Sun Puts its Weight Behind Ubuntu Linux

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."

Comments

would Sun put all their weight behind apt-get?

[ubiquitin]

Does this mean that Sun is endorsing the Debian package management system over RPM-based approaches? IMNSHO, it's high-time that an enterprise IT vendor saw value in dpkg.

Question

[Kadin2048]

I use Ubuntu (actually Kubuntu) on my Linux desktop machine, but I use straight Debian on my headless server.

Can anyone tell me why a person would want to use Ubuntu on a server, as opposed to just using Debian?

It seems to me that most of the advantages of Ubuntu are on the GUI side of things, and this is the way that most of the software that's different for Ubuntu than Debian is aimed towards. Most of the server-type packages you'd probably be pulling from the Debian repositories anyway, so there's not much advantage and some things might not work, because Ubuntu doesn't follow the "Debian way" in everything (there are some file locations and paths that are different, I believe). Plus Debian has always seemed a bit better documented, although I admit that's arguable.

I'm glad to see Sun put its weight behind a Debian-based distro, but I don't quite get why Ubuntu and not just Debian, especially if it's for servers. The only reason I can think is that they don't want to get too close to Debian's leadership and philosophy, and find Ubuntu more palatable from a PR and customer-relations perspective. Still, it seems like an odd choice.

Re:Question

[deque_alpha]

Can anyone tell me why a person would want to use Ubuntu on a server, as opposed to just using Debian?

I've been a big fan of Debian since I first started using Linux 10 years ago. I really respect their attitudes towards a lot of things, and yet, I hardly ever use it. There a couple factors behind this, most notably their tradtionally huge lag behind current development, and their adherence to "the Debian way" even if it is less convenient for no good technical reason. One example of this is lacking a "local" startup file by default. It is relatively trivial to add one, but there's no reason not to have a template for that in place out of the box, like every other distro I have ever worked with. For me, the Debian experience is sort of a death of 1000 cuts where there are no major deal breakers, but a lot of minor annoyances. For a lot of people, this is offset by the other things they do well, but for even more people, it is not. Ubuntu takes all the stuff that Debian does right, and then removes a lot of the painful little annoyances. That's a big part of the reason that I run Ubuntu on servers as well as desktops. MAybe a lot of this will be fixed by the new leadership that Debian has, but only time will tell. I know a lot of people don't see these as problems to be fixed, but I think those people are the typical "vocal minority" that is so common in the FOSS world. The users don't always know best, but if they are complaining, it's a good sign that a change should at least be seriously considered. Hanging onto dogma is not good just for its own sake, there have to be sound technical or (sometimes) philosophical reasons behind it.

I also run a highly heterogenous environment, and I find it easier to have everything I touch be either completely the same or totally different. Having a number of machines that behave nearly the same is harder for me because of the "close but not quite"-ness of it. Moving between a Fedora machine and an Ubuntu machine is easier than moving from a Debian and an Ubuntu. There's a clearer differentiation, which makes it easier to "change gears". It's like moving between different versions of windows, things are close enough you expect them to be the same, but different enough to be really annoying. This is probably just me though.

So, yeah, that's why. For me anyway.

Re:Question

[digidave]

Ubuntu's predictable release cycle and newer software repositories might benefit a lot of businesses. For instance, PHP 5 is not available in Debian stable, but is in Ubuntu Breezy and Dapper. Sure, you can use one of several PHP 5 packages available for Debian stable or use the version from the unstable repository, but then you're compromising a lot of what makes Debian so great... package stability and quality.

I would argue that Debian stable packages are better than Ubuntu packages, but not always once you get outside of the stable repositories. Ubuntu can stabilize newer packages faster.

*shrug*

[Rendo]

I've been using Ubuntu for about 2 months and I like it a lot. But instead of SUN backing one distro, why don't they try and work on a better solution, perhaps maybe a unified distro that can compete on on a larger range against Windows? I'm sure if they made it clear they'd support one uber distro, other companies might do the same and help the linux movement. *shrug*

sun to the destkop

[mikesd81]

Could Sun be using this to eventually get to the desktop, or at the very least, allowing companies to run a complete linux system. Solaris server, Ubuntu clients for the employees?

Ubuntu and Java, a pair of shark-jumpers

[Lord Agni]

I've used Ubuntu, installed it, ran it for a few weeks, and went back to Slackware. It's origins and aims are noble, but it's not my favorite distro. Even as a "live" CD, Pro-Mepis and Knoppix have it beat; I keep a copy of Knoppix 4.03 around just in case I have to (or have the opportunity to) use/fix a PC. Java is a better C++, but not by much; C# is better designed and you're not giving up too much in the way of SDK size, available documentation and libraries or ease of use over C++. It's not available as such for non-Windows, as Java is, but Java is still overdesigned and combines the worst of dynamically typed/interpreted languages and more rigidly typed/compiled languages. On Linux/Unix/etc, I use Python, Scheme and C, because you can't spell cilice without C.

Main problem with yum - slowness

[brunes69]

This is my problem with yum - it is god awful slow.

Want to install something? 'yum install foobar', wait 30 seconds while it connects to the repository, wait 30 more seconds while it resolves dependancies, wait 30 more seconds for it to think about installing, wait 30 more seconds and it is finally done.

With apt-get this all happens in about 10 seconds or less.

Part of the problem is that *EVERY SINGLE ACTION* causes it to hit the server and verify it's package repository. Any 'yum install' command essentially does a 'yum update' first, even if your database is only 3 minutes old. When you're installing a fair number of packages on a new system, this is very tedious. What is the point of even having 'yum update'? apt-get is much better in this regard, *always* using the local cache unless you explicitly 'apt-get update'.

Also, I don't know if it is because of the differences between .deba nd .rpm, or yum vs. apt, but the reoslution of dependancies is orders of magnitude faster with apt-get than with yum install.

Re:Main problem with yum - slowness

[massysett]

This is my problem with yum - it is god awful slow.

That's a complaint about yum, not about RPM. There are other dependency-resolving tools for RPM, including urpmi, yast and (surprise) apt. Yast and apt don't exhibit the annoying behavior of which you write.

Similarly other posts say that the advantage of apt is the Debian repositories. That's an advantage of Debian, not of apt. Ubuntu uses apt and dpkg, yet Ubuntu's package repository != Debian's package repository.

Every distribution I know of uses one program and format to keep track of installed packages and to figure out the dependencies needed (e.g. dpkg, rpm, ebuild) and another program to query repositories and automate the process of fetching needed packages (e.g. apt, urpmi, yum, emerge). A lot of grief directed at RPM has nothing to do with RPM and is instead better directed at the tools that query repositories and fetch packages. Similarly, credit for Debian's repositories belongs to Debian's maintainers, not to the wonders of apt.

Re:Main problem with yum - slowness

[Anonymous Coward]

"EVERY SINGLE ACTION* causes it to hit the server and verify it's package repository. Any 'yum install' command essentially does a 'yum update' first, even if your database is only 3 minutes old"

New yum's wont go re-sync the database with the remote server if the last sinc time was recently.

I don't buy it.

[abelikoff]

I am not sure about the motives of this move. Several explanations come to mind.

• Pure FUD. This is a plausible one. Sun has a lot to lose with Linux success. Linux has always been a competition to Solaris and this is not going to change. Leave "Let's be friends - there is place for everyone." rhethoric for glossy corporate press releases. As long as Sun cares about Solaris it will fight tooth and nail against Linux. becaus if Linux wins, Sun will be reduced to a vendor of exotic albeit powerful and very expensive hardware running a commodity OS on it. And this is not a good position to be in, now that Intel/AMD platform is becoming cheaper and more powerful every day.
• Change in strategy with Schwartz steering the company. It is unlikely, but still possible that Sun will try to get out of the OS business altogether. But as I said, it is very unlikely - someone will have to do a lot of explaining to the customers, why Linux, so much maligned by the Company, suddenly became the top choice despite all the hype around Solaris (OTOH, seeing the sheer number of people that drank Apple's Cool-Aid during both PowerPC heyday and during the recent migration to Intel platform, one learns to no be surprized by anything). And someone would have to convince customers to buy an expesive piece of hardware running Linux from Sun, not from Dell...
• Finally, and this is the most possible case, the Comany continues to do what it's been doing the best for about 6 years - running around like a chicken with head chopped off. The company is losing ground and has no strategic direction whatsoever. This might be yet another testament to the "we are clueless and will become irrelevant soon" motto.

Didn't Ian Murdock try this already?

[tomcres]

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.

I understand this, but didn't Ian Murdock (founder of Debian) already try this with Progeny? The distro went belly-up and eventually Progeny became just another Linux services and support company. I'm not even sure if they're still around TTT. How is Ubuntu more a more corporate-friendly face for Debian than Progeny was (supposed to be)?

Re:Don't forget Gentoo

[whimmel]

Did you happen to document your procedure?

This could be interesting.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

This could be interesting. They don't want to lend support to rivals like Red Hat or Ximian, so they go with a more neutral player. Ubuntu seems to have a lot of steam behind it in the community, and it's a fairly well put together system. Sun may be doing something right this time.

Re:Why Ubuntu ?

[Respect_my_Authority]

You've made a nice marketing speech for Ubuntu but you fail to give any actual reasons why Ubuntu would have an advantage over Debian on servers. Let's take a look at the moot arguments you present:

> "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."

Well, Debian has also a "server install". Just install the base system with the netinstall cd and select the type of server you want from tasksel. Verdict: Ubuntu has no advantage here.

> "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."

Every six months, you say? I'm sorry, but it doesn't look like Ubuntu is any good in keeping their promises. It is no secret that there is a two months delay for the Ubuntu Dapper release, which actually makes the release cycle from Ubuntu Breezy to Dapper eight months long. And Edgy Eft is planned four months after Dapper. But Edgy is not going to be a stable release in the same sense as Dapper (and Ubuntu devs don't recommend upgrading any production machines to Edgy), so the Edgy+1 release will come ten months after Dapper.

Six months? Eight months? Four months? Ten months? -- Ubuntu's release cycle seems to be totally unpredictable, changing all the time. Verdict: No advantage to Ubuntu here.

> "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."

Ubuntu Dapper will be supported for five years. Can you guarantee that Ubuntu Dapper can keep its "packages freshness" all the five years in the fast moving world of GNU/Linux software? Can you guarantee that Ubuntu Dapper's kernel will support all the latest hardware for five years? If you cannot guarantee this, then Ubuntu is in this respect no different from any other distro, including Debian. Verdict: No advantage whatsoever to Ubuntu here.

> "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."

You seem to forget that Ubuntu is based on Debian. When you take Xserver and the GNOME desktop tweaks away from Ubuntu, what you've got left is an unstable version of Debian with considerably less officially supported packages available. You don't have to give up on homogeneity if you run Ubuntu on the desktop and Debian on your servers -- you just get a more stable and reliable server. Verdict: Definitely no advantage to Ubuntu here.

> "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 wha

Re:Why Ubuntu ?

[this great guy]

Yes the "server install" option is, stricly speaking, not an advantage since you have this option with Debian too. I just wanted to point out this not so well-known feature...

Regarding the fixed release schedule, yes Dapper is late by 2 months, but this is in no way comparable to the past of Debian (2 years between potato and woody ! 3 years between woody and sarge !), which you seem to completely ignore. If what you say is true, then good for Debian if they start trying to do more frequent releases, starting from now (so it has yet to be proven if they succeed).

Regarding the 5-year support for Dapper, yes this is basically what Ubuntu guarantees: that the distro packages and kernel will be supported for 5 years.

Homogeneity: of course it all depends on what OS are running on your desktops and servers. For example you can decide to go for all Debian or all Ubuntu. For those that run Ubuntu on their desktops, then running Ubuntu on their servers is the way to achieve homogeneity.

Developers: Yes I know there are bright people on the Debian side too. However in my experience, I have been more impressed by the Ubuntu ones than by the Debian ones. You are welcome to share with us your opposite experience instead of just saying "The same, of course, applies also to Debian developers".