Best Panel

[photography]

I was wandering what do you think is the best OS either CentOS, Debian, Fedora Core, Suse and which is the best control panel cPanel, Interworx, DirectAdmin, Plesk. I am just wandering what your opinion is.

Thanks

[Daniel_DBS]

PERSONALLY i prefer CentOS with cPanel/WHM... i do not want ANYTHING to do with Plesk.. i highly dislike Plesk... Fedora is great and is what I use at home on one of my linux boxes but centos is still my preference for server enviroment.. as for Interworx and DirectAdmin, i have absolutely no clue as I have never used them... Suse and Debian are great but I see Suse as being a more desktop like OS and Debian I have used but not for a great while so I am not exactly sure my thoughts on it

[Spathiphyllum]

...i do not want ANYTHING to do with Plesk.. i highly dislike Plesk...

Why? What is it doing/not doing that is causing grief?

[thisisit3]

I personally don't like Plesk because it messes with the regular file and directory structure of unix systems. They move around everything in their own directories and for a few months you won't know whats where.

cPanel follows the official naming and file/directory structure so everything is placed correctly. Of course cPanel has its own problems, but i prefer it over Plesk.

[Daniel_DBS]

Why? What is it doing/not doing that is causing grief?

it is not as feature rich and easy to use as cPanel and like thisisit said, the file structure is completely different... i just do not care much for the layout either

[Spathiphyllum]

Thanks for the heads up. Yes, the file structure issue would concern me, too. I checked out their demo and, functionally, it seemed OK. Every panel has its own quirks which is, I guess, unavoidable.

The reason I asked is I'm kicking around getting a VPS again and while my needs for a control panel are pretty limited, I sure don't want to get one that has a major "flaw." File structure rearrangement seems like a deal killer.

[thisisit3]

yeah the file structure is a major problem.

i prefer cPanel because it uses standard stuff, for example a domain is a user with a /home/user directory and everything about the user is under there (except database files). The user is completely isolated, since he runs under a jail and his PHP scripts only run within his home dir (suexec and open_basedir enabled).

in Plesk, it has a /var/ structure were the domain is limited to a set of paths like "private" and stuff like that.

[Daniel_DBS]

i just got a new vps a couple of days ago and love it... im not going to turn back... when i first became a JPC customer, i signed up for a VPS with plesk and i lasted 2 days before i switched to an SDX... i absolutely hated it... i then went from an SDX to a reseller so I could have individual accounts for each of my domains... after i began to need more access to system files and custom modules installed which are not available on a reseller i decided to jump back into a VPS with CentOS and cPanel/WHM... this time the VPS is great.. i have had only one issue which was with the firewall blocking smtp but a ticket to support was able to solve that issue... i would definitely recommend the CentOS/cPanel/WHM setup... of course cPanel will not run on the lowest priced VPS, you would need a RAM upgrade but even then it is reasonably priced.

[jason]

When I first started playing with Linux 10+ years ago I was using Red Hat, and since then most of my Linux experience has been with Red Hat, so CentOS just made sense for me. I've played with a few other distros, like Slackware (remember that) and Debian/Ubuntu, but I keep coming back to Red Hat or RH clones.

As for control panels, I decided to go with Interworx. I only use my box to run a few low traffic sites and for dev work, so since I don't need anything big I opted for the Discovery plan which won't run cPanel. I could get by without a panel (I run a few other Linux boxes and virtual servers already), but decided to add one for convenience. I am very happy with Interworx--it is fast, light weight, and doesn't mess with anything on the server. Getting used to Qmail took a little effort, but it was worth it. I also managed to get PHP4 and 5 running side by side without a problem. The only complaint I have about Interworx is that it doesn't (yet) include mailing list support, but it was easy to get mailman running with a script on the Interworx forums.

One thing that I really like about Interworx is that, when you multihost domains, all of your domains go into their own directory instead of a subfolder of the main site. For example, if I have two domains hosted in the same account the paths to access these sites are /home/username/site1.com and /home/username/site2.com, not /home/username/public_html and /home/username/public_html/site2.

I've never admined any other panels, so I can't comment on any of them from that perspective, but I've always found certain cPanel features kind of kludgy (like how it doesn't allow you to list email aliases by domain or the aforementioned multihosting issue). I won't say I wouldn't consider cPanel in the future, but right now I really like Interworx.

--Jason

[Ron]

One thing that I really like about Interworx is that, when you multihost domains, all of your domains go into their own directory instead of a subfolder of the main site. For example, if I have two domains hosted in the same account the paths to access these sites are /home/username/site1.com and /home/username/site2.com, not /home/username/public_html and /home/username/public_html/site2.

I think this is a new feature for cPanel in version 11, the ability to move the subdirectories. I wonder if it is still below public_html though.

[Spathiphyllum]

Again, thanks all for the input.

It seems all of the control panels are pretty decent. I'm actually quite impressed with their breadth of utilities and coordination however achieved.

jason,

I'm leaning towards your route because my situation mimics yours the most. I'd like the CP to be lightweight and not interfere too much with the underlying OS, to not be a memory hog, and to coordinate well with the OS. Interworx seems to blend well with CentOS 5 (which has the standard and excellent third-party applications as default) and limited memory needs. Furthermore, the tools available seem pretty comprehensive.

Are you running with Apache 1.3.x, 2.0.x, or 2.2.x? Any problem getting the modules you want to integrate? And how's Perl on your system? Any problems with upgrades/updates to the binary or its modules through either YUM(?) or compiling individually?

[jason]

I'm running CentOS 4 with Apache 2.0, which is what the VPS was set up with when I got it. The only Apache module I've installed so far was suPHP to do a similar PHP as CGI setup to JPC's. For that I manually compiled both suPHP and PHP 5 and had no problems. I've also had no problems using yum, which I've used to install a few programs and several libraries that I needed to compile PHP 5.

I haven't done much perl work on the VPS at this point, but it has perl 5.8.5 and seems to be working fine.

Like I said, I'm very happy with the setup and it seems to be meeting my needs nicely at the moment.

--Jason

[Baka092]

i am a total newb and i messed with plesk for a while and wasn't a fan. Now i use the cPanel/whm thing and I am a happy camper!!

[Spathiphyllum]

I'm flying unmanaged at the moment. It starts out quite stripped, but it allows for the most versatility. Also, unmanaged isn't for the faint of heart. Don't get it if you cannot work your way around linux comfortably. You'll hate the VPS.