my liscences of windows have been used many times on slightly reconfigured hardware, so most of them are dead (I get a lot of them from old work pc's and broken laptops). ANd I know how to configure PHP, Apache, and mysql on windows, as I'm developing my site on the computer before I upload everything to the web.