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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

#51

Post by sixbrx »

dharma1 wrote: post #25
bsilvereagle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In personal and small projects, yes. But not necessarily for large, scaled, infrastructure.

not sure which distro is dominant on scaled projects but Ubuntu gets plenty of use on large projects too - from the article: "Global enterprises including AT&T, Bharti, Bouygues Telecom, British Telecom, China Telecom, China Unicom, Cogent Communications, Comcast, Deutsche Telekom, Korea Telecom, NEC, NTT, Numergy, Orange France, Time Warner Cable, Turk Telecom, Verizon and Yandex, as well as leading web scale servic…

"Article" is one word for it, a more specific phrase would be "press release".

It's hard to tell from these lists how seriously a lot of those companies are relying on Ubuntu. Obviously some are (HP for example). But I've seen my own employers listed in press releases where us implementors were wondering "do we really still use that stuff? Oh yeah I think there may be a box or two still running that from when we were testing the waters."

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#52

Post by rohansingh »

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.

The package name really shouldn't be lxc-docker anymore. Since v0.9, the default execution is libcontainer and not LXC. In later versions, LXC is likely to be deprioritized.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#53

Post by kbenson »

bananas wrote: post #30
rlpb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're claiming "safety in numbers" by moving away from Ubuntu on the desktop? Surely you're joking? > Unity So don't use it. Ubuntu is more than just priority support items from Canonical. I'm using Xubuntu right now - it works great. > Launchpad is a total pile both from a tracking and management perspective. It's basically a baron land of neglect. As opposed to...Bugzilla? Again: surely you're joking?

Yes 100%. I want stability. In fact I need stability and there's nothing more stable than a boring corporate desktop so... CentOS 6.x's Gnome desktop despite being considerably older is an order of magnitude more stable, works flawlessly on every bit of kit I've tested it on and doesn't fall over on minor patches or kernel releases. I lost count of the number of times I've had power management and display regressions…

I think what you are seeing is the ancestry of these projects coming to the fore. Ubuntu is, to my eyes, first and foremost a desktop OS that is trying to make inroads into the server OS space (replace OS with distro if if helps helps lower your pedanti-meter). RHEL/CentOS have always been very server/workstation based (and I do consider a workstation different than a desktop).

You can see this in how they focus their work. Ubuntu, while it's contributed much to the ecosystem, has focused quite a bit of those contributions to ease of use and graphical stack items. These are important, but less so to workstations (of a particular breed) and servers. Red Hat has focused on stability and management. Need a full virtualization stack? RHEL has developed a stack they are pushing as competition for VMWare. Want directory services? It's an officially supported component with documentation (as of at least 4-5 years ago). Want a bug tracker with lots of info on exactly what's going on and what to expect? Use Bugzilla. It's overkill for most user-facing projects, but for IT staff who may be expected to file a fair number of bugs over time, after you've invested some time to learn it, it's great.

Ubuntu is a great OS/distro, but I don't think they've reached the same level in the server space as RHEL yet. Similarly, I wouldn't necessarily push RHEL/CentOS for desktops for home users or most businesses needing Linux on the desktop, unless there was a need for a much more controlled environment, and the long time between versions is not an issue.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#54

Post by jamie_ca »

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?

Support contracts. Mostly CYA, but the fact that there's some company out there that can be paid to be "responsible" for any issues and provide companies with a scapegoat is worth something.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#56

Post by shellac »

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?

ubuntu's release cycle is quite different from debian. If you want more recent versions software, but with firmer guarantees concerning support than testing or unstable, ubuntu is a good choice.

Having said that for many of our servers we use debian stable, because stability trumps latest-and-greatest.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#57

Post by Nizumzen »

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?

For me the advantage of Ubuntu over Debian is that I know that each LTS release of Ubuntu will be supported for exactly 5 years. That means that at the time of deployment I can already anticipate when I will need to upgrade / retire that specific server.

Debian doesn't quite offer the same level of guarantee for how long each release will be supported for as far as I am aware.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#58

Post by drone »

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?

When Ubuntu came out with LTS releases, that's what did Debian in, in my experience. Numerous compliance regimes require supported OS versions, and having a guarantee of long-term support for a version means you're not forced to upgrade the entire OS every year or two, and reduces the cost of using that particular OS.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: the cloud platform of choice

#59

Post by mrsteveman1 »

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.

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