Frustrated with installaton - advice please

[cogitech]

Hello all,

I want to setup SMF 2 on a server and I've just wasted a bunch of time due to compatibility issues.

I installed Ubuntu 20.04 in a virtual machine and then installed apache2, mysql and php.

Of course, then I discovered that SMF 2 doesn't support php7.4, so I downgraded to 7.3.

Then I installed phpmyadmin (because I plan to import and convert a hxxp:forums.net [nonactive] db to SMF2) and quickly discovered that mysql8 authentication method does not work out of the box with phpmyadmin.

I'm ready to blow it away and re-install an older version of Ubuntu so that all this compatibility crap goes away, but I am open to any suggestions.

What is the latest, best version and distro of linux that is going to have SMF2-compatible versions of apache, mysql, and php right out of the box?

In other words, if you were about to install SMF2 from scratch, which version of which distro would you choose if you just wanted it to work without having to downgrade packages and other dicking around?

Thanks in advance.

[Arantor]

If I were doing such a thing, I'd pick Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Latest isn't always best.

I haven't yet moved my production servers to 20.04 for that reason.

[cogitech]

Thanks!

Anyone else want to contribute their opinion on this?

[Arantor]

Realistically... you might get a couple of people suggesting a CentOS build because that supports PHP going back a bit, but at the same time... most people here aren't server admins so the amount of advice you're going to get is going to be limited.

Then again, quite a few people do just tend to run with what I suggest, as I'm a former member of the SMF dev team, and I run massive PHP applications at scale for a day job (like, I run Ubuntu 18.04 professionally on mission critical sites - think university learning platforms during exam time, accepting millions of hits - and I have only very modest plans to experiment with 20.04 to see what minor performance benefits I get; I'm still on software that can't move past 7.2 yet, just like SMF)

[cogitech]

I appreciate your feedback, Arantor. I've decided to go with 18.04. I have it running on several other machines (both virtual and bare metal) and have never been disappointed so it's a no brainer.

Cheers