You're way off base there, dude. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/patent#Pronunciation makes it fairly clear. One is a US pronunciation, the other is UK. Anybody using either pronunciation is potentially equally well-informed. You're reading way too much into a situation based on your own (or others') idle supposition (or did you really question everybody that you heard saying "pay-tent" and establish clearly that they had taken the pronunciation from a misreading of the word....?)

The points you make are quite valid - it's just that they had nothing really to do with the topic at hand.

A Linux newbie wanted an introduction to LAMP serving with an easy-to-use distro that would let him set up a hobby project. He specifically stated that he didn't want to use much CLI. (My personal preference is to use CLI with everything - but I totally respect the inclinations of others not to do so - other people don't necessarily share my priorities, and why should they?)

He is also unlikely to be running a mission-critical service with critical security requirements: following the generally accepted set of guidelines will provide a reasonable level of security.

I'd love if you could give examples of how easily he could be compromised by trojans on his newly-minted LAMP server. I suspect you are talking about marginal cases - which again takes us out of the area of relevance.

Re the insecurity of HTTPS ... If he is concerned about possible man-in-the-middle attacks on his hobby LAMP server (though I think we're heading into paranoia-level security here) then he can generate his own certificates/have them signed/etc. Yes, the browser provides more holes .... Does this mean that you would like to lock down his new LAMP server so that no browsers can talk to it?
Or does he have to communicate exclusively to his server via SSH tunnels?

By the way, do you ever buy anything online? As in, do you occasionally use HTTPS connections to supply credit card details?
Or do you live in a concrete basement, with a tin-foil hat, and do your shopping by mailing out cheques?
HTTPS works in the real world and will serve this man's purpose fine for running a webmin console.

Re OpenBSD - while I have all the time in the world for projects such as the *BSD, they have ABSOLUTELY no relevance to the poster or what he's trying to do. Again - he wants an introduction to LAMP serving on Linux, with minimal CLI to get him up and running. How helpful is it to people like him to have answers from security freaks saying, "You should really check out OpenBSD, and learn the CLI!"

That's not the kind of message that the Linux/Open-source community should be sending out to curious newcomers: "You're a long way from achieving anything, because you have to learn this huge mountain of marginally-relevant technical information to achieve your reasonable goals".

And I have put plenty of servers up on the open web and have never been compromised. So, thanks for the polite suggestion, but it's really my business how paranoid I choose to be.

znerk makes a very good point. The kernel is an important difference between Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Desktop - they use different schedulers, and the server version leaves out the "user interface" tweaks which the desktop has.

However, bearing in mind that you're a Linux newbie, and you probably want to have an easy GUI style installation, the desktop version is the way to go.
The differences in serving performance between the two kernels are unlikely to be noticeable unless the site is a high-throughput one.

But if you are concerned about performance, and you want to take on board znerks' advice, install the server kernel after installation, with a single CLI command like this:
# sudo apt-get install linux-image-server

Ok, I'll bite, since you responded to my response ....

That's good - I must have missed the first few times you popped out these gems!

If you're careful in the set up, a non-critical project could be hosted on the first spin. Besides ... trojans on a LAMP server are not a big concern, are they?

Dude. The guy asked for a "newb-friendly Linux flavor". And your considered response is to go and use OpenBSD - which is neither newb-friendly, or Linux? Really? The only reason that you would suggest that is down to your own preferences - not the poster's - and as such it appears quite irrelevant.

Again, not necessarily good advice. Webmin runs by default on HTTPS, putting the basic level of security on a par with an SSH server. No need for SSH tunnelling to the server.

So much noise in the world ....

The formatting got screwed on two of those commands ....

So here's the updated 3 minute Webmin install for Ubuntu, following Unix sys-admin best practices:

# sudo echo "deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository/ sarge contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# wget -q http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
# sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install webmin

If you want to have a general purpose full-featured Linux server distro that will be easy to set up and maintain, and be flexible enough to adapt to any purpose, choose either Ubuntu or CentOS (the Redhat clone).
They are easy to work with, and both can do everything.
(I'm guessing you're going to be physically sat at the computer while you're working on it, or working over VNC or some such, and that therefore you'll want a GUI - in this case use the usual Ubuntu desktop installer (rather than the -server edition which contains no GUI stuff).

Otherwise, if you want a quick and easy route to LAMP web serving, then the above suggestions of XAMPP, Zend, and also possibly Bitnami are the obvious choices. (They don't necessarily involve Linux though.)

Personally, I would recommend Ubuntu. It is a cinch to install and set up, great active community support, and you're not limited in what you can do.

Here's a little demo of what setting up LAMP on Ubuntu would look like. You can get where you want to be pretty quickly:

- download and install Ubuntu to the server (installation could be 10 minutes)
- open a terminal and type:
    # sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server phpbb3
(this will take probably 2-3 minutes to complete)

You are now 90% set up with your LAMP server. Current versions of Apache, Mysql, PHP, phpbb3 and all their specific dependencies are now installed AND running.
Time to configure the services!

If you want to stay away from the CLI - and set up a web-based GUI to admin the server - here are four CLI commands :-) to achieve that:
# sudo echo "deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# wget -q http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get install webmin
(probably another 2-3 minutes for all these steps to complete)

That's it. You now you have a full-powered LAMP server, configurable via a web GUI.

Total work? About 30 minutes.

Barring security concerns (firewall rules and following guidelines on apache/phpbb3 config, passwords etc), backups, and future updates (which Ubuntu will handle almost completely automatically for you), that's about all you need.

I presume that, behind the smug hilarity of your post, you understand (even to some very limited extent) what conditions are like in countries like Liberia, and thus why things like newspapers and trains are not viable options for the majority.

Or perhaps you hadn't actually heard of Liberia, and didn't in fact give a shit anyway. Perhaps you just wanted to make a comment that would fill you with a sense of self-satisfaction. Aren't you all big and clever now?

Seriously, it makes me sad that such a smug "joke" could be marked as insightful. WTF, Slashdot? Please, SuperTwatBanana, just sit in your own self-satisfied corner of the world and keep your cretinous fucking thoughts to yourself. Or maybe try travelling the world a bit and see what life is like in other places before unleashing that rapier-like wit of yours again.