All over the computer press this morning:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
Also in the Slashdot queue, please click up:
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=1290215
This is a geekly-interest story that draws attention to what we do behind the scenes, not just having a nice popular website but how we get there. And, of course, how to do a top 10 website on approximately NO MONEY (give or take a few million, but you'll be going *way* down the Alexa ranks to find a site that does as much as we do with so little).
Many of the comments on the press stories are armchair sysadmins going "fools, why not my-fave-distro?!" - if someone could please write a note on "why Ubuntu", it would likely be useful for press purposes.
- d.
2008/10/10 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
All over the computer press this morning: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&... Also in the Slashdot queue, please click up: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=1290215
Slashdot story up:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/10/1520200
Do feel free to stop by and enlighten with factual information as appropriate :-)
- d.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=991875&cid=25329349 Brion wrote:
We liked it better It's nice that people can run the same version locally (who runs CentOS on their desktop? Playing CentOS vs RHEL just feels like a big > fat kludge and tells you there's something broken about the distro.) Unlike Debian stable, and like Fedora, it's updated fairly frequently so we get a decent rate of package updates for infrastructure... ...unlike Fedora, it's not so bleeding edge that things die all the time (SELinux breaking everything, yay!) ...and Canonical actually puts out security updates for a decent amount of time.
Maybe I am a sad person, but every time I upgrade from version N to version N+2 on ubuntu, the 50% of the stuff broke (mostly X related stuff). Seems debian upgrades are painless.
But he!.. I am not sysadmin. I even use XP on home to play games :-P. Also, seems upgrading ubuntu from version N to N+1 seems more stable.
I know a girl that work on a computer from the GRID, and also use some distro optimized for desktop useage. To me is crazy. But maybe more is to be made with a system you know and love, to with some "better" distro that you don't love and know much less. Also, seems all feedback about debian-ish stuff is ubuntu related. Sysadmins seems much dependants of Google searches (?). And google search has become some sort of "Ubuntu manual", while information about debian stuff is often below a pile of random crap (the "for humans" motto seems to work here, googling for information in google using "Debian" + "error message" always show crazy useless craps from logs and robots, never forums with sane or usable information.
Maybe I am a sad person, but every time I upgrade from version N to version N+2 on ubuntu, the 50% of the stuff broke (mostly X related stuff). Seems debian upgrades are painless.
But he!.. I am not sysadmin. I even use XP on home to play games :-P. Also, seems upgrading ubuntu from version N to N+1 seems more stable.
I have never been a fan of upgrades. Unlike home users and small shops, most large environments use installation servers, configuration management servers, shared storage, and a bunch of other things that generally make upgrades even more painful than fresh installs.
When your systems look the same, it is easy to get the new (kickstart) image ready, and install systems in batches. You have to do the same amount of work when you upgrade, if not more, since you have to update your configuration files in your configuration management repo, re-test all of your software, and ensure the upgrade was actually sucessful (on each system!).
I know a girl that work on a computer from the GRID, and also use some distro optimized for desktop useage. To me is crazy. But maybe more is to be made with a system you know and love, to with some "better" distro that you don't love and know much less. Also, seems all feedback about debian-ish stuff is ubuntu related. Sysadmins seems much dependants of Google searches (?). And google search has become some sort of "Ubuntu manual", while information about debian stuff is often below a pile of random crap (the "for humans" motto seems to work here, googling for information in google using "Debian" + "error message" always show crazy useless craps from logs and robots, never forums with sane or usable information.
I often don't have to search for any specific distro when I'm searching for stuff. Although part of sysadmin is dealing with distro specific info, it is more usually dealing with applications inside of the distro, like Apache, MySQL, NFS, etc., which are not distro specific.
My point in saying this is that most good sysadmins can switch between distros without issue; the knowledge base is essentially the same.
Back on topic though; doesn't Debian have a hideously long release cycle? One of the reasons I never used Debian for servers was because I didn't want to have to use unstable/testing for everything, and the stable stuff was always too old.
V/r,
Ryan Lane
On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 3:37 PM, Lane, Ryan Ryan.Lane@ocean.navo.navy.mil wrote: ...
I have never been a fan of upgrades. Unlike home users and small shops, most large environments use installation servers, configuration management servers, shared storage, and a bunch of other things that generally make upgrades even more painful than fresh installs.
Cool. Then ubuntu could be a good option.
[...]
Back on topic though; doesn't Debian have a hideously long release cycle? One of the reasons I never used Debian for servers was because I didn't want to have to use unstable/testing for everything, and the stable stuff was always too old.
IANSYS (I am not sysadmin) but, Is not ubuntu debian/unstable with a different hat?
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2008/10/14 Tei oscar.vives@gmail.com
IANSYS (I am not sysadmin) but, Is not ubuntu debian/unstable with a different hat?
I'd more consider it as a mix of Debian unstable and testing, together with some nice expansions which come really good in desktop usage (it's so easy at Ubuntu to get e.g. stuff like decss running, that's a PITA on debian).
Marco
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Tei wrote:
Back on topic though; doesn't Debian have a hideously long release cycle? One of the reasons I never used Debian for servers was because I didn't want to have to use unstable/testing for everything, and the stable stuff was always too old.
IANSYS (I am not sysadmin) but, Is not ubuntu debian/unstable with a different hat?
Nope.
Debian testing and unstable are continuously updated and something could break on you at any time; *releases* of Ubuntu stay fairly constant once released... and come more than once every 3 years. ;)
- -- brion
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