Ubuntu Receives IBM DB2 Certification

Khakionion writes "Ubuntu has announced their recent certification for IBM's DB2 Universal Database for Linux. Quite a big step for Ubuntu towards becoming one of the heavyweights of the Linux world." From the announcement: "With an respected product like DB2 on Ubuntu, our partners will relish the chance to discuss database and solution choices with their clients."

Comments

Ubuntu

[BrookHarty]

Isn't Debian 3 already certified? So ubuntu which is based on Debian shouldnt be hard.

I recently started playing with Ubuntu after seeing it climb to #1 on distrowatch.com, and I must say, very nice. Made me switch from Mandriva, and I wont touch Gentoo again after this. SuSE seems a little more polished, but debian has more packages.

Also think I'll dump gentoo, really liking having all the packages I need and not compiling. Going to try sparc debian tomorrow at work, kinda interested to see how the install goes.

Unfaithful

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll be back with Gentoo, you'l be back...

How important?

[JanneM]

How important are these kinds of certifications really? I assume they are really just a fancy way of saying "we support our software on this platform and are prepared to sell support and consulting services for our system running on it". If $LARGE_CORP decides to run, say, db2 on a system that isn't certified, wouldn't IBM be happy to take their money for support and such anyway - probably with an added surcharge due to the lack of certification, but on the other hand with a rebate for being $LARGE_CORP rather than $SMALL_FRY?

Re:How important?

[sydb]

You need to learn to think like a manager. Not all the time, of course, just for the sake of role play.

Re:How important?

[worf_mo]

Any large corporation is more likely to select an already certified system. For technical reasons as well as political ones (CYA).

Re:How important?

[turbidostato]

"How important are these kinds of certifications really?"

It is not important, but essential when working on corporate environments.

"I assume they are really just a fancy way of saying "we support our software on this platform and are prepared to sell support and consulting services for our system running on it"

No: it is more saying we WON'T sell support and consulting UNLESS we previously said so (via a certification).

While it should be less of an issue when talking about open software (others will do what you don't want to), it is a must when talking about privative software, like it it the current case.

And it is currently a "clever" path for a "corporate distribution" to follow. An example: I work for a consultancy firm and we usually go with Red Hat when a client needs/wants say Oracle support. I would prefer using Debian, but the client mandates (and rightly so) a certified platform when it wants to deploy Oracle. But then, it means that our bosses prefer to go with CentOS when certification/support is not an issue in order to take advantage of our Red Hat "know-how". In the end it means that our company is much more savvy with Red Hat-like distributions, so in the end Red Hat gains kind of a "lock in" on us.

Maybe Ubuntu going this path will mean that in the future we will be able to go with the Ubuntu/Debian tandem instead of Red Hat/CentOS.

I agree, this is a DUH move.

[ChrisMroz]

How many of us have family that dont play games but are computer illiterate? So many distros have managed to meet the criteria for a so-called perfect OS alternative. Ubuntu is it... or if you dont think its it, it will be. Near perfect project management and one of the best foundations to build on, Ubuntu isn't going anywhere. Good job IBM, here's a cookie. While I'm not staying away from gentoo or my flavor of slack(SLAMD64! w00t,) I will be putting more fear in the eyes of my WinONLY friends just because I know finally I can provide them with an alternative that can relate to them. While Novell and RedHat has done a great job, I think Ubuntu will be the open source monster that most of us have been waiting for. Who woulda thunk it! With a name like Ubuntu!

Re:I agree, this is a DUH move.

[turbidostato]

"Ubuntu isn't going anywhere"

That's still to be seen.

Ubuntu had an easy start since they had a ton of money and an almost finished product (that date's Debian Sarge, which was almost frozen). Now Ubuntu is going away from Debian Stable (since they more or less follow Testing/Unstable) and the effects of using a more beta-quality master are already noticeable: Breezy Badger (current Ubuntu) is quite unpolished (few days ago I made a "clean install" then I tried to install KDE just to see it was not possible due to broken dependencies, for instance; that would never happen with Debian: they'd either distribute a *functional* KDE or no KDE at all). For Ubuntu to stay the "up to date easy Debian-like distribution" they seem wanting to be, it will mean they will have to through more and more money and more and more human force (they will be able to take less and less directly from Debian). For companies like Red Hat or SuSE it meant being almost at bankruptcy for *years*. Since now Linux is much more known and widely deployed than in the days RH or SuSE started maybe Ubuntu has a chance to abandon red numbers faster but, well, as I said at the beginning of this, that's still to be seen: it can be a succesful "corporate distribution", or it can go the way of, say, Progeny (which already tried to take the same niche).

Re:I agree, this is a DUH move.

[spxero]

After what I've seen in Ubuntu, the only reason I still have windows is for gaming.
Out of the box it has everything that I would need. Next time grandma needs a rebuild(due to adware/spyware), I'll set her up with Kubuntu and the Redmond theme. Ubuntu has made Linux easy to use for the windows-only crowd, and I hope they keep running with it.

Compiling Anyway

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

At this point, I've been having so many dependency issues with apt and yum, that 70% of the time, I end up compiling from source anyway. So I'm in fact moving to Gentoo. I'm sure it won't be a paneaca of all my dependency ills, but the way things stand I'm practically running a custom compiled system anyway.

Re:Compiling Anyway

[John Nowak]

Debian's package management isn't good because of apt (or even aptitude): It is good because of the repository and package management process.

Re:Compiling Anyway

[moro_666]

i've been using debian for 4 years now ... i admit i like the apt as it is and the dependancy issues can usually be resolved with some effort.

but the thing that bothers me is that debian is lately lagging far behind of the actual releases. for example, when slashdot was writing that 1.0.x version of firefox is invulnerable to something and all the previous versions too, then sitting on 1.0.(x-2) doesn't really feel good, and the waiting 2 months to get the upgrade smells funny.

tried out gentoo lately too ... imho it rocks. yea people dont like building the stuff all the time, but that is the choice you have to take when it comes down to staying on the bleeding edge. sometimes you even want to choose stuff that isn't bleeding edge but is defacto standard, like x.org, but debian had enormous problems to break off from the xfree86 server (and i'm not even now sure that it has braken off from it, i use ubuntu packages right now...)

the thing that really annoys is that mplayer tends to break all the time if installed from packages, so i compile that one myself and only update it if really breaks down (not when the package manager decides that it shouldnt be here anymore). and marillat tends to change the directories from time to time :s

if debian breaks this lagging behind and gets some improvement to the dependancy problems it's probably one of the best distros out there.

commercial distros i just dislike and once i saw dpkg i never looked at rpm hell again ( and i hope never will have to look at it again :D ).

Re:Compiling Anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

"i admit i like the apt as it is and the dependancy issues can usually be resolved with some effort."

You really had bad luck! I NEVER had a dependency issue with Stable. If you are not using Stable, then you shouldn't have any question, since you were using "beta" quality software to start with.

Re:Compiling Anyway

[JabberWokky]

Just replace the final make install with checkinstall and you can install your compiled from source app as a package with all the happy modularity and ease of use that comes from a package manager. I'm not telling you not to go to Gentoo, just tossing a seldom considered option.

--
Evan

Re:Compiling Anyway

[stevey]

Definitely seconded. I wrote a tutorial on using checkinstall for Debian which explains how it works with a small example.

99% of the time I use Debian's excellent package repository, but for the remaining 1% checkinstall is the way to go, as it lets you deal with your package in the normal manner.

Re:Compiling Anyway

[Knuckles]

If you have dependency problems in Debian, you need to learn how to use you distro. Seriously. Let me recycle this comment. Or look into the docs. (4th link on google for 'debian "security fix" version' btw.).

Nice, but irrelevant...

[samj]

because distributions and vendors should be targeting the Linux Standards Base. IMO announcements like this are a step back for standards and remind me of the days we were hearing similar statements from RedHat.

Re:Nice, but irrelevant...

[turbidostato]

"because distributions and vendors should be targeting the Linux Standards Base"

Why they should?
1/ LSB's only benefit is with respecting binary closed source software. But there're no sign that closed source vendors are going to support LSB at all: there's almost no software that officially support say LSB 1.0, and even when a company won't tell you they support Red Hat, but Red Hat ES 3.0 for instance.
2/ Last I reviewed we were on a capitalist society, thus no company should be doing nothing (not legally bound to) but trying to maximize profit. The day companies see targeting LSB is a way for maximizing profit, don't worry, they'll do.

Psh, who cares

[elasticwings]

MySQL is what everybody should be moving to anyways. We only have DB2 on a server because somebody else's crappy product only works with it.

Support for Wikis

[faqmaster]

Now all we need is to get Wiki support for DB2 on Amiga.

MOD +1 FUNNY

[metamatic]

Except I've a horrible feeling you're probably serious.

Re:Offtopic

[SilverspurG]

Over the last 6 hours I've watched that post go from 1-5-4-5-4. The silly part is that it's completely truthful and the mods still kick it.

What would you do if the ref were easily trollable? :) From the ref's perspective, you'd mod it down.

Mods are easily trolled.

Is parent trolling?

[jonasj]

You won't get any dependency problems installing KDE on Breezy. That's a plain lie.

And this:

Ubuntu had an easy start since they had a ton of money and an almost finished product (that date's Debian Sarge, which was almost frozen).

Wrong: All Ubuntu releases, including the first one, was based on Debian Unstable.

Re:Is parent trolling?

[turbidostato]

"You won't get any dependency problems installing KDE on Breezy. That's a plain lie."

Well, you can tell *others* this is a lie, but you can't tell that to me.

I *did* install Ubuntu (which installed Gnome by default using the "standard" procedure), I *did* executed `apt-get update` and `apt-get install kde` and I *did* get a broken dependencies message.

You can believe it or not; you can even test it by yourself, but you *cannot* tell me what I did and what did I saw with my own eyes.

"Wrong: All Ubuntu releases, including the first one, was based on Debian Unstable."

Yes; on a date when Testing and Unstable were basically the same due to Debian being frozen and Unstable not accepting anything too critical due to this (like Xorg or gcc 4 which were going into Experimental).

I'll repeat it: the farer Ubuntu is from current Debian Stable, the more work Ubuntu people will have to do to insure stability and integration for their releases (since they won't be able to rely so much on the "parent" distribution), and it is still to be seen if Ubuntu will have the power/interest on doing it.