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."

Comments

Re:Conservative and don't like Debian?

[Cyberai]

I recently worked for an ISP/Consuting firm that used a lot of Debian. Every single experience I had with it was unpleasant, and I am not a Linux newbie. The installation/setup system is the most gawd-awful piece of sh*t I have ever had the misfortune of using. Upgrades are unpredictable because the lines between stable, testing, and bleeding edge versions are constantly blurred. Dependencies become a tangled mess because dselect gives no real clear indications before it just installs right over libraries other apps need. youhave to resort to using apt-get and upgrading individual pieces at a time. Case in point - we had to upgrade a Debian server at a client site (Putting Debian in as a server at a client site is a practice advised only for the most extreme of masochists). The server provided file services, DNS, PDC, print, and some web. It also was connected to a bank of modems through an internal card so laptop users could dial in. We were merely to install a RAID running on a PCI SATA card. We did approach it the smart way, by creating an identical machine in our lab and testing there. Well, 90 days later.. with a severely hacked 2.6 kernel, alpha code drivers, complete rebuild of every service, and hundreds upon hundreds of man hours.. it worked.. sort of. Install at the client site took 42 hours over a weekend with no sleep and several points that the client was literally screaming. Just to prove a point to my boss, I then took the testing system and installed Fedora Core 1 on it. In less than two hours I had every single piece working - and to be honest I was doing several other things at the same time. I understand the value of Debian and it's place in the Linux community. It is obviously the hackers distro of choice. it has many techical superiorities over other distros (great /etc setup). So I am not bashing Debian as a distro here. But I AM bashing it as a commercial tool. Debian has NO PLACE in a shop that needs to get things done.