Best OS for OScommerce

[ExtraTX]

Hi Folks,

 

I am about to make a change from Candypress to OScommerce. This will involve changing from a hosted server to an in-house server. We have an order ever 15-20 minutes and pretty high traffic. We have about 5000 products, but will be taking on more product lines and will change to about 20,000 products in the next year. Hopefully that we double our traffic as well.

 

What have people found as the best operating system for hosting a busy OScommerce site? This installation will be synchronized with quickbooks as well as UPS worldship and Endicia for USPS.

 

I am literate in all things computer, but have been out of the game for a while. Some recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

 

I am looking forward to this installation and development, and hope to contribute to the community.

 

Thanks

 

Jon

[dmnalven]

Debian GNU/Linux is my choice, however, any flavor of UNIX/Linux has the capabilities that you require (often out-of-the-box) and many are easy to setup and maintain.

[Guest]

UNIX is the most bullet proof operating system ever developed for large and small operations. MAC is free BSD (a free version of UNIX) underneath its GUI. I don't know much about the Windows Server, but I've never been that happy with Windows. Lynix is essentially a version of UNIX developed for a PC platform.

 

Your real consideration should be what kind of hardware platform your operating system will be running on. Your Platform needs to be sufficient to run the operating system along with all of the server software needed to support osCommerce, in addition to being able to handle your expected traffic and planned traffic growth. (I'm assuming you'll be running the Apache HTTP server and MySQL database server, as well as an email server). Once you've decided on the platform, the operating system will probably be dictated to you.

 

What did your hosting company use as a server? Since they were probably hosting more than just you, going with the same platform/operating system is probably your best move.

 

Hi Folks,

 

I am about to make a change from Candypress to OScommerce. This will involve changing from a hosted server to an in-house server. We have an order ever 15-20 minutes and pretty high traffic. We have about 5000 products, but will be taking on more product lines and will change to about 20,000 products in the next year. Hopefully that we double our traffic as well.

 

What have people found as the best operating system for hosting a busy OScommerce site? This installation will be synchronized with quickbooks as well as UPS worldship and Endicia for USPS.

 

I am literate in all things computer, but have been out of the game for a while. Some recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

 

I am looking forward to this installation and development, and hope to contribute to the community.

 

Thanks

 

Jon

[dmnalven]

I don't usually get pedantic, but the post above needs its misinformation corrected.

 

Versions of MAC OSX previous to the current were based on Darwin, an open source, UNIX-like fork of FreeBSD. Alas, this is no longer since Apple decided to port their operating system to the x86 platform, and make it available to dual boot with M$'s operating systems.

 

You will not likely encounter any of the licensed UNIX operating systems in your search for a hosting service, though they are prevalent as corporate servers.

 

GNU/Linux is probably the most widely supported community operating system in the world (this is informational and not intentional flamebait for you *BSD users). It has been called a UNIX clone because it operates and is structured with great similarity to the great Unices of the past, though it is written completely from scratch. Versions of it run some 5 of the top ten supercomputers in the world. Way beyond pc only use.

 

Contrary to the previous post, your hardware platform is nearly immaterial in your choice of a modern hosting service and unless you are looking to purchase a colo or dedicated service, will be offered only a few pre-configured choices. osCommerce is not some big, multi-1000's of users app. You are not going to stress any UNIX or UNIX-like low end server, unless you approach 1000's of sales per day.

[ExtraTX]

Thanks for the info guys. The hardware is plenty adequate, I just didn't want to install one Linux then hear there was another that worked better, etc.

 

I am going with OScommerce to get away from Windows...

 

Cheers

[ExtraTX]

Just saw that Ubuntu server edition does a full install of Apache, MySQL, PHP, and of course the OS automatically, called a LAMP install. I think I will go with this to save time and possible frustration.

 

Cheers

[dmnalven]

An excellent choice.

[Guest]

IIS7 now fully supports php (which microsoft never did before) so it is much more robust now.

[dmnalven]

What is the correlation between application compatibility and "robustness"?

 

If history is any indication of Microsoft application compatibility, I would wait for the first major update or "Service Pack" before implementing any new ability on a MS production server.

[Guest]

i have fully tested with server 2008 and have no problem whatsoever.

[Electronjunkie]

I am currently using a CentOS dist called SME Server v 7.3. Its a fully intergrated server and ready to roll out of the box. http://wiki.contribs.org/Main_Page .

 

It's a 500 meg download and takes about 30 minutes to install. After install it is ready to go.

 

You need install phpmyadmin for your sql database unless your familiar with command line.

 

All services are ready to go after a few minutes of point and clk web interface configuration. Is easily intergrated into your windows network (samba is already setup). Can act as your web server, dns server, ftp server, mail server, mysql server and a few others i dont remember right off the top of my head. All this is set up and ready to use right out of the box.

 

SSL Certificate intergration is fairly easy.

 

Im still working on mod_rewrite, but as i understand it, mod_rewrite can be kinda difficult on any server.

 

They have an excellent support forums.

 

Give it a try. Its worked great for me for many years.