i recently installed Apache2, Mysql 5 and PHP 5.1.1 with pear libraries on one of my dedicated boxes, it took a few hours thanks to linux dependency spaghetti lol, but i got there im currently recoding all my sites up to php5 (no easy task there are thousands f lines of code), so far im vey impressed with performance and stability and php5s OO features (not as good as java but alot better than php4) the only downside is that Plesk broke ill be soon upgrading my main server s well so heres the question How many of yee use PHP5 on your core servers? and any experiences u had
Yes, I use PHP5 on my primary server and it has been pretty good. I did notice a couple applications broke which I needed to fix. I'm waiting on the upgrade for MySQL 5.x now because I know it will break a lot more of my applications as well. I'm going to wait until I have time to make them comp. then I'll be upgrading to 5.x MySQL. PHP5 is solid though and is worth upgrading to. PHP4 seems to be the way of the past now.
I still use PHP4 because of legacy code that probably wouldn't work right with PHP5 - some day I will have to fix the code but I have so many other things to do now.
I wouldn't go as far to say the new version is always better, but often it will be and is safer than older versions. New versions may break things and cause problems, which one of the factors to why I'm still on 1.3.x Apache. 2.0.x has been out for quite some time, but a lot of companies still run 1.3.x. Same thing, a lot of companies have yet to upgrade to PHP5, but I believe it is a good move.
PHP 5 is yet to be widely used, but I think it's better to stick with PHP 4, unless you have the time to fix the problems that PHP 5 will bring.