It's been a while for me contributing - but had some time. Great
discussion, a few things, Ubuntu is not just for desktops it is the
leading web server instance used in website services. It over took Debian
as the leading web server a few years ago. About 8 years ago CentOS used
to be number 2 behind Debian but they were overtaken by Ubuntu. For web
servers RedHat (RHEL) has never been closer than a distant 3rd.
[image: image.png]
RedHat (after IBM bought them out) have slowly turned into the Microsoft of
Linux. Most of there products are now behind a paywall and their service
agreement that you sign to use there work allows them to pull their product
and service license from you. They are infringing on the GPL licensing
setup by Linus and the Free Software Foundation (Stallman) and the Linux
Foundation They are trying to choke out the downstream competitors to
their distro (CentOS, Alma, Rocky etc.).
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/im-done-red-hat-enterprise-linux
When I was at GoDaddy their Dell servers ran CentOS 7 and they were
probably ranked in the top 4th largest datacenter providers in the world
for webservers.
For services other then web services RHEL is still probably the leading
Linux instance that runs on bare metal in the data centers at the
enterprise level. However keep in mind the largest datacenter cloud
provider in the world AWS, runs mainly their own Linux distro based off of
Ubuntu/Debian. I have worked for large enterprise companies and clients
for the past 11 years, companies with billions in infrastructure costs and
I can say the we have implemented as many Debian, and Ubuntu based servers
as we have CentOS and RHEL boxes.
Canonical (The owners of Ubuntu) Also have a lot of dealings with
Microsoft. They were the first distro to be available on MS WSL. And as
you know Ubuntu is based on Debian's unstable branch.
Where does that leave the average users of Linux for server based
services. My opinion is squarely with Debian. Debian of all of the
distros is the oldest and has remained the most constant. There are only
really 3 MAIN foundational distributions of Linux left, Debian, Fedora, and
Arch, All popular enterprise implementations of Linux come from either
Fedora, or Debian. But Fedora is a bleeding edge distro not considered
stable for enterprise use RHEL is the downstream stable version. Only
Debian has a stable version, that is considered enterprise ready,
maintained and free for use.
3 more observations:
1. Servers need consistency - any kind of server service should be based on
a minimal, well maintained, stable OS. You want to maintain security
patches and minimal updates that don't break your implementation. You
don't want every new bell and whistle out their. That means a server
distro (Ubuntu server, or Debian bookworm). Most server instances are
implemented and maintained headless - accessed through the CLI and don't
have a desktop environments installed.
2. Containerization (Docker) is a double edged sword - It can seem easy but
there are also trade-offs that have to be taken into consideration, like
root usage, networking and non-ephemeral storage considerations. Sometimes
you aren't making things simpler, you are just trading one set of complex
issues for another. Also mostly headless.
3. Servers require admin knowledge - There is no easy fix or solution to
maintaining even a simple web server in a secure state. There will always
be issues of maintaining the PHP/Java/Node/Golang/Python language base on
the system and there will always be dependencies of the language,
framework, daemons, and configuration that are not part of the base
distro's implementation and that have to be tweaked and updated for your
needed uses case. It is part of the job.
In most cases it is a choice of learning to DYI the stuff or paying a
hosting company to take care of it for you. Thus the explosion of positions
in companies such as DevOps, Platform, and Site Reliability engineers.
On Sun, Dec 8, 2024 at 12:55 PM Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
> That's how it used to be, back when RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and
> CentOS were equal peers on the Software Development Lifecycle River.
>
> The "upstream" distro was Fedora, all the newest, most bleeding edge stuff.
>
> You could get and install CentOS and be (virtually) Bug-For-Bug compatible
> with RHEL Proper. All was right in the world, but this wasn't making a cent
> for RedHat. Why buy the cow, when I can get the milk for free?!
>
> Then RedHat "killed" CentOS by moving it "Upstream" next to Fedora. No
> Enterprise company would ever run that in production, EVER ... and that was
> the point.
>
> Most large enterprises migrated their production CentOS over to RHEL
> proper and started paying several hundred thousand a year for that
> privilege.
>
> Speaking from first hand experience, the Arizona power company APS -- we
> pay just under a MILLION dollars a year for JUST the Ansible Automation
> Platform (AAP) ... That's not counting all the actual RedHat VMs we use, or
> RedHat Satellite. We're probably into RedHat for 3-5 million, all in, every
> year.
>
> But back to David's point. Ubuntu Server does have market share, albeit
> drastically smaller, but does exist.
>
> ---
> Thanks,
> Alexander
>
> Sent from my Google Pixel 7 Pro
>
> On Thu, Dec 5, 2024, 13:37 David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss <
> plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>
>> Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but my imprssion is that Ubuntu is
>> mainly for desktop use, while CentOS is used by a vast number of commercial
>> hosting companies for their hosting machines.
>>
>> Also, CentOS is basically a pre-configured Red Hat distro, while Ubuntu
>> is GUI-oriented Debian distro.
>>
>> -David Schwartz
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Dec 5, 2024, at 11:42 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss <
>> plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > Asked AI about configuring a Vhost oh RedHat and it wants Apache to be
>> the docroot owner. It also shows some manual config for VSC...
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On 2024-12-05 11:14, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>> >> Thanks....I'm in consideration/research stage.
>> >> On 2024-12-05 10:53, Snyder, Alexander J wrote:
>> >>> Okay, seriously though, it's easy. Go setup a RedHat account. Then go
>> >>> to developer.redhat.com [1] and do that flow. I don't immediately
>> >>> remember what that requires, but it's fairly straightforward and free.
>> >>> I only have to revisit that flow once per year, and I have trouble
>> >>> remembering what I did last week.
>> >>> You can then navigate their site and download the RHEL iso and create
>> >>> a VM from it. During the setup you can register your VM, or you can do
>> >>> it later from the CLI.
>> >>> Let me know if you have any issues.
>> >>> ---
>> >>> Thanks,
>> >>> Alexander
>> >>> Sent from my Google Pixel 7 Pro
>> >>> On Thu, Dec 5, 2024, 10:43 Snyder, Alexander J
>> >>> <alexander@snyderfamily.co> wrote:
>> >>>> Yeah. Use RHEL Proper. It's the tits.
>> >>>> ---
>> >>>> Thanks,
>> >>>> Alexander
>> >>>> Sent from my Google Pixel 7 Pro
>> >>>> On Thu, Dec 5, 2024, 10:39 Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
>> >>>> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>> >>>>> Hi,
>> >>>>> As mentioned before I used to use CentOS as a development and
>> >>>>> testing
>> >>>>> web server.
>> >>>>> As I recall it was simple to configure a virtual host.
>> >>>>> 1) create the docroot off the home directory like this
>> >>>>> /home/<user-name>/public_html/
>> >>>>> 2) Create an Apache Virtual host configuration file. I recall
>> >>>>> having
>> >>>>> one "large" Apache configuration file that contained all of my
>> >>>>> virtual
>> >>>>> hosts.
>> >>>>> I'm a PHP developer not a system administrator. All these Ubuntu
>> >>>>> PHP-FPM configuration issues are causing me to re-consider Ubuntu
>> >>>>> as a
>> >>>>> server... YIKES!!
>> >>>>> I want to keep things simple so I can get onto my PHP coding
>> >>>>> projects.
>> >>>>> Any Thoughts?
>> >>>>> Thanks!!
>> >>>>> Keith
>> >>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> >>>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
>> >>>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>> >>>>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>> >>> Links:
>> >>> ------
>> >>> [1] http://developer.redhat.com
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--
James
*Linkedin <
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-h-dugger/15/64b/74a/>*
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