This is my first post here, so I thought Id make it good. I am building a webserver that will be up in a month or so, so I am starting now. I was wondering, since I am on the fence here, should I go with Red hat or BSD? I am comfortable with both, I can run apache on either one, but I am wondering (pardon my ignorance) which would be faster, stable, and secure?? Many have told me BSD is the way to go, which is the whole reason I got it. I just want to know what everyone thinks....
I would say that they are equally fast and stable. BSD is a more secure but has less applications floating around, while RedHat has the most support and applicaitions of any UNIX flavor. If you are comfortable with both and just plan on running a web server, I would suggest BSD. If you are going to use it personally to work on, I would suggest RedHat.
Well, I planned on keeping red hat on my main machine, I have been running it for a year now with no problems, and I have a lot of apps that BSD cannot provide. I am just kind of toying with the idea of BSD for the webserver, as I dont really need a lot of apps for it, it shouldnt be a problem, I just needed some more input on the idea.
It is not accurate to oversimplify the choice between RadHat or BSD as a security consideration.
Both distributions have pros and cons and neither is better or worse. The choice is based on your needs and requirements. Many people run Linux very securely and very insecurely; same for BSD.
I favor Slackware because I like it and I don't run either RedHat or BSD, a personal choice. However, I don't claim that Slackware is better, it is just what I prefer. That is why we call it 'personal computing' 
[Edited by Neo on 01-22-2001 at 04:18 PM]
I've seen a lot of BSD vs. Linux discussions turn into flame-wars (that is why I closed the thread early).
My apologies for closing, but there are little differences between all UNIX flavors, except for personal taste and it is not fair to developers of one UNIX OS to use this forum to critique their hard work and dedication.
Saying BSD or Linux or RedHat is 'more stable' or 'more secure' or 'less secure' is inaccurate, overly simplifies complex problems and misleading. This is not 'the rumor board' There are plenty of those on the net, but not here
Also, if a thread gets closed too early (or you want a closed thread reopened) just email and make a polite request to reopen.
[Edited by Neo on 01-22-2001 at 05:56 PM]