Preferred Linux Flavor for Web Server?

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Monday 12 March 2007 10:40:40 pm Scott Oertel wrote:

> Given you have one server
> which is a "BINHOST". You don't "need" install every update that gets
> pushed into portage. If you're checking the advisories and such you
> should be able to make a binary and have all your 'child' servers update
> from the binhost, thus creating a platform which is completely in sync
> (the children would have a cron to 'emerge world'). 

So if you have a large enough operation where you are doing daily maintenance 
anyway, time spent on a daily basis analyzing the advisories and deciding 
which ones you actually need pays off.  In my experience, you will eventually 
need to install the packages you would ordinarily choose to ignore because 
future packages will have (sometimes bogus) dependencies on them.  The 
release system assumes that you always install all updates.

This is another example of the resources Gentoo requires.  A BINHOST server, 
dedicated to building and distributing packages.  Binary distributions, on 
the other hand, provide that service for you.