Any advice for a distribution I can use which will require minimal administration time and effort?

I need to set up a LAMP server, add on an infrequently used version control server, and a few CRON jobs including site monitoring and backup services, and host a few websites, including Joomla! / MySQL sites .

I really, really don't want to spend a lot more time doing administration than I currently do with a CPanel reseller host plus an old Ubuntu box sitting inside my home firewall. I don't want to spend much time twiddling resources to get decent performance.

I don't want to look through log files to try to find out if my node is being hacked; I'd like the server to tell me if something seems amiss. I do need the node to be very secure to protect my client's information.

Is a LINODE right for me? What distribution is best? Any way to get the security configuration done turnkey?

Thanks much...

Charlie

Linode is an unmanaged service so you are expected to take care of maintenance things yourself. Its just like your ubuntu box at home, except it sits out on the public internet.

if your comfortable with ubuntu thats what I'd go with. If your not familiar with the key settings in making your server perform well you might have to do some research. I know theres alot of stuff in the Linode library that will get you up and running quickly.

If you'd rather not deal with the setup and day-to-day stuff, lets have a chat.

I picked Ubuntu for the home server because it's easy, and inside my wap's firewall and I don't host any websites on that server, so I'd want something better suited for security, reliability, and performance if there is an easy to maintain package to get there.

I think I'm in the middle ; can do the performance tuning myself but I'm not really a Linux administrative hack and I'm particularly concerned about the security side - for the amount of work it would take me, the risks involved, and the fact that it isn't my area of specific expertise.

I don't think I'm unique in this area; a small development shop that hosts various types of websites and services for clients, and does a few other things atypical of what can be run on a CPanel / WHM account. I can spend perhaps 3 days getting the system configured , and then 4 hours per month more than I'd put into a comparable reseller account. In terms of my skills, it would usually be easier for me to code something myself than to learn the details of managing packages (an impossible proposition these days for a server!) , but I can follow directions reasonably well for package installations if the directions are up to date.

Advice on whether that's feasible and where to start appreciated -

Package management is actually really the only way you should be doing things. Packages get regular updates, while stuff installed from source doesn't.

Installing a package is easy (and all dependencies will get automatically pulled in), and then later you can just run "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" and every package on your system will get updated to the latest version. You can even have a cron job to install updates, although most admins like to do it themselves so that they're on-hand in case something breaks.