<div dir="ltr">As a specific example of something that I'm sure is fixed by now, when I attempted to implement a simple openldap server, the user was created with the default security in place, which left the user shell unusable for the rest of the install script, and it promptly bugged out. This was a very easy workaround, and I had a series of fixes jammed into the build script, like using /bin/bash for init scripts, etc (yes, I know, but that's the downside of running vendor hardware stuff).<div>
<br></div><div>Anyways, yeah. So take that pain, the fix having to be fixed every few months, and the tendency to build another set of (conflicting) libraries to work with 3rd party stuff that essentially was made for RHEL, I just gave up. That was 12.04. Maybe it's been fixed? Who knows.<div>
<br></div><div>I will say this... Getting custom vm's cobbled together and rebuilt was incredibly simple with their python vm tools, but I've already learned the RHEL build systems and gone through the work of getting it all working and fitted into a reasonable toolset. The simple inertia of continuing to work with a RHEL system vs rejiggering (technical term) all of my custom stuff to work with a distro that, let's be honest, does little more than host the various bits of middleware, db, and whatnot that is not part of said distro, why would I bother to switch without some serious reason?</div>
</div><div><br></div><div>It's not pretty, and I'm sure there are plenty of technically sound reasons to make a different choice, but when it comes down to business sense, NOT taking the time to switch makes more sense than doing so if your current system works just fine.</div>
<div><br></div><div>There have been attempts at various points in various companies I've worked with to change off of RHEL, and that has led to a few systems of debian, a couple true ubuntu, maybe a suse or two, and hundreds of RHEL. So we convert the others by reason of ease of maintenance and swallow our pride of what's RIGHT vs what's efficient.</div>
<div><br></div><div>That's servers, mind you. They all run apache and a jvm and the dbas are always wanting to use their own db packages, so the main deciding technical factor is can they run, say, dell openmanage. I've had to forgo quite a few nice pieces of software, like openvpn, because of weird and completely nonsensical conflicts.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Enough about that. I will not recommend anyone run Cent or any of the RHEL variants as desktops because they run so far behind that little things like Chrome will gladly move on to better and incompatible libraries necessitating some hacks, or waiting it out, or doing a desktop upgrade right in the middle of a project sprint. I run ubuntu on my desktop because it's good enough that I can hack it to do what I need, and the folk that concentrate elsewhere (networking, dbas, developers) can easily run it and then when they have problems we're running the same toolset and I can help them out.</div>
<div><br></div><div>This is my reality. Your mileage may vary.</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 12:30 AM, James Dugger <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:james.dugger@gmail.com" target="_blank">james.dugger@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148)">
I have a question for the group regarding server distributions. For sometime in forums, in blogs, comments, emails, and even at work I constantly here sys admins/ engineers say that they would never use Ubuntu's server edition, especially in "mission critical" situations. When asked why, the only thing that I here is "Its buggy, its unstable". When pressed I cannot get any specific, logical reasons backing their claim. Which leads me to believe that the primary reason is not based on personal experience with Ubuntu's server edition, but a predisposition to bias based on what they already know. Which to me is not a valid reason at all.<br>
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148)">If there is a reason even if that reason is that it is "buggy" is there anyone who can explain "what" specifically is buggy or unstable about it. I ask this not as troll bait or out of a desire to start a flame war. This is a legitimate question asked of those who have experience with both Ubuntu servers and RHEL based servers. I have used CentOS and Ubuntu server editions to build web servers, NAS, Samba, file servers. I have used both to manage RAID 1, 5, & 10 arrays using mdadm. I have used Debian, and Ubuntu to run Proxmox and manage vm's.<br>
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148)">I have heard the argument that Unity is not complete or less feature rich than other DE's. This to me is not an answer as most of the servers I run are headless and accessed through ssh, sftp, http(s), and drush, curl, etc.. So what is it, kernel features?, They way the kernel is patched?, Is it the way Apache, MySQL, or PHP is implemented.<br>
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148)">Maybe I am wrong but isn't Amazon's "amazon Linux" EC2 instance based on Ubuntu server? Vagrant's official default base box is a Precise 32 server install. OpenStack's most implemented distro is Ubuntu Server. So why would these entities spend millions of dollars in DevOps utilizing Ubuntu server if is just buggy and unstable and not useable in mission critical projects.<br>
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148)">I develop web applications on Vagrant instances using CentOS 6.5 web servers only because we are running RHEL in production and it is a best practice to develop in an environment as close to the production environment as possible. <br>
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148)">So what are specific legitimate reasons for not using Ubuntu Server in mission critical roles that can be substantiated.<br>
</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 1:15 AM, der.hans <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:PLUGd@lufthans.com" target="_blank">PLUGd@lufthans.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div class="h5">Am 26. Jul, 2014 schwätzte Paul Mooring so:<br>
<br>
moin moin Paul,<div><br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I'm curious as to what prompted the migration to Ubuntu. I've historically<br>
used gentoo and CentOS for servers and Fedora on my desktop, but I've moved<br>
towards Ubuntu across the board purely because of industry adoptance.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
debian is my preferred distribution. It was the first distro I found to<br>
have solid package and dependency management. That was many, many years<br>
ago :). I like how the debian community works, so it has stayed my<br>
preferred distro all these years.<br>
<br>
Many years ago I created my own debian fork. The technical design of my<br>
fork intentionally made it easy to stay based on debian snapshots and<br>
difficult to completely break away. Ubuntu had that same dependency,<br>
though in a different way. Ubuntu was also often ahead of debian on some<br>
features. I started running a mixed environment with both debian and<br>
Ubuntu in place :).<br>
<br>
Recently some Ubuntu moves have frustrated me, so I have been moving some<br>
systems back to straight debian.<div><br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
What's strange to me is although Ubuntu is a fine distro (especially for<br>
desktop Linux users), the last 2 Ubuntu shops I've worked at haven't had a<br>
single sys-admin who would choose it as their top choice yet it's still<br>
been the primary distro we all use.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
At the last place we were all debian sysadmins running CentOS. The company<br>
had settled on CentOS before any of us joined the company. There was no<br>
business justification to move off a perfectly adequate distro, so we<br>
stayed with CentOS and complained about yum :). I know complaints go the<br>
other way around as well.<br>
<br>
For business the LTS model is a good setup. That and backports provide a<br>
solid, reliable base with an option for latest, greatest if we need it. We<br>
can get similar features with other distros, but Ubuntu's is easiest to<br>
explain to management.<br>
<br>
As I mentioned elsewhere, I've run lots of distros over the years. I used<br>
to switch every couple of months just to try out new distros. I also ran a<br>
dual-boot laptop with two different distros and a shared home directory.<br>
I would alternate updates, so I always had a fall back in case an update<br>
hosed something.<br>
<br>
For work, especially teaching, I've used several distributions as well.<br>
The main thing for work is that servers should not require GUI packages.<br>
I've created architectures that require multiple distributions or even BSD<br>
in addition to GNU/Linux in order to have a heterogenous environment to<br>
limit exposure to certain classes of bugs.<div><br>
<br>
ciao,<br>
<br>
der.hans<br>
-- <br>
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