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Sun Puts its Weight Behind Ubuntu Linux

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stepping-stones-to-success dept.

fak3r writes "Sun today announced that they are putting their weight behind Ubuntu Linux. While Ubuntu has been many people's desktop Linux choice for a few years now, with its Debian heritage, you can see what kind of server it could be. Slap that on the new Sun 1Us with the new Niagra T1's CPU, the one that'll have four, six or eight cores each, and go to town."

10 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So why wouldn't you just use Debian if you want a server linux distro? What will Ubuntu provide over Debian for a server?

  2. Must be new math or a time warp by El+Cubano · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While Ubuntu has been many people's desktop Linux choice for a few years now,

    I find it interesting that a distro only first released slightly over 18 months ago [1] [2], could be "many people's desktop Linux choice for a few years now" (emphasis added).

  3. Nothing builds character... by GillBates0 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ...like lugging some of Sun's monstrosities around on one's back. I have only the Sunblade 100's and their heavy-duty CRT monitors to thank for, for my markedly improved resilience and my super-sturdy balls.

    This is a good thing for Ubuntu and Open source.

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  4. Re:Server? by Poppler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ubuntu on a server? So what? Ubuntu ...is nothing special as a server.

    Well, there is a lot of buzz around Ubuntu, and Sun is trying to capitalize on it.
    That aside, there's nothing wrong with running Ubuntu on a server. Do a "server" install to avoid all the bloat, and you have a stable Debian system with up to date software.

    --
    What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
  5. Weight? by fm6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All I see is a lot of vague statements about how cool Ubuntu is and how Schwarz would like to do stuff with it. That's a long way from "putting weight behind Ubuntu". The headline of TFA is more accurate: Sun is flirting with Ubuntu. Or more accurately, their new CEO is — and I'm not convinced he'll be around long enough to push through that kind of strategy.

  6. direct support and control by asv108 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Can anyone tell me why a person would want to use Ubuntu on a server, as opposed to just using Debian?

    As a big proponent of debian, the biggest problem corporate/companies have with debian support options is that is not coming directly from the distributor of the software. So maybe thats one reason for choosing Ubuntu is that they offer support directly.

    Its also probably a lot easier for Sun to deal with a company when wanting changes/partnerships, rather than dealing with a fully community based effort. You can't just go to 1-2 guys in Debian and say do this and get it in by next week or else!

  7. Re:would Sun put all their weight behind apt-get? by Knuckles · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Debian package repositories ;)

    --
    "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
  8. Re:Server? by Trelane · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The Ubuntu releases aren't particular stable; if you look at the process, you'll see that there's nothing like the level of testing that goes on in Debian.
    Nor does Ubuntu have Debian's high latency. It's a tradeoff, really.

    That said, I agree that stability on the server is much more important than being on the cutting edge of technology, for most server uses. Besides, if you install Ubuntu to get a Debian system, well, why not just install Debian? :)

    I guess it depends on the usage where the maximum cost/benefit point lies. If you want a rock-solid mail/webserver, Debian Stable is great. If you want to stream 3gp to your phone, Ubuntu is probably the best bet (with Flumotion and packages). Or if you want to use the latest version of PHP or whatever.

    --

    --
    Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
  9. Why Ubuntu ? by this+great+guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use Ubuntu as well as Debian, both on desktops and servers. Here is a couple of advantages Ubuntu has over Debian on servers:

    • Server install. I have to point it out because many people don't know it but installing Ubuntu doesn't necessarily mean installing a full-fledged desktop OS. You can actually select the "server" option during installation and it will only install server-related packages with no X11/X.org packages whatsoever.
    • Fixed release schedule. Ubuntu releases a new version of its install CDs every 6 months while Debian is more irregular and does it less often. It makes it easier for example when you need to install Ubuntu on recent hardware, the kernel is generally more up-to-date and Debian may not detect all of your hardware. Of course it is always possible to find workarounds for Debian (loading an optional kernel module, netbooting a more recent kernel, etc), but it involves more work.
    • Packages freshness. Ubuntu tends to have more recent packages than Debian. For example I recently had to install 2 servers, one Ubuntu and one Debian, that had to boot off a software md RAID setup. It worked off-the-shelf with Ubuntu because it uses a more recent initrd package (mkinitramfs, IIRC) while the latest AMD64 Debian release uses an older initrd package (initrd-tools) that was unable to correctly detect and assemble the RAID arrays when booting up, I had to manually fix that to make it work.
    • Homogeneity. When you already run Ubuntu on your desktop machines, running the same OS on your servers (without the desktop packages of course) simplifies everything: your local package mirroring server only has to mirror packages for 1 OS, maintaining and supporting only 1 OS requires less work than 2 OSes, etc.
    • Developers. It seems Ubuntu developers are extremely active and, simply said, bright people. I have already fixed a couple of bugs in various Ubuntu scripts/packages over the past year or so and Ubuntu developers have always been very quick to respond and apply the patches. I also tend to keep an eye on what they are doing and it is obvious that Ubuntu developers make a lot of efforts to correctly engineer every little detail in their distribution.

    As a Unix guru/developer I also regularly use a couple of other Linux and BSD distros (FreeBSD, Gentoo, OpenBSD, etc) because I like to experiment a lot and like to live on the bleeding edge of technology, but all in all I have realized that Ubuntu plainly rocks and there is a lot of reasons why it is becomming so popular. I think every IT engineer easily understands the advantages of Ubuntu. And somehow it totally makes sense that Sun, "a company built for engineers, by engineers" [1], is interested in Ubuntu :-) I am a technological perfectionist and Mark Shuttleworth (the man behind Ubuntu) seems to have created a distro the way I would have done it. It is well engineered and It Just Works (TM).


    [1] http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan
  10. Re:With friends like these... by Builder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I sooooo wish Linux had that naming scheme.

    When you're automatically rebuilding a Linux box, and you only want to re-install the OS and not blow away the data on the SAN, this would be a godsend.

    At the moment, we install Linux on /dev/sda which is a mirrored disk presented by the RAID controller. No worries if you have no SAN connection. But when your san disks are presented as /dev/sdx as well, and there is no guarantee that sda is the internal hard disk, having a controller / target naming scheme makes a lot more sense.