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Using Debian in Commercial Environments?
sydb asks: "I am currently persuading my employer to try out Linux. We are heavily dependent on IBM software technologies just now, and it's a very conservative operations organization. As a challenge, I am trying to persuade them to use my preferred distro but there are hurdles: IBM doesn't officially support Debian as a platform, though I have anecdotal evidence that most of it can be persuaded to work (with alien etc). Does Slashdot have experience shoe-horning Debian into this kind of scenario? Most importantly, how have things gone getting IBM support? My rationale for pushing Debian boils down to its vast array of packages available to apt-get, easy upgrades, apt-get itself, and the overall quality and consistency of the system."
I cannot speak about the IBM support, but I can speak about using a less main-stream Linux distro, such as Debian in a serious, commercial software development shop. What I found was that a lot of time was wasted on getting some of the more complex applications to work on it (e.g. Oracle 9i), while getting the same sw to run on something more 'standard', such as RedHat, was a bit easier. In fast-paced environments where every developer's day counts, this does matter. This experience is a bit over 1 year old, so maybe (hopefully!) things have changed since then.
Simpy
I went through this same discussion at my company, as Debian is my preferred distro as well. The thing is, beyond the distribution scheme, I really don't get to experience the true differences between the distros, as I'm usually running an unstable release anyways.
The link above also documents creating an apt RPM repository - we did this at my company, and to be honest, 99.9% of my gripes with RedHat went away completely.
I'd suggest looking into apt for RPM, it fixes a lot of the problems, and doesn't introduce those posed by a totally new distro on your production boxes.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
I would say that what you want to to do is set up a technology demo. Put a server together doing a task using debian. The reasoning being that you have expertise in debian, so it reduces cost of the tech demo if you do and support what you know.
When it comes time to decide on an actual rollout they have to make a decision to go with a distro that they know is proven in their environment, or go with what IBM pitches.
But in either case, what you're doing is making the haters defend on two fronts: the vendors pushing for one linux and you pushing for another. With the debate being "which Linux" it stops being "why Linux". It's a win-win.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Actually my employer was quite happy running Windows servers and rebooting weekly. (They were comfortable.)
Now that we have switched our servers to Linux they wished we could move more.
I've had the same conversation in my workplace, when deciding upon a distro to standerise on. It was a tossup between SuSE and Debian.
It eventually boiled down to a single point: SuSE had commercial backing from Novell. Debian is purely a community-maintained distro. If we built a server for a customer, and then that customer decided they wanted to buy support for it, the only safe answer was to use SuSE or Redhat... and frankly, none of us (including the management) liked Redhat a whole lot.
At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself a few questions:
1) Are you happy supporting %DISTRO linux?
2) Are your management types going to be happy with it?
3) Are your customers going to be content with it?
4) Is it compatible with commercial packages? (Really important... although you might be able to shoehorn say, Chilisoft onto Debian, do you really wanna do that across a couple of hundred servers, and then end being responsable for manual updates or whatever?)
We have had a government contract that required Oracle 8i for odd reasons. Debian still has available the older libc versions needed for Oracle 8i. I don't if any current versions of RHEL or SLES support 8i, but I know Debian + the older 1.1.8 JDK allowed the Oracle installer to run and work with minimal shoe-horning.
The other Debian box we built for this application was for running Tomcat with the Sun JDK pushing a web-based reporting tool. We were able to demonstrate how Debian supported removing all unrelated packages (including compilers) and lowered the security profile lower than their Solaris boxes. (They still used telnet, God help them) The demonstration worked and the server is running Debian in production on the [redacted] government network.
Don't push it. We recommend Debian because of access to the build/distribution system and the ability to craft custom loads for specific purposes (point-of-sale, thin client, rich client, etc.). Controlling the build/distribution environment is a bigger issue than many people realize. But we really support anything because after a certain point, Linux is just Linux.
Comment on DebianPlanet about how we do it
We use it in our business and support it for our customers. No problems here! Go Debian!
My God! It's full of Voids!
The reasons you cite for using Debian are contradicted by your stated approach. The reason that apt-get and dpkg are strong is the features they have vs rpm--using alien squanders any advantage you may have gained by going with .deb .
You find yourself using terms like shoe-horn, this should be an indication to you that the shoe doesn't fit.
Many of us inside IBM would like to see at least one free distribution supported. However, IBM won't support Debian unless there's customer demand. You're a customer, so demand it. Keep demanding it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It's truely free and fully open source, support is just about as good as Red Hat or Suse [again unless you're willing to paybig bucks], forward and backward releases are supported fully...no pressure to upgrade on a company's timetable, and software compatiblity is of the highest level... In a nutshell Debian IS Linux!
What's needed in the general OSS movement is to get more corperate interest in the grassroots OSS movements... Personally, I'm a Suse fan...because they have some great IBM hardware ports [like iSeries/AS400!] but realistically, distros like Gentoo and Debian are the future of software...companies like RH & Suse are attempts to strap "traditonal" lock-in software business to OSS/Linux... they are bound to fail...and leave you holding the bag. The beauty of Gentoo and Debian is that anybody can bolt anything they want on to the very stable bases...and when the base changes it's easy to work the changes into your custom software...they are DESIGNED to do just what most companies need!!!
As far as stability and compatibility, isn't it an open joke that the current version of Debian Stable is pushing 3 years old...I'd call that a pretty reliable standard base...better than ANY of the corperate Linuii.
Or...
Employee: Um, look harder please, remember we're paying you all this money for [Operating System]
[Any Vendor At All]: Ah, ok, I think we've found the problem. You're running software we don't support. Now go fix it yourself and stop bothering me.
How about this instead?
CEO: What's going on here?
Employee: I unwisely installed a new package on our production server without testing it first. I'm just in the process of removing it and going back to the old version. Everything should be back up by the end of our maintenance window.
CEO: Good. Let me know how it turns out and why this won't happen again.
Paying a lot of money for a support contract is no excuse for being careless. If your server absolutely has to be running tomorrow, then keep it running. I don't care if you use a cold spare, restore from a backup or try to fix it yourself, but I do know that if I told my boss that I couldn't be bothered to find a solution and was sitting in my butt waiting for a vendor to fix it for me instead, I would soon be out of a job. And I would have earned it.
Being a sysadmin means you always have a backup plan. Having someone to point your finger at does _not_ constitute a plan.