D&D ( distros and desktops )

[James Dugger]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So what are specific legitimate reasons for not using Ubuntu Server in
mission critical roles that can be substantiated.


On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 1:15 AM, der.hans <PLUGd at lufthans.com> wrote:

> Am 26. Jul, 2014 schwätzte Paul Mooring so:
>
> moin moin Paul,
>
>
>  I'm curious as to what prompted the migration to Ubuntu.  I've
>> historically
>> used gentoo and CentOS for servers and Fedora on my desktop, but I've
>> moved
>> towards Ubuntu across the board purely because of industry adoptance.
>>
>
> debian is my preferred distribution. It was the first distro I found to
> have solid package and dependency management. That was many, many years
> ago :). I like how the debian community works, so it has stayed my
> preferred distro all these years.
>
> Many years ago I created my own debian fork. The technical design of my
> fork intentionally made it easy to stay based on debian snapshots and
> difficult to completely break away. Ubuntu had that same dependency,
> though in a different way. Ubuntu was also often ahead of debian on some
> features. I started running a mixed environment with both debian and
> Ubuntu in place :).
>
> Recently some Ubuntu moves have frustrated me, so I have been moving some
> systems back to straight debian.
>
>
>  What's strange to me is although Ubuntu is a fine distro (especially for
>> desktop Linux users), the last 2 Ubuntu shops I've worked at haven't had a
>> single sys-admin who would choose it as their top choice yet it's still
>> been the primary distro we all use.
>>
>
> At the last place we were all debian sysadmins running CentOS. The company
> had settled on CentOS before any of us joined the company. There was no
> business justification to move off a perfectly adequate distro, so we
> stayed with CentOS and complained about yum :). I know complaints go the
> other way around as well.
>
> For business the LTS model is a good setup. That and backports provide a
> solid, reliable base with an option for latest, greatest if we need it. We
> can get similar features with other distros, but Ubuntu's is easiest to
> explain to management.
>
> As I mentioned elsewhere, I've run lots of distros over the years. I used
> to switch every couple of months just to try out new distros. I also ran a
> dual-boot laptop with two different distros and a shared home directory.
> I would alternate updates, so I always had a fall back in case an update
> hosed something.
>
> For work, especially teaching, I've used several distributions as well.
> The main thing for work is that servers should not require GUI packages.
> I've created architectures that require multiple distributions or even BSD
> in addition to GNU/Linux in order to have a heterogenous environment to
> limit exposure to certain classes of bugs.
>
>
> ciao,
>
> der.hans
> --
> #  http://www.LuftHans.com/        http://www.LuftHans.com/Classes/
> #  Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others.
> #    -- Fred Rogers, aka Mr. Rogers (1928-2003)
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-- 
James

*Linkedin <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-h-dugger/15/64b/74a/>*
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