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