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Which Linux for Professional Admins?
LazloToth asks: "Short and sweet: with so many distributions of Linux to choose from, and so many of them good to excellent, which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration? If an admin wants to standardize on one Linux distribution and have the best of all worlds on everything from file-and-print servers to database boxes, what, in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes - - the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?"
It's the administrator, not the distribution that matters the most. A different administrator might like a different system. There is no absolute objective "good".
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I was about to say the same thing - although AFAIK we're missing one of the points hes looking for:
.
stability - Check
security - Check
rapid updates - Check
ease of administration - Check
high-level support options - No check
I don't consider google and usenet high level support options. Im sure someone knows of a commercial outfit that will do pay-for-play deb support - so please, chime in . .
Otherwise go debian!
Isn't this more of a religious question than a technical one?
What is best for your everything might be best than what is best for my everything.
If I my organization does a, b, and c and requires d, e, and f, then Linux Distro G is best for me. But if you do x, y, and z and need u, v, and w, then Linux Distro T is probably better for you.
There is no _one_ answer.
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Yeah really. Asking Slashdot users which Linux to use will produce more results than asking google.
At least google won't make fun of you while you ask.
C'mon Cliff. Why post this kinda thing? What good will come from this.
[your distro] sucks...use [my distro]...
Killme now.
You'll have that sometimes...
As a system administrator and IS manager in a mostly windows environment, I have found Debian to be the most reliable and easy to maintain. The APT system makes security and package upgrades (and downgrades) considerably easier than any RPM system ever was.
While APT is available on Fedora, I have always found Debian to be well-thought out and reliable, even for a Windows guy like me.
There's so many options and so many 'ways of doing things' with Linux and EVERYBODY knows they are right and everyone else is wrong or simply misguided...
Gentoo Linux users will proclaim that their distro is simply the best and the only option to go for. However, you still have a steep learning and a long setup time for building a system, which requires more then just passing knowledge of Linux, which isn't bad. It just isn't necesarily conducive to the 'standard' corporate environment. (My opinion may not match your own.)
Red Hat Linux is supported by a long standing team of Linux Engineers that has built itself around supporting the Enterprise computing environment, which makes it a good choice for such environments.
Mandrake Linux has made a name of itself for desktop use, mostly for consumer end-users, although they are working hard at making inroads to the corporate enterprise environment.
SuSe Linux/Novell is a long standing corporate computing environment corporation that should be able to provide support that equals or surpasses Red Hat. Of course, that would depend upon who you talk to.
Beyond that, there are tons of other players in the marketplace that will or won't be here in 6 months to a year.
Honestly, if I was setting up a Corporate Environment to create a standard setup across multiple servers, I would choose either Red Hat or SuSe/Novell. They are widely used distros, they both have easy to use tools, they both have certification programs, which could be used in order to certify that a support team, from the top Admin all the way down to the helpdesk jockey have a certain level of knowledge comensurate with their position as well as knowing the tools for that particular distro.
That's just my opinion anyway.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
If ease of administration, stability and security is more important that than latest versions of the latest applications and the ability to use the latest bleeding edge hardware, then the *BSD distributions (e.g. FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD) may be the answer. Granted, a fairly good understanding of UNIX will be required, but if you're fairly proficient at adminsitering one or more Linux distributions, then *BSD will be very easy to learn. Even better, the documentation is generally better written, more complete and more up to date than any Linux distribution that I've seen.
This answer may not be what you expect, but then again the question, as posted, deserves a thinking outside the box type of answer. You stated that you want the best of all worlds, and then mention file/printer server and database boxes. It sounds like you're more interested in servers than clients. *BSD is ideal in this regard.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
stability
Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.
high-level support options
None?
security
Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.
rapid updates
No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid.
apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.
emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour.
and ease of administration?
Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".
Don't get me wrong. Typing this from a Gentoo box, and I like my Gentoo. But that's a zealot/fanboy distro. Not a pro admin distro. I keep it because I like it, I can fiddle with it, learn. I can do cool stuff with it. If I was to manage a farm of 200 different of these I'd easily go crazy.
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if you're new to any operating system, WTF are you doing installing it in a production environment?
new to gentoo or debian or redhat or windows. if you don't know the OS you shouldn't be pushing it in production. if you know the product enough to be hired as an administrator in it, then you should have no problems with it in a production environment.
debian isn't any easier to learn than gentoo just because you can apt-get a package vs emerge some source to compile. both distros can install a successfully working package in one line (or bork a system in one other line)
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While I concur that Gentoo and Debian are both great distros (i've managed to get a few gentoo boxes in at work), the problem comes from the lack of enterprise support for things such as Oracle and EMC. Oracle only runs on RedHat and maybe SuSE, and EMC software is only supported on RedHat and SuSE. While I have managed to get a gentoo box connected to an EMC, it doesn't have their PowerPath software for failover, etc. That and it took me a week to get the stuff working properly. If Oracle and EMC supported gentoo, i'd set our redhat licenses ablaze. Unfortunately the only thing gentoo/debian can do is web/smtp/dns which is fine if you run mysql/postgres as your choice of database, but these days in an enterprise environment you are stuck with at least one RedHat/SuSE box.
18 months of support is not good enough. I have servers that sit around for years which need to be up to date with all current security patches. Although apt-get dist-upgrade is not difficult to do, it is not practical to do every 18 months or so.
What about security releases? Is Ubuntu as good about security as Debian? You know, there is a reason Debian takes so long to release stable. It is very well tested. Ubuntu is a little too bleeding edge for most serious server environments. In my experience, the latest greatest packages are not generally necessary on servers. I'd stick with Debian, personally.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Nice job missing the joke, Einstein. However, just to counter you with a bit of reason, and not dogma..
stability:
If you use their standard package set, meaning not keyed for your specific architecture, stability will not be bleeding edge. You'll be building programs with configurations that are well-tested, generally since the inception of portage.
high-level support options:
Yeah, you're right here. But as far as I'm concerned, if the bosses hired you, they should have confidence in your skills and your resourcefulness.
security:
Right here, too. Also - to me - any security in linux is standard, unless you're running an older (read: 2.4.x) kernel that doesn't have much new feature influx. At that point, kernel security approaches that of the BSD's, though I would argue that base system and system services security is still rather low due to lack of development cohesion.
rapid updates:
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. So wrong. For gentoo to be considered for a corporate environment, you would definitely set up a centralized build server, possibly with distcc installed on all of the workstations to mitigate the load, distribute it across the network and speed up compilation times. This build server would also act as a weekly package checkpoint. All of the servers and workstations would use this machine as their central package repository and using a little cron magic and universal, standardized config files, every machine would update on saturday or sunday, grab the new packages off the server, install them, and be done with it. There would be no office-drone typing emerge -u world, then going on an extremely long coffee break. If you were to set up a network of 200+ gentoo machines without making your own, custom stage three tarball, you ARE crazy.
and ease of administration:
See above. After you got the initial infrastructure in place, it would be a breeze. Assuming everything works out right. But hey, they hired you to admin the systems, right? That's what you're there for.
Now, personally i'm past my gentoo phase. Goin' back to the ol' faithful FreeBSD. But, just because Gentoo is a source-based power-user-centered distro doesnt mean you can't cook up your own in-house solution while taking advantage of the awesome tools gentoo provides. The only reason apt is faster than emerge is because emerge uses source by default, while apt-get uses binary packages by default. However, portage can use binary packages and apt-get can indeed install from source. In their default forms you're comparing apples to oranges.
Bottom Line: I can be done, and if you have the know-how, it can be done well.
Me: Hi, Oracle, I am having problems getting Oracle 9i to install on my Gentoo server.
Oracle: We don't support Gentoo
Me: Hi, Veritas, I am trying to set up VCS on my Gentoo cluster.
Veritas: We don't support Gentoo
Don't think Gentoo is going on any of my servers. We standardized on Suse do to the huge support structure that has been put in place with them being purchased by Novell. When you are a single admin over 112 servers you need to be sure that each one you log in to is exacly the same. Automation is key. Good vendor support is a requirement.
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