Ubuntu - why are people preferring it? [[unix thread]]

[Ytts]

Or, to put it in another light, I hear a lot of people saying lately that they think Ubuntu is better for servers than RedHat.

Frequently I hear RedHat referred to as "antiquated," "outdated," "legacy cruft," and it appears to be gaining a reputation for being unsuitable and inferior to Ubuntu.


Which Linux distribution I use is almost irrelevant, so long as it meets my needs, I have no real preference. With Linux, I usually use RedHat or an RH derivative merely because that's what I have been using lately and there are far more interesting things to do in the world than learn the quirks of another distro. But I am definitely interested in knowing if a given distribution has started to fall behind the times or if there's one I can extract better performance out of, or see more reliable packages produced for, etc.


So to all the technical geeks out there, is anyone up to explaining why Ubuntu is better than RedHat or why RedHat is bad?

If there's an actual reason, I'd love to hear it, but as far as I can tell they're about equal.


Perhaps  we're looking at underground propaganda? A real hidden technical edge I'm just not seeing? A hidden agenda against the colour red? Better maintained packages? Mass brainwashing?

[Rook]

It's very friendly, and built with the end-user in mind. Also, the community support is staggering. It sees more decent releases than most other distributions.

I'm not saying RH is any bad. But 'buntu's easier for many, many things.

The main reason I'd say is the community support.

-G

[Ytts]

Any specific examples?

Specifically, with the server usage in mind. I'm just not seeing much of a difference in user friendly for things you'll be doing over the command line. I can understand the desktop appeal - with a large number of people using a particular configuration for a particular set of packages, chances are someone has already run into any given problem a desktop user might have and has written a guide on how to fix it. But with specialized systems the claims don't seem to add up for me.



Community support for...? Does the Ubuntu community have a special concentration of experience with compiling and building apache, for example? Inasmuch as most distros have a special level of knowledge regarding something, my experience is they are usually really only experienced with packages produced for their system. I don't use packages for the top layer of my web stack - PHP, Apache, MySQL and etc are all compiled by hand according to a very specific set of needs on my systems, and I never run into problems with the most common packages I use, as I would imagine would be the case with any large production system that had specific needs.


Don't get me wrong, I just would really like to understand the apparent view that Ubuntu is inherently superior in some way that a lot of (mostly younger, honestly) people have. It puzzles me.

[Robert]

I run a very small Ubuntu frankenserver out of my living room. To be honest, I find the distro as a Server OS still rather primitive. It has no special packages to make maintaining it easier or that trick it out as a ultaspecial server. The reason I went with it, is mostly to keep my server running the same OS and Distro as I use as my desktop.

I honestly could not see why you'd choose it over say RH/CentOS as your server. While that may be "behind the times" package wise, its probably got a lot higher reliability when it comes to uptime/security. See the whole Debian/SSL fiasco that happened.

If I had to hazard a guess as to why it's the hip new Server OS, it may be because Ubuntu has come a long ways in the short amount of time for servers. It still has a while to go, but it's getting there I think. The other reason could simply be attached to its popularity lately, it really is the "it" distro I think when it comes to recommendations by people.

As for compiling software other then install packages, if you are gonna go that far, why use a package distro, why not use a source based one like say Gentoo which gives you a lot of room to customize packages for compilation and installation?


Side Note, people want to copy Wikimedia now that Wikipedia is being converted over to a Ubuntu based server.

[Ytts]

As for compiling software other then install packages, if you are gonna go that far, why use a package distro, why not use a source based one like say Gentoo which gives you a lot of room to customize packages for compilation and installation?

Dependencies.

perl-Net-SSLeay
gcc
openssl
flex
curl
libxml2
zlib
pam
libc-client
lynx
bison
gcc-c++   
libtool
lm_sensors
gd
system-switch-mail
gcc-c++
ncurses
libcap
libmcrypt
libjpeg
libpng
krb5
pcre
bzip2
...
and on

...and on. I've no interest in juggling a few dozen different dependencies and recompiling each one when new source is done. The reason for compiling Apache, PHP and MySQL by hand is because 1) it's highly unlikely a distro will offer a package of PHP that has everything I want but without the cruft I don't use. My ./configure line is almost half a page now for that. MySQL because running chat systems is about one of the most intensive uses you can use a database for: constant, multiple, individual queries for a rapidly changing set of content which is being updated and deleted from nearly simultaneously, Apache because PHP is pants when it comes to security and I like to make things a lot more secure before PHP even gets the nod to do anything.

There is definitely a case out there for hand compiled software, especially when you've got unique hardware that the code could really be optimized for, but if no real benefit is derived from it (why on earth would I compile any part of my toolchain for instance? I'm not really going to see any benefit to a faster gcc because I can already configure, compile and install something like MySQL in less than five minutes with the hardware I have) but it's just sane practice to offload components that aren't directly relevant, especially when there's a bogstandard package for it already, guaranteed to work without hassle.