Would love to know why folks like CentOS so much. I find it very lacking and unsecure unless you add in additional features and programs.
I would suggest you to consider Cent OS operating system as it is compatible with most of the applications and control panels. Also, it is considered to be easier to use in comparison to other Linux based operating systems.
I have windows servers and CentOS servers for different purposes if you know how to manage them get what you need. Linux is the more prevelent.
Lacking? Can you explain a bit more? There are so many repos for CentOS, various packages that you want are there. In terms on security, you don't have to worry about it - any updates/patches that are done for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is also applied in CentOS. So it's like the enterprise distro which is Red Hat, being repacked for the public and it became CentOS.
As I've noted earlier, every package that I consider needed and necessary for a hosting server, like svn, had to be added afterwards. Therefore lacking.
It depends on your needs. For my needs, I would use Solaris 10 for the database server and CentOS for the web servers. If I had caching proxy servers in front of the web servers I would probably put them on Solaris 10 as well. I usually prefer Debian to CentOS as a server OS but for a web server, Apache and especially PHP need updating quite often. I roll my own RPMs for this purpose and since I have never looked into rolling .debs, CentOS is easier for me. I have used RHEL but we never got any significant advantage out of it when compared to CentOS. I have also used FreeBSD (or was it NetBSD ? I can't remember now) and it was quite nice. However, all of this is mostly irrelevant because the operating system is not what uses the resources. What makes the biggest differences when choosing software are the choices between Apache/Lighttpd, PHP/Perl/Java, PostGres/MySQL, MyISAM/InnoDB, Wordpress/Joomla/Drupal and so on. Therefore, my recommendation for OS is what you find most comfortable and easiest to use.
Cent OS 5 has been serving me well for the past few years. Easy to use and works with cPanel the best.
The best operating system is one that is properly configured and well maintained. It is even possible to configure and maintain a secure windows server (though it would not be my preference).
Since opening up this thread (over a year ago) I've learned a lot. Bought many dedicated servers and yes CentOS is the best so far. However uBuntu is awesome for Desktop