Moodle in English: Windows 2003 or linux

Windows 2003 or linux

by mick marshall - Thursday, February 2, 2006, 10:01 PM

Hi,

I have been trialing Moodle for the past month using windows XP and easyPHP. I am now at the stage of installing this on to a live server.

We have just over 2,500 students and over 200 staff. I anticipate heavy use as teachers and students are very much looking forward to using it.

I was originally going to use windows 2003 server with EasyPHP but after reading through the forums I see that linux is used as well.

Is there a clear choice to make. I have a 6 month old dual xeon 4g ram raid 5 scsi server standing by.

Also, if Linux is the best route what software do i need to get as i have never used Linux before.

Please advise as i am confused and appear to be chasing my tail.

Cheers,

Mick

Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Iñaki Arenaza - Friday, February 3, 2006, 12:01 AM

Given enough Linux/Unix knowledge, this is clearly the way to go. But if you have never used Linux/Unix before, the extra horsepower you get from Linux will be useless if you don't know how to fix that tiny little problem that prevents Moodle from running.

So either go with Windows, or (my choice) first learn Linux and then go with Linux.

Saludos. Iñaki.

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by David Martin - Friday, February 3, 2006, 2:55 AM

Hello Mick,

I had to make the same choice some time ago, I tested moodle on both plateforms, but my final choice was made for me, I have some skills with linux systems and probably would get by; however ohter technicians at our site did not have these skills, this obviously put the system support at risk. So I used Windows 2003, IIS 6x, MySql 4.x and PHP.

The server configuration you stated should cope with the load (given your student count) I have similar system as yours but less RAM which I plan to upgrade soon when system hits 60-70%

Learning new skills is good and recommended, however if you are new to linux I would suggest sticking to Windows OS, setup a spare machine and play with a linux installation untill your comfortable with it. You can always export your Mysql database and moodle/documents folder to your linux box for testing. Then when your able install linux on your production machine if you feel the linux install is better.

Hope this helps in some way.

David Martin
ICT Services Manager
Wolverhampton Adult Education Service

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Friday, February 3, 2006, 3:09 AM

You must have seen this: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance

Quote

- The amount of RAM on your web server is the strongest factor in performance - get as much as possible (eg 4GB).

- Linux or Unix is the recommended operating system for the server. They perform much better than Mac OSX or Windows servers at high loads.

- You are strongly recommended to use a PHP accelerator to ease CPU load, such as Turck MMCache or PHPA.

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Dave Ray - Friday, February 3, 2006, 8:26 AM

Hi Mick, I've used Moodle on both systems and agree
with previous posts. Use what you and staff are familiar
with now , but in the long run learning linux will serve you
well. I am learning Debian Sarge and won't look back, it's
outstanding!

Good Moodleing, Dave

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by mick marshall - Friday, February 3, 2006, 4:17 PM

Hi,

Thanks for all your support. I will add another 2GB of RAM and see how it goes. meanwhile I will look into a Linux course.

Can somebody please advice me on which linux version to learn as there are many.

Thanks again,

Mick

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Matt Gibson - Friday, February 3, 2006, 9:38 PM

As hinted at above, the best one is usually the one that your mate or the school techies know and can help you out with when your stuck. I'm learning Debain, simply because that's the one the supoprt guys at my hosting company know the most about. Other than that, I'm not sure.

Matt

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Thomas Haynes - Saturday, February 4, 2006, 11:30 PM

Mick...

In terms of a Linux distribution, I was using WhiteBox Enterprise Linux last year, and moved to Scientific Linux 4 with upgrades at the end of the summer. These are RHEL clones, and have worked very well for me. The WBEL seemed a little slow on updates, and the SL seems to have excellent support within the academic/research communities.

Regards... Tom

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by M Y - Sunday, February 5, 2006, 11:45 PM

Damn Small Linux worked for me. You should install XAMPP (very simple).

Everything you need for hosting Moodle is included in XAMPP and DSL uses very little RAM and harddrive space. Ideal if your using an old hunk of junk like me.

Scott Computers Q Model 256 MB RAM + 20 GB harddrive. - 90+ users.

Not quite 4GB RAM >

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Corey Simpson - Wednesday, February 8, 2006, 6:33 AM

Mick,
I've been very pleased with Suse Linux Enterprise Server from Novell. I've used other distributions, but Novell provides a tech support line...a person who I can call if I get stuck. They seem to want to take Linux to the next level to make it more user friendly.

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Paul Stott - Tuesday, February 28, 2006, 5:58 AM

Although I have managed to set up a "test" moodle site using Mac OS X on a powerbook I have been advised that linux is the way forward for the main site. I have acquired a copy of Debian serge but have absolutely no experience of linux especially using the command line which I find very daunting. If anyone can point me in the direction of any resources it would be greatly appreciated.

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Juan David Martínez Pavony - Wednesday, March 1, 2006, 4:20 AM

Hello Paul.

I suggest to get the horse slowly. If you are used to MacOS, then go ahead on it. Later, you can think about moving to Linux (or Windows dead ).

Starting a new system is difficult enough to add more elements to the recipe trying to setup a new operating system.

Good luck.

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Jonathan Moore - Wednesday, March 1, 2006, 9:42 AM

If you are going to have more than about 25 concurrent users (50 is a definite drop off point) then I can't recommend doing a production site on MacOSX. There is a problem with server performance really suffering with increased number of users. There is a good Ars Technica article regarding this issue. It seems to specifically impact both apache and mysql performance. So depending on size I would be cautious, if you are going to have a decent number of users, I would suggest getting the linux end worked out before you go into production and have unhappy users.

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Joe Gruce - Tuesday, April 11, 2006, 1:24 AM

First of all, thank you to all for the expertise about this question. It has helped me make the same decision. Since as a classroom teacher interested in Moodle, I am being "encouraged" by the Network Administrator in my school district to try to get it to run on a Windows 2003 Server. It's going to be a long, slow, road to get it available outside the "walls" of the school network. Hopefully I'll be well versed in Moodle and maybe Linux by then.

I have run many Linux desktops for daily work, the last round went for a year, before a big crash forced me back to the "dark side" OS. Any experience with Linux Servers going down for no apparent reason? That is the other reason I am trying to make Moodle work on a Windows 2003 server. Thoughts?

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Jonathan Moore - Tuesday, April 11, 2006, 9:34 PM

Normally the "random" failures I have seen on Linux are hardware related. Occasionally I have had a failure do to not keeping my updates current and then a cracker breaking into the system. I would say generally that Linux has been more stable for me than Windows, although I do remember having to reload Linux a lot when I first got started because I would do something that I didn't know how to fix and would be left with the option of an unusable system or reloading. Of course there are a lot of community options out there now for help, that I didn't have access to back in the day. Whether hearing more about your failure I couldn't say with any certainty what the cause was.

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Benoit Brosseau - Wednesday, April 12, 2006, 12:43 AM

Linux (or somme flavor of BSD) is THE way to go no question about that but if you cant get support its a poor choise. See if you have a local lug that would administrer a school server as a comunity project or if you have sommeone on staff that could help. if you dont have support go for windows 2003 BUT DONT use sommething like easyphp or somme other base installer. Thoses are created for devellopers thats want a local install on their laptop or worksation and have about 0% security build in.

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Re: Windows 2003 or linux

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Wednesday, May 10, 2006, 2:43 AM

> Linux (or somme flavor of BSD) is THE way to go no question about that ...

Check this: http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=311&tag=nl.e550 This blog contains two pretty images to explain "Why Windows is less secure than Linux".

One can agree or disagree on that, for me the images are the best illustration of a comparison of Linux+Apace vs. Windows+IIS.

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Hardware and performance

Windows 2003 or linux