Anatomy of a Successful Enterprise Linux Distro?

phenix asks: "With the new release of Novell Linux Desktop, and the upcoming release of Sun JDS3, I am curious to hear how these two suites, and their underlying enterprise infrastructures (JES and OES) compare. Specifically, I am interested in their ease of management/deployment in these areas: directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation. All of these, of course, without the use of Windows products like Exchange and Windows technologies like Active Directory. Is there a better alternative?"

Comments

How about YOU test it & get back to us?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.novell.com/products/openenterpriseserve r/beta.html
Open Enterprise Server is now shipping. An evaluation version will be available from the product web site on March 15, 2005. You may choose to download the public beta at this time or return when the evaluation is available.

The Java Enterprise system is available for download in its entirety as a CD Image (ISO) or Compressed Archive

Re:How about YOU test it & get back to us?

[goldspider]

At risk of wandering offtopic, the parent post is a microcosm of why people don't try OSS. A user asks for help/opinion, and it gets thrown back at him/her. Almost as un-helpful as "RTFM".

Re:How about YOU test it & get back to us?

[kneecarrot]

Current users of OSS are constantly bemoaning the lack of wide adoption but also have their personal identity and self-esteem heavily reliant on the elitism associated with the communities surrounding OSS. The natural urge is to bar membership to this community to perpetuate the elitism, greatly harming new user adoption.

Re:How about YOU test it & get back to us?

[jedidiah]

Free Software is not about being whiny and helpless.

Even Apple is not about that despite the fact that they've been the vangaurd of user friendly computing since foundation.

Re:How about YOU test it & get back to us?

[ender-]

Or maybe the poor guy is aware that sometimes issues crop up during a full deployment that don't show up in a test environment, and just wants to see what issues or concerns others have come across in their deployments.
Or perhaps he just wants to supplement his testing with other opinions of the products which might bring to light issues that he hadn't thought of.

I'm a pretty pessimistic guy but it amazes even me the amount of negative feedback that is generated whenever someone asks a question.

Maybe he is just being lazy and not wanting to try it on his own but you don't know that. It's pretty rude to slam him on the basis of something you don't know anything about.

Not to mention the fact that by posting it in a public forum, he's bringing an important topic into public discussion which could produce a productive idea or two on the topic. Sure I know it's a slim chance, this is Slashdot after all :). But it could happen.

ender-

Re:How about YOU test it & get back to us?

[4of12]

The natural urge is to bar membership to this community to perpetuate the elitism, greatly harming new user adoption.

Sometimes. But untrue at least two-fold.

First, much of the FOSS community is genuinely interested in helping people to use FOSS, regardless of their abilities. The majority, in all likelihood. It's only a small fraction of FOSS users with some intelligence and more than a few personal insecurities that belittle the attempts of others to learn FOSS software.

Second, there's always the cachet associated with doing what's new and what's cool and what's not common. There are some who will actively seek to learn FOSS for the same reasons that they have the latest PDA gadget. The community grows in size somewhat because of these new members who usually delight in "explaining the mysteries of the universe" to co-workers, friends, the girl cashiering at the grocery store, etc.

The biggest problem is that enterprise wide deployments are the last frontier for Linux (and even that is rapidly being colonized). In the old days people complained about lack of desktop environments, lack of hardware support, lack of embedded processor support, etc. a whole lot of features which have faded in importance.

That's why the last battle will be the one for a distributed global authentication and authorization system, something which takes a while for the FOSS to come up with the standards and the implementation of an agreeable system. The established players (MS, Sun, etc) will just distribute their solution as part of their distribution.

Just like

[Anonymous Coward]

The anatomy of the unicorn. They're both mythical creatures.

Re:Just like

[Draknor]

Then surely SOMEONE on /. would have seen it by now!

Obligatory bash quote

[Mad Merlin]

man
<Saty> active directory is to system resources
<Saty> what joseph stalin was to human rights

linky

-1 Troll

[Ars-Fartsica]

This is just a veiled "which distro is best" post (most of what poster asks is at application level, not distro level), this entire discussion will be a flamefest.

Blame

[peterprior]

Having someone (a company / corporation) to blame / call when it goes wrong

Steps to a better Enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Get rid of Berman and Braga

Ohhhh, were on about Linux in the enterprise.

what about multimedia?

[bogaboga]

I see you (the submitter) have not mentioned multimedia! And ohh, the topic "successful Linux desktop" is subjective.

The question to ask/consider would be...Successful as defined by who? To me, SuSE is successful but after heavy modification of KDE as discussed here at slashdot many times, and installing MPlayer to handle all my multimedia needs. I also use streamtuner because I have not been able to fine any other KDE based directory browser, that will let you record a stream too.

Unfortunately, I have never had any success with amaroK and Kmail. Amarok keeps crashing, and its equalizer sucks, the analyzer is always behind...while Kmail cannot connect to my ISP, even after letting it detect what the ISP supports. It would be interesting to know that Evolution is just fine.

-1 Offtopic

[daveschroeder]

A successful enterprise Linux distribution?

Mac OS X + X11 + Apple Developer Tools (Xcode) + Fink

In all seriousness, we have found that a desktop or laptop with Mac OS X, with X11, all of the compilers and development tools, and a ports/package manager like Fink or DarwinPorts, which still allows running normal productivity software like Microsoft Office, mainstream media players, Adobe products, etc., has been the most productive platform of all.

Be the borg

[LINM]

The problem with Sun and Novell is that they are both approach the problem: how to be Microsoft. As such they are trying to be all things to all people (their own OS, own directory services, own productivity, etc.). I support the effort, but there are two many years and too much functionality of built up Microsfot competitive status to comprehensively replace in one package.

A more feasible / successful approach the "assimilation" that is being led by Xandros. Let the user keep his productivity suite (Crossover), keep his Active Directory (Xandros authenticates against it), keep their NTFS, etc. Above all, get the home and corporate user on the right OS (Debian in Xandros' case) and migrate the other functionality in a best of breed fashion in the future (when it is easier).

In some of the cases, Xandros did build out functionality that Linux normally lacks: e.g. remote application installation. In this case though, they also built Windows hooks so the same manager can control both Linux and Windows boxes: clever.

Re:Be the borg

[mchawi]

To be fair - Novell had all of those things before Microsoft did. They are just porting most of it from Netware to Linux.

I use both AD and eDirectory, and have used both SMS and ZENWorks. If I can do the same things with either one, it means I can choose what I want based on the company rather than on what I am missing from the OS.

The approach you say with Xandros is a very good approach - and I agree that it will hit a definite market that Novell and Sun do not hit. I do think though that trying to have an enterprise wide solution from start to finish from one company with one management interface (sort of) is a real giant step for Linux. They've always had all these tools, but it has never been marketed as a cohesive unit until now. Sometimes the difference is in the perception.

Re:Be the borg

[LnxAddct]

Err... Red Hat has had this for something like over 5 or 6 years. Need to install something on 60,000 desktops? No problem, just click go. Need it customized per user, per their profile or groups that they belong to, also not a problem. This and many other reasons are why enterprises almost always go with Red Hat, especially after you take in to consideration the support and licensing costs of other distros, i.e. Novell (The same level of support will typically cost you just as much, but in some cases can be up to 5 times as great).For those who think I'm trolling, please see Novell's pricelist for the SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 costs per year.
Regards,
Steve

Best Distro for Enterprise: Roll Your Own.

[torpor]

There is absolutely no reason for a company wanting to use Linux, to not have its administrators roll their own distro, with their own builds of whatever apps they need.

"Enterprise" means "not being too lazy to do it properly, so that it works" in my book, so before you MSCDE weenies get all GUI, let me just insult you all right now: if you aren't rolling your own, you're a mouse monkey at best..

Re:Best Distro for Enterprise: Roll Your Own.

[jedidiah]

I can think of one big reason not to do this: Oracle.

Some enterprise applications have very rigorous support and compatibility matrices. Unless your idea of running Unix servers is just playing around with apache, you will likely have some serious support considerations.

In this case, RH and Suse enterprise are the only options if you happen to be in the US or Europe.

Re:Best Distro for Enterprise: Roll Your Own.

[torpor]

"a decent admin" would do it once, properly, in a couple of days, get things online in a week, and from that point on be doing proper clones of the OS partition, when and where needed. a proper enterprise would have a plan to accomodate this. it does not take 6 months to get a working linux system online, it takes working hardware and a competent build engineer. good enterprise has those, whether its a hat worn by one or many ..

and i believe it is true that i need to 'get a life'. alas, my life has been spent in far too many computer operating environments, computer rooms, vaults, cellars, etc.

Then they go for a beer, because everything works.


'a decent admin' goes for a beer, because everything works, and also because he knows precisely how everything works.

distro-fed linux newbies seem to think 'redhat'==business, but in fact, good business does roll its own.

Re:Best Distro for Enterprise: Roll Your Own.

[johnjaydk]

So very true.

The other extremely important factor is the "Warm and fuzzy feeling(tm)" in your manager. It boils down to covering his ass. Having a really big name behind your distro really helps. Novell/Suse have a winning hand here. We all know that in the real world vendors won't cover jack-shit but it's all part of the big lie. Various bogus partner programs can also help here but not as much.

The more insecure your maneger is the more important these factors are.

But having your key applications certified on your distro of choice is essential unless you've got source for them and can roll them yourself.

You might want to include RHEL 4 in the comparison

[crush]

It comes with Samba 3.0 for SMB/CIFS, Active Directory authentication and a Microsoft Exchange connector.

Citrix and Acrobat Reader, OpenOffice2.0 etc

Hmm.. what else... NUMA support for multi CPU (also a lot of multicore enhancements)...LVM2 for easy disk addition, removal....

RHEL4

Re:Better alternative than active directory?

[Tony Hoyle]

Unfortunately maybe not... I always use Linux server side, but have a Win2003 VMWare session running active directory. Why? It just works. It's all integrated... you add a user, set their password and kerberos and ldap work across the entire network. I don't have to *know* that it's ldap and kerberos under the hood...nor should I have to.

Sad to say there's nothing close to that for Linux yet (until we get a native version of NDS).

Farting around with ldif files and obscure samba configurations just doesn't come close.

Red Hat?

[phenix]

You're all just mad because i didn't mention Red Hat.

Seriously though, the question really has nothing to do with the distribution, I'm concerned primarily with the infrastructure provided by Novell and Sun to support and implement the distribution.

I'd love to test these myself (and will), but nothing is more informative than real-world users who have done a real-world implementation; I'd be very surprised to hear that there are no /... readers who have tested these yet; meanwhile, please comment on these companies past performance with their products (JES, SuSE Enterprise, Red Carpet).

I'm not looking for Windows clones, or Windows compatibles, and am rather disturbed that both Novell and Sun seem to be touting their "Exchange connectors" as one of their key features.

Anything better then PAM?

[0racle]

For authenticating against an LDAP directory or kerberos key store, is there anything other then PAM for Linux to handle it?

Re:Better alternative than active directory?

[jedidiah]

That level of network integration is all fine and good until you start to contemplate their network security. They are the lowest of the low when it comes to this.

Of what use is an easy to use network if that network is down or is being hijacked to host warez?

Novell has done this long before AD existed

[Havokmon]

directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation.

What an odd question. NDS has existed almost 10 years, providing centralized appliation serving via NDS integrated applications. Look at Pegasus Mail (I assume this is what you mean). Install the app on the server, and the programs INI files are stored in the user's home directories. Users can move from PC to PC without migrating anything that's PC-specific (such as the registry). Hell, if there's any reason to get MS Source code, it would be to get the source to Outlook and rip out the registry crap.

Zenworks takes care of the rest of the desktop 'distribution', like installing and upgrading pc-centric software.

I would guess you didn't know Novell's Border manager could be thought of as IPChains based on NDS login.

It sounds like you really don't know much of what is out there, and you need to read some whitepapers at Novell.com. Or goto some tradeshows. Get exposed.

Re: not mad, but you did miss an important one

[ubiquitin]

Ubuntu.

This is the first linux distro that I've recommended to my mom, and to my brother-in-law, who has used Windows exlusively. My mother's experience was that the web browser worked without any configuration when she booted up, and my brother-in-law was happy that his wireless connection on his laptop also "just worked." Sun and Novell could learn a lot from some of the open source integration efforts, but they have the advertising budget, so we can guess who will get al of the press.

Interface and Control Issues

[Zombie Ryushu]

I think that Linux Distributors need to help get distrobutions configurations optimized.

In Linux, often, the needs of the Enterprise have to translate into the needs of the Home User. I know you likely think that the Home User doesn't need OpenLDAP, when in reality, with the amount of information they have to manage using computers, they absolutely need OpenLDAP, MySQL, Samba, and other things.

Alot of Linux "Bugs" are fixable out of the box configuration issues. I have a friend of 8 years who much to my emotional devistation, is moving from Linux to Windows XP. The major issue he had? There was always something wrong in how something was configured.

The permissions not being set right on the CD Burner, Gaim not being absle to direct connect from behind a NAT, even a well configured Shorerwall NAT.

Linux can be configure such that it does "Just Work(tm)." The issue is the distributors, even Mandrake do a hard time gauging what the real needs of the Enterprise and Home Users are.

This isn't a "Linux Software is inferiror" issue its a "Why did you set the CD Burner to 600 when it should be 660" issue. These configuration issues cause Linux to fail. Giving people the impression Linux Software "Doesn't work" Like my friend.

Linux Distributors Underestimate the needs of Home Users and Distributors of this day and age with half-hearted configurations and sometimes downn right "Wrong" information. They substitute Universal comprehensive Linux Applications like Linuxconf for Proprietary ones like thee Mandrake Control Center.

The Distributors need to start creating more dynamic and sophisticated DEFAULT CONFIGURATIONS to meet the growing dynamic needs of today's home and Enterprise Users. /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow Just don't cut it anymmore.

You forgot xandros!

[matt-larose]

Ok, so I work for them... BUT you should definitely look at Xandros Business edition as a desktop, and xDMS as a deployment solution.

Not really important

[ebuck]

Most of these features you wish to compare are not part of a Linux operating system. Most are applications that are installed on top of a Linux operating system.

So, among the Linux distributions, all of these features are roughly eqivalent, providing that you are using the same software to meet the need for the particular feature.

Now in comparison between Linux and something else, Solaris, Windows, whatever... the ability to compare becomes much more difficult; because, you are comparing different products. In some platforms (Windows for example) the product can be part of the operating system, while in others it may require the purchace of "3rd party" software. In a few cases (Oracle, et. al.) you get lucky, you are really comparing the same product on two different platforms.

When comparing different products, you are usually comparing different solutions, and such comparisons often break down to personal preference, familiarity, and comfort factor.

As far as the base Linux operating system, a company can't go far wrong with either RedHat or SuSE. I'd pick RedHat personally, but Novell's backing of SuSE is not to be discounted. Both products support many of the solutions businesses will need, but neither will perfectly act as a Microsoft server clone.

Lack of a feature is not a defficency, when the feature itself creates more problems than it solves.

Re:Not really important

[ajs]

"Most of these features you wish to compare are not part of a Linux operating system. Most are applications that are installed on top of a Linux operating system.

So, among the Linux distributions, all of these features are roughly eqivalent, providing that you are using the same software to meet the need for the particular feature."

VERY untrue! You will find that, for example, LDAP support (and the ability to talk to AD if needed) varries widely from distribution to distribution, even though they all have roughly the same tools for talking to LDAP. The key questions are: how easy is it to set up; how well are applications, tools and libraries configured to integrate any given feature you need; are conflicting services installed by default (and/or REQUIRED);etc.

You might not think this way because you worry about <1000 end-user machines, but let me tell you, when you need to install 5,000 end-user desktops, you're not thinking, "eh, it's ok... I'll just install anything and configure to taste," you're looking for something that gets you as close to the finish-line as possible so that you can worry about the truly hard problems. Sure, you're just going to dupe hard-drives, but that doesn't get you the perfect economies of scale you might have expected. You're going to worry about things like, "oh look, this LDAP server falls over when 1000 clients ask it a question at once," and other scaling issues. You don't want to have to start at ground-zero, "why doesn't LDAP work with applications X and Y and works half the time with Z."

The above is just an example, but I think it illustrates the point.

Dual smooth

[spectrokid]

This is my wish for a linux distro. I work in a Windows only company where linux is slowly creeping in (embedded, specialised application servers, a small beowulf). I have ZERO chance of getting admin rights on the network or influencing the IT dept. towards Linux. What I need is a distro which not only coexists with windows, but automatically sucks its settings, copies email settings, home drive and printers. Automatically install the correct autentication module so people can log on with their active directory password. Read the windows drive letters and mount them. Note I write this from a linux box. I am trying, but it could be easier.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes. It's called Windows."

AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH.....

And one other neat thing about RH

[crush]

is that they're busy working away (especially Thomas Fitzsimons) on GNU Classpath to make sure that with that and gcj there's a full Free/Libre java environment

Filesystems

[Micah]

You would think that a serious enterprise Linux distro would support filesystems beyond ext3.

Ext3 is good and stable and all, and is fine for pretty much any general purpose use. But Reiserfs and XFS both have advantages in certain areas. Reiserfs for tons of small files (like mail spools) and XFS for monster files. Either of those could have uses in the enterprise.

So I'm a little disappointed that RHEL4 only supports ext3, and even removed Reiser from the distribution entirely. We were going to use Reiser for our new RHEL based mail server, but now it will have to be ext3.

Re: not mad, but you did miss an important one

[caino59]

I'll second that vote for Ubuntu.

It just works. I was a big fan (still am) of SuSE... but Ubuntu is even easier...and runs very very smoothly even on a 650 mhz duron machine with an old ati video card.

In fact, I would say it's desktop ready.

Wrong Again, n00b

[soloport]

No, "RTFM" is by far the most cross-platform application ever developed.

So, before you ask for help from one of us, please RTFM and check the bug listings, first.

:-D

The same issues that have been for years.

[gelfling]

Make Printing or CUPS work. Period. Don't make me fuck with it. Just make it work. And have more drivers than 10 yer old HP laserjets.

Have an installation proc that CLEARLY tells you what it requires of your disk partition and CLEARLY tells you what it's going to ignore.

Get mouse support in X to work better. Seriously, anyone who who builds a distro where the installation fails because of a fucking minor mouse configuration glitch in X should be shot.

We don't need 4 or 5 6 windows managers. We need X term, K, and a lighterweight one like fluxbox or ICEWM but not both and absolutely either put all of the same apps in all the menus or strip them all down to minimum.

Create the ability to change screen res on the fly w/o forcing a shutdown/restart of X and PLEASE indicate that settings you have already stored will not work if in fact they will not work.

Application installation apps need to have clearer discriptive lines of WHAT they do. Calling something "Monkeysoutmyass+glb.flx.x86windget.v.11.110.9.1.1 .23bmourning_becomes_electra" does not help me in the fucking least.

Put applets that manage devices in ONE PLACE. ONE. not two not three. ONE.

You need:

one office suite
one IM client for AOL/Yahoo. etc.
one IRC
one image management app
one burner
one real/quicktime/etcetera
one file manager

You need to make the appearance of the filesystem in the file manager MORE simple not LESS simple. if that means making a linear type arrangement like windows then so be it.

Make applications uninstallers obvious.

Re:The same issues that have been for years.

[grahamsz]

In the enterprise the goals are entirely different.

Installation doesn't need to be graphical, it should be as automated as humanly possible. In the proper environment you can install solaris using nothing but the network and bios.

Applications should be updated remotely (or launch from a netmount), users shouldn't be installing/uninstalling or you'll create a support nightmare.

Enterprise linux seems a whole lot closer than desktop linux, and they aren't the same.

Re:The same issues that have been for years.

[waferhead]

All good points.

You just fairly well described Mandrake 10.1...

I just hope they stop adding acpi=ht in the default lilo setup, as that rather kills off USB on several Athlon based boards.

Unfortunately (for political reasons) you must add contrib and PLF packager sources, easiest by googling for "easy urpmi"

Re:I'm with the others

[Taladar]

While that might be true or not I don't believe most of those that used Linux as anything similar to a primary OS switched (back) to Windows. If anything they moved to other alternative OS.

stick with the borg

[spyrochaete]

I just participated in a test pitting Win2k3 vs Red Hat ES3 vs SuSE Enterprise 9. The test was for useability and functionality.

Windows came out on top by a mile. These 2 distros are nowhere near a mature state. The included (gui) tools are atrocious, incomplete, and often break the service so bad that it's easier to reinstall than to repair. Yes, functionality can be established from the command-line, but if you could do that you wouldn't be buying a packaged enterprise distro.

Directory services are a nightmare to configure in linux, and these 2 distros are certainly no exception. Neither distro comes with a gui tool or scripted install procedure, and the testers and I couldn't figure out how to get kerberos and LDAP to work together. Novell's tech support was useless - they said they support installing the service (from RPMs) but not configuring them. The manuals in both distros were totally useless.

The lack of centralized management tools in linux was the biggest downfall. The sysadmin has a LOT of work to do writing scripts and delegating authority to subordinate admins. What the distros really need is a management console like AD/MMC to administrate objects, groups, security policies, profiles, permissions, etc etc etc.

Stay away from enterprise linux products for now. Roll your own. There's no substitute for know-how.

It only takes three commands

[imtheguru]

it only takes three commands to install Gentoo

cfdisk /dev/hda && mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ && chroot /mnt/gentoo/ && env-update && . /etc/profile && emerge sync && cd /usr/portage && scripts/bootsrap.sh && emerge system && emerge vim && vi /etc/fstab && emerge gentoo-dev-sources && cd /usr/src/linux && make menuconfig && make install modules_install && emerge gnome mozilla-firefox openoffice && emerge grub && cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf && vi /boot/grub/grub.conf && grub && init 6

that's the first one

Source Bash.org

No one ever adds OS X to the comparison

[sjmikeh]

Apple seems to have it all figured out as far as enterprise unix is concerned. I wish a linux vendor looked at what makes OSX work visually and (without blatenly copying) at least implement whats going on. A single well thought out control panel to configure the computer and user environment. Menus using universal sets of words to describe thing instead of the thrown together menus currently used. Stuff that just works. And for godsakes get rid of 90 percent of the stuff the average home user does not need. There is way to much stuff in all the linux distros. Install a base User OS. Don't give them a million options. Don't let them choose to install all the developer stuff. The average person sees the ability to add more stuff and thinks its there I must need it. Give them a good base install. and make them do something else to get more stuff.
The desktop needs
One web browser, one office suite, one email program. Thats it. The computer should detect and print to most USB printers, not require the user to setup or turn on cups....

Again look at apple. What makes there products strong. Its there ability to get rid of all the crap and deliver what most people need. As long as every linux distro tries to make hackers and geeks happy there distros will never serve users.

Re:No one ever adds OS X to the comparison

[Frumious Wombat]

Look at Apple *AFTER* 10.4.

I'm running it for a cluster. LDAP was easy to set up, Kerberos a nightmare (the "you haven't connected to a domain" after you really have was a nice touch), and NFS is pretty doggy compared with AFP, while AFP makes SSH users go through gyrations to get their home directories.

Now, for what I do with it (crunch numbers and provide an office worth of desktop connectivity), it's a good system. If I were running a small web-farm, or moderate sized office, then, yes, i'd recommend it in a minute. It was leaps and bounds ahead of setting up 2003Server for the same purposes. However, in any kind of large enterprise, it needs some time to mature, or you're going to spend as much time becoming proficient in the OS-X/Next way of doing things as you would becoming a RHCE/HP-UX/AIX-jock.
Quite seriously, the question should be, do you want Linux for particular support reasons (pricing, software available, Linux-jocks in good supply, cheap hardware), or should you be looking at a more mature Unix, with more aggressive vendor-support? I know people who work at Enterprise-level sites, and they swear by HP-UX/Solaris/AIX.

BUZZWORD ALERT

[evil_one666]

For the love of god, please stop using meaningless phrases that include 'enterprise'

'Enterprise infrastructure' has no meaning. Yes, it has possible meaning; No, it is not well defined enough to use in this context.

This language is invented by salesmen to sell expensive stuff to pointy haired bosses. We should not use this language here.