Raspbian Stretch

I had cause over the past few weeks to update an RPi to Stretch.  It was an old build so I decided a new install would be best.  I use the lite version as I don't use a screen and don't need a desktop, I just use putty to establish an sssh session.  As usual the download and basic installation process was easy.  The mechanism to start ssh on the installed system worked fine but it was a nightmare trying to setup a static address on the ethernet interface as networking has been changed so that the interface is bound to the mac address and you cant just use eth0 as previously.  I left it for a few days and found a new version was released on 07SEP which removed / corrected this change so that I could setup ip.
I was now able to get the website (lighttpd) working so that RPi became useful.  The next piece was to setup mysql database; install mysql-server now causes mariadb to be used rather than mysql.  It turns out that the developer of mysql is maintaining mariadb whilst Oracle maintain mysql.  Lastly I needed to install PHP which was troublesome.  PHP has been updated to version 7 but after installing it lighttpd told me it was still using version 5.5.  I followed some non-intuitive steps provided by some kind person to fix it.
Now I have a shiny new headless RPi server which will:

• Strip out the adverts and play internet radio stations (streamripper)
• Allow me to play my albums using my own web-based front-end (javascript, jquery, php)
• Let me use any of my bluetooth devices for listening
• Run a bit torrent client for downloads
• Allow file-sharing with Windows PCs (samba)
• look at my artwork database together with commentaries I have written (mysql, php)
• Share videos locally which can be played on TVs or other devices (minidlna)

The old system ran in read-only mode with all data held on usb sticks.  The new installation hasn't got that far yet.  Also I haven't re-added my network of temperature sensing arduinos communicating using LRF24N01+ 800MHz wireless devices.