How to find a "good" server distro

[James McDonald]

Collins Richey wrote:
> In my case "good" has a rather restricted meaning.
>
> 1. Solid, secure, etc.
> 2. Capable of running latest PHP, MySQL (yes I know this is despised
> by many list members) without contortions.
>
> The situation at work is this. We are running RHEL5/CentOS5, but
> developers for some of the websites have a need for PHP5.3.
Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't even have PHP5.3 yet (5.2.6) so you are probably out 
of luck with a server distro having it. Remembering server distro's are 
conservative.

If you do as Michael says and compile you can run php in cgi mode and 
point it at the correct php binary.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/suexec.html

I notice my webhost provides a choice of php4 and php5 using suexec or 
something similar