I am thinking of getting a dedicated server from plantz.net with webmin control panel. I want to know how difficult is it going to be comapre to a raq control panel.
http://www.webmin.com/webmin/screens.html

Webmin has a ton more features for managing your server but is not even as close to as easy as the cobalt control panel. But webmin will be a ton faster, id suggest getting a server with webmin and just spend some time reading and learning

Webmin is ugly. :D

I got my first dedicated server a couple of months ago and had absolutly no knowledge of unix. I used telnet a little when my sites where hosted by other webhosts, but thats it.

The first thing I did is install webmin. Installation was easy enough and well documented. Webmin really helped me. It also made it possible for me to learn the back-end and now, 6 months later, I do not use webmin much, except for the file manager and mySQL admin.

I had the chance to look at the raq control panel.. It's okay, but it's not made for the same kind of use as webmin. Webmin allows you to administer easily your unix box. The raq panel allows you to setup hosting clients without knowing what's going on at all.

If you intend to offer website hosting services, the raq control panel may help you get going very easily, but if I were one of your customer, I'd do not feel confident knowing that the server admin does not know a thing about server administration.


Just my 2 cents..


Cedric

Webmin, is an excellent option if you don't want to spend extra money monthly for licence fees for control panels.

Another thing to point out about webmin, when I used to be a novice, I had given out a telnet account to somebody, who used it to hack my machine, changed the root pass and created many other accounts on my machine, luckily I had webmin installed which allowed me to shutdown/reboot the machine and change passwords and delete accounts quicker than the actuall user could, and I had him off my system with 20 mins, using the webmin interface.

Webmin is not ugly, you can get layout for it, and additional packages, it also has an ISP feature, which you have to purchase which allows you to create reseller accounts, alowing them access to the control panel also, but with limited control.