EnGarde Secure Linux

This site (Eclectica) is hosted on a server running the EnGarde Community Edition distribution of Linux. Several options were evaluated before committing to EnGarde, and nearly two years and no regrets later the choice is just as appropriate. (Update 2005-11-05: EnGarde may still be right for you, but I have switched to OpenBSD.)

The focus of this distribution is security, and suitability to the tasks of being an e-commerce platform and internet server. When an applicable common vulnerability is discovered and announced, EnGarde is always one of the first distributions with an available update; see the EnGarde advisories for a history. Installing the updates is simple and error-free, and thanks to their minimalist approach in building the distribution, there are not very many of them.

EnGarde does not ship with a compiler, which sidesteps any exploit that involves compiling code. Development tools are available, and I have installed these on a test machine. I make available things specifically compiled for use with the Community version of EnGarde at ftp://ftp.binarytool.com/pub/linux/engarde/. These include:

• Drivers for newer network cards (if you need them you already know it)
• Postfix 1.1.11 RPMs with an anti-spam patch (see notes on FTP site)
• popbsmtpd 0.5.2 RPMs

By the way, I wrote the Hard Disk Recovery HowTo on the EnGarde site; the original is here.