D&D ( distros and desktops )

Tue Aug 5 03:51:55 MST 2014

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).

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is my reality.  Your mileage may vary.

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 12:30 AM, James Dugger <james.dugger at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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-- 
James McPhee
jmcphe at gmail.com
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