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We made this choice recently, choosing Ubuntu 12.04 and a few (popular but unofficial) PPAs, rather than use Ubuntu 13.04.
Is it generally considered better to go with a better supported OS (eg CentOS or an Ubuntu LTS) and use extra package sources for non-OS programs or to use a more up to date OS that's already tested with the latest programs? We made this choice recently, choosing Ubuntu 12.04 and a few (popular but unofficial) PPAs, rather than use Ubuntu 13.04.
FreeBSD has a very stable core distribution with an up-tp-date rolling release "ports" system for additional software. It's great for these purposes. It also has excellent documentation, stable native ZFS, and compatibility with Linux binaries.
Redhat puts a lot of effort into building its enterprise distro. Yeah, it's mostly out of FOSS parts, I get that, but distros are nontrivial and costly undertakings. I've always had a bit of a problem with Centos, which as I understand takes Redhat's work, removes the proprietary parts, and redistributes for free-as-in-beer - perhaps depriving Redhat of a sale or two. It's not exactly theft, but not sporting either.…
It's a pretty good thing, actually.
FreeBSD has a very stable core distribution with an up-tp-date rolling release "ports" system for additional software. It's great for these purposes. It also has excellent documentation, stable native ZFS, and compatibility with Linux binaries.
While I have a lot of respect for FreeBSD's developers, I'd be unwilling to deploy it for production on servers; this is at least partially my own inexperience with the system...but I'm simply afraid to trust a system that makes it so easy for me to shoot myself in the foot.
Even with my own very limited use, I've never had a FreeBSD system that didn't end up utterly trashed eventually (in such a state that I chose to reinstall rather than try to fix it, because I had no idea where to start on fixing it; I'm sure a more experienced FreeBSD user would have been more capable of getting the system working again). I can't imagine what would happen if I were using it heavily, without first spending months or years learning how to avoid the pitfalls I run into so readily.
I had a similar level of experience with Debian (which is to say, not much), but never had a problem keeping it running. My experience is much higher on Red Hat based distros (I've managed CentOS and RHEL servers, and before that Red Hat Linux servers, for almost two decades), so I can't really compare it to FreeBSD, but I know our customers rarely run into OS issues on RHEL or CentOS, and we have a lot of them. CentOS represents more than half of our user base.
> [W]e need reliability and predictability over a large variety of systems over many years. We need strong support by most of the world's software vendors and open source project. We need documentation, tools, and global resources for the most commonly used systems. In which of these does Debain fall short?
Compared to RHEL/CentOS the Debian release cycle is actually very short, with support for an older version ending just one year after the release of a new stable version. So in average you will only have support for about 3 years for each release, compared to at least 10 years for RHEL. That's why there has been some discussion about a possible Debian LTS release: http://lwn.net/Articles/565007/
Is it generally considered better to go with a better supported OS (eg CentOS or an Ubuntu LTS) and use extra package sources for non-OS programs or to use a more up to date OS that's already tested with the latest programs? We made this choice recently, choosing Ubuntu 12.04 and a few (popular but unofficial) PPAs, rather than use Ubuntu 13.04.
Wise choice, because non-LTS version of Ubuntu is basically piece of shit.
I see no discussion of package management in here, which is kind of a bummer. My experience with yum has been pretty crummy and I don't think it's improved over the last several years. That alone should drive someone developing software away from working on that platform. Centos & Red Hat are great if you have a single package you need to deploy to a machine and all the dependencies are already there or easy to pull…
apt-get is fine, and I wouldn't be at all unhappy with servers running Debian, but yum is my preference.
I see no discussion of package management in here, which is kind of a bummer. My experience with yum has been pretty crummy and I don't think it's improved over the last several years. That alone should drive someone developing software away from working on that platform. Centos & Red Hat are great if you have a single package you need to deploy to a machine and all the dependencies are already there or easy to pull…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wise choice, because non-LTS version of Ubuntu is basically piece of shit.
It's not that non-LTS releases are "shit"...Just that you'd be a fool to sign up for replacing your OS every 18 months on a server that will be in service for more than 3 years (which is the average lifespan of a server, and that number seems to be growing).
I manage a large AWS environment at my current gig, and all of our code is in git. With configs in puppet, code in git, I can deploy to new OS version instances in the background, do testing/QA, and then swap out the old OS environment for the new one all transparently to the user.
Now if you're talking bare metal, yes, it makes sense to go with LTS releases.
It all depends on what your equipment lifecycle is.