I am setting up a virtual machine to instal and run Moodle 2.4 and need to know if Ubuntu 10.04 (as listed in moodle docs) should be used with LAMP or Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ( longterm service) ? Can You help me? We have small 20 concurrent users one course but wish to expand in the future. Looking for a stable ride with minimal bells or whistles.
Thank you for the promp reply! But why does Moodle Docs for 2.4 install dated Sept.15th 2012 (http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Step-by-step_Installation_Guide_for_Ubuntu) still instruct to use Ubuntu 10.04?
What is the differrence as I am interested in SIMPLE operating system that works BEST with moodle 2.4 Not sure that a Debian based Ubuntu is the simplest although it may be the newest.
Ethan
Two of the most popular choices will be Ubuntu, or a RedHat based system (usually CentOS). Here's my experience of running live servers on Ubuntu and CentOS over the last 5 years:
Ubuntu is 'easier' to get started. It tends to use newer packages and there's more to install out of the box. This is good if you want to set something up quickly and easily. It's easier to upgrade Ubuntu from one version to another (for example, 10.04 to 12.04), but obviously you'd need to check the applications you're running. More customisations and custom applications = harder upgrade.
Ubuntu has a large user base and an active community, to if you want to set something up there's usually "walkthroughs" that will tell you every command you need to enter. Typing random commands into your server because someone tells you do can be a terrible idea, but it's a useful thing to have if you're less experienced at running servers. Just stick to reputable sites for walkthroughs.
CentOS is a good choice for something reliable. It tends to include packages that are quite new but have proven themselves reliable, rather than the bleeding edge. It also has fewer packages installable by default, but you can always compile software yourself, enable another package repository, or find an RPM online (I won't do this to my live servers). It comes slightly more locked-down out of the box, but this can be changed. Upgrading from one version to another (i.e. CentOS 5 to CentOS 6) isn't easy, so you're probably looking at setting up a new server and moving stuff across. However, they do support their releases for a ridiculously long time. My live Moodle servers are based on CentOS 6, and that's officially supported until 2020. By that time, we'll probably have moved to different hardware anyway, so having to upgrade the OS isn't a big deal.
I have four live servers and five development servers running CentOS, and one live server and one development server running Ubuntu.
One last thing: if you want to use BigBlueButton, that'll need to go on an Ubuntu server. There are instructions for setting it up on Ubuntu, but trying to get BigBlueButton running on CentOS is a bag of hurt.
Brilliant reply! Just the right amount of detail .Thank-you.
Speaking of BigBlu Btn we purchased a brand new server and Ubuntu10.04 would not recognize the hardware. Ubu 12.04 LTS works but BigBlu won't . Tried to search for drivers but no support for 10.04. Sad thing is that this new server would really kick but Big Blu does not seem to have any plans to upgrade to a newer O/S.
Any idea's?
We've resorted to blowing the dust off of an older server and loading up Ubu 10.04 for BBB, but it hurts to see the superior hardware not being used ( another Dept. will steal it soon for something else if we can't resolve this O/S issue).
Any other web conferencing suggestion?...although I really prefer BBB.
Come on Fred upgrade to 12.04 Long term Support! SOON PLEASE!!
If it's a powerful machine, you could look at setting it up as a virtual server host. That's what we have.
When we launched our new Moodle in 2011, we went with two brand new blades (two 6-core CPUs, 48GB RAM). We turned our old Blackboard servers (which are still pretty good, but the hardware is no longer supported) into virtual server hosts.
We have several virtual servers running this way. We have a WordPress blogging server, an Apache Solr server for college-wide search, a BigBlueButton server (Ubuntu 10.04), and a Moodle development server, all running off our old Blackboard server.
