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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

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Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#91

Post by mwcampbell »

mrsteveman1 wrote: post #59
mwcampbell wrote: post #44

I suppose it was a good PR move, but I wish Ubuntu hadn't added Docker to an official repository (albeit the universe one) yet, since Docker hasn't hit 1.0. Especially since Ubuntu is packaging it under the name "docker.io", whereas the official package is called "lxc-docker". Seems bound do generate confusion.

They can fix the name issue with a meta package, I've seen that happen a few times. Personally I'd rather they just leave a lot of this stuff to PPAs and external repos.

I'm ambivalent about distro package repos versus official packages or PPAs. On the one hand, having all the packages one needs in one place can be quite convenient. On the other hand, Debian (and by extension Ubuntu) has rather strong views about how the whole system should fit together, which it imposes on its packages. So the way a piece of software is packaged in Debian and Ubuntu can be quite different from what the upstream developers intended. I'm reminded of this blog post that a Riak developer wrote last year:

http://vagabond.github.io/rants/2013/06/21/z_packagers-dont-...

and its follow-up:

http://vagabond.github.io/rants/2013/06/21/zz_packaging-and-...

The Docker package in Ubuntu trusty (which comes from Debian testing/unstable) is certainly more Debianized than the official package provided by the Docker team. Whereas the official Docker binary is statically linked (and the build process has to go through some contortions to make this work), the Debian/Ubuntu build is dynamically linked. Consequently, the Debian/Ubuntu build has to run a separate "dockerinit" binary inside containers, whereas the official build uses a single binary on both sides. Naturally the official build is tested much more extensively, so I'd recommend using that.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#92

Post by mindcrime »

jcastro wrote: post #84
mindcrime wrote: post #79

Whose choice? Not mine... not that I have anything in particular against Ubuntu (in fact, I'm on an Ubuntu system as I write this, because it's our corporate standard desktop here), but I still prefer Red Hat based distros, whether it's RHEL, CentOS, Fedora or what-have-you? "Why?" you might ask. Well, TBH, a lot of it is just familiarity - I've been using RH based distros since the Red Hat 5.2 days, so it's what I k…

> but I need apt-cache and apt-get to do the same thing on Ubuntu. apt 1.0 in Ubuntu now contains an `apt` binary, which means this is finally fixed! See also: http://mvogt.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/apt-1-0/

Aah, well that's handy to know. It's always bugged me a bit, even though it's admittedly a minor nit.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#93

Post by mindcrime »

mwcampbell wrote: post #85
mindcrime wrote: post #79

Whose choice? Not mine... not that I have anything in particular against Ubuntu (in fact, I'm on an Ubuntu system as I write this, because it's our corporate standard desktop here), but I still prefer Red Hat based distros, whether it's RHEL, CentOS, Fedora or what-have-you? "Why?" you might ask. Well, TBH, a lot of it is just familiarity - I've been using RH based distros since the Red Hat 5.2 days, so it's what I k…

I think a big reason why Ubuntu is so popular for cloud deployments is that Canonical provides official Ubuntu images for Amazon EC2. Last time I checked, CentOS didn't. Red Hat does, but of course, you'll pay extra to run official RHEL, so that probably makes it less attractive to a lot of companies. Basically, Ubuntu is the path of least resistance on EC2. My employer used RHEL on its servers (via a managed hosting…

I think there are CentOS official AMIs now. Not sure how long that's been the case, but their wiki suggests that such "official" images do exist.

http://wiki.centos.org/Cloud/AWS

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#94

Post by krisdol »

Paul_S wrote: post #77
harel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you do not install X on a server.... I don't get your comment

Aren't those the big selling points of Ubuntu - graphics drivers and unity? Both of which as you say are irrelevant on a server, I agree.

X/Unity/Graphics Drivers are not installed on Ubuntu Server by default.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#95

Post by snark42 »

simonw wrote: post #73
Paul_S wrote: post #49

We use virtual servers and all of them run different releases of ubuntu and for the life of me I don't understand why they're not running debian. You never start an X session on a server and what admin would want to use Unity anyway so what's the point in using Ubuntu rather than stable debian?

I've tended towards Ubuntu over Debian because I've found Ubuntu historically to be more likely to run a recent version of the packages I use (Python, PIL, python-mysql etc). Might not be so true these days now that Python 2.x development has more or less finished.

This makes no sense. All ubuntu packages originate in debian, although ubuntu may get them out the door as an official release first.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#96

Post by chronid »

mhurron wrote: post #90
chronid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having (or better, limiting yourself to) a single vendor is not standardization at all, in my opinion. I'm not talking about having a single vendor in a single company at a certain point in time - that's good, doing differently is hard to manage (since usually the sysadmin team is really too small). I'm talking about having all the sysadmin jobs in my area using Linux as a synonym for Red Hat Linux.

> Having a single vendor is not standardization at all It's the only standardization that you're going to get in enterprise Linux and it's no different than targeting Windows. > I'm talking about having all the sysadmin jobs in my area using Linux as a synonym for Red Hat Linux. And the problem with that is?

I hope that's not the only standardization we will get, since I don't really like vendor lock-ins (talking about Windows...) and I think we need something better than that.

Silly me? I know. And still I don't like it.

Maybe I am still too young. :)

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#97

Post by allenap »

tsuraan wrote: post #68
allenap wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The single largest contributor by the metrics you posted . There are other types of contribution, integration and distribution for example, things that Ubuntu has traditionally focused on instead of raw upstream work. By head count, Red Hat is 10 times the size of Canonical. This means that Canonical would not be expected to show in the graphs you linked to, given the same level of activity averaged per employee. Yet…

What do you mean when you say Ubuntu is the distro of choice? Looking at openstack's install docs, they list install guides for Debian, SUSEs, Red Hats, and then Ubuntu (in that order). Is there some place on the openstack site that indicates a preference toward Ubuntu?

I may have overstated then.

From rwmj's comment that "every distro except Ubuntu has to set up an external CI server in order to get their drivers and changes in" I gathered that Ubuntu was the distro of choice for CI, so that's what I should have written: for CI. I didn't mean to say that Ubuntu is the OpenStack project's preferred choice for deployment.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#98

Post by duaneb »

kapilvt wrote: post #35
duaneb wrote: post #15

Ubuntu is far too opinionated to be a stable "cloud platform".

yeah.. we should all use a distro based on something unopinionated.. like systemd ;-) personally i'd rather benefit from solid pkg management with updates and bits available for free (as opposed to only paid subscriptions) and with wide availability of the same cloud images across cloud platforms (published by the distro themselves). sometimes opinions are good and beneficial, and become widely adopted because its ju…

Well with the rate Ubuntu changes core services I don't see how you could view this as a stable server platform in the least.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#99

Post by smtddr »

snark42 wrote: post #95
simonw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tended towards Ubuntu over Debian because I've found Ubuntu historically to be more likely to run a recent version of the packages I use (Python, PIL, python-mysql etc). Might not be so true these days now that Python 2.x development has more or less finished.

This makes no sense. All ubuntu packages originate in debian, although ubuntu may get them out the door as an official release first.

Nope.

Packages originate from the package authors; these people are not particularly tied to any linux distro. Ubuntu tends to stay close to the most recent version of packages(via apt-get update && apt-get upgrade), Debian purposely lags behind for stability reasons.

Probably one of the most notable examples of this is rtorrent(http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/) for the longest time didn't support magnet-links; at least not for people who could only do apt-get upgrade. But going to the site itself and getting the src you could compile the newest version and get magnet-link support. Ubuntu , Debian, Fedora, etc. have nothing to do with what the rtorrent developers release on their website.

Another example, GIMP somehow is _still_ not 2.8 for all linux distros package-managers(at least my Linux Mint doesn't get it as of this writing) , but clearly http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ GIMP is on 2.8. The devs behind GIMP don't care what the distros do, they just write their code and release it.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#100

Post by RivieraKid »

viraptor wrote: post #63
RivieraKid wrote: post #38

Does anyone have an experience with OpenStack? How much worse is it than AWS?

It's not worse, it's not better. It's got very different approach to many things. It also depends who deploys it and with which features/services enabled. Rackspace is different than HP cloud is different than ... In comparison to AWS: The best thing in OS for me is the very flexible network configuration where you can define exactly what your environment looks like. The worst is lack of customised authorization / ac…

Thanks (you and other commenters). I had a closer look at OpenStack and it looks way better than I've thought.
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