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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."

38 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. With friends like these... by SWroclawski · · Score: 5, Funny

    As a very happy Ubuntu user, I'm scared.

    But it could be worse, it could be "Ubuntu, supported by SGI"

    1. Re:With friends like these... by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Funny
      Oh, c'mon - it won't be that bad... you'll just have to get your files from hard drives named "/dev/rdsk/c0t0sUpercalifragilistic" and things like that.

      At least you won't have to hunt down and install j2se. /P

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:With friends like these... by tyrr · · Score: 4, Informative

      "/dev/rdsk/c0t0sUpercalifragilistic" is actually a SysV4 standard. HP or IBM would do the same.

    3. 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.

  2. would Sun put all their weight behind apt-get? by ubiquitin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
    1. Re:would Sun put all their weight behind apt-get? by chicagotypewriter · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sun has denied that their move to back Ubuntu is a move against Red Hat, or SuSE. Whether or not that is believable is another question, but thats just what they have said.

    2. 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
    3. Re:would Sun put all their weight behind apt-get? by digidave · · Score: 4, Informative

      Non-Debian users will think you're joking, but the truth is that Debian packages are several orders of magnitude better than any other distro's. Slackware may come closest. I think the difference is that Debian packages feel like they've been made by people who love Debian and love the software they're packaging for Debian. There are no bad packages in Debian stable and packages don't do anything they're not supposed to do, like break compatibility.

      Debian is the only OS I use in which I feel confident upgrading a production server without extensive testing. 100 packages might need upgrading, but I know it will work and won't break anything.

      --
      The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
  3. 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?

    1. Re:Debian by aug24 · · Score: 5, Funny

      A GUI, so that MSCEs can use it.

      Justin.

      --
      You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
    2. Re:Debian by MoogMan · · Score: 5, Informative

      What will Ubuntu provide over Debian for a server?

      Commercial Support.

  4. How far we've come... by nganju · · Score: 4, Informative


    Remember this quote from Scott Mcnealy a few years back?

    --
    There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
  5. Question by Kadin2048 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    1. Re:Question by deque_alpha · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Question by digidave · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
  6. 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).

    1. Re:Must be new math or a time warp by Ramses0 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dude, chill out- the're internet years... sheesh.

      --Robert

    2. Re:Must be new math or a time warp by muellerr1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's like, 6 years in Internet Time.

      --
      steampunk web design
  7. OSS is being quite the slut lately! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yesterday: Microsoft flirts with open source
    Today: Sun flirts with Ubuntu (yahoo article title)

  8. 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
  9. 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
  10. Hope you're not in a hurry by Analogy+Man · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you are going to town with the Niagara chip I hope your application is appropriate for it. If you need to chew up threads...great. If you have a single threaded application you will have 2X the response time of a Sunfire v440 which is hardly a FAST machine (think medium duty truck). If you are doing any floating point processing the FPU is shared across the 32 processors (8 cores / 4 threads) the application sees.

    --
    When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
  11. Re:Server? by arachnoprobe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nope, you are wrong. Ubuntu/Canonical offers 5 years of support for "Dapper Drake" as a server. Only because you don't consider it at Desktop OS (like lots of other people, including me) it is not unusable on a server.

  12. 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.

  13. sun to the destkop by mikesd81 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    --
    That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
  14. 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!

  15. 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.
  16. Main problem with yum - slowness by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Main problem with yum - slowness by massysett · · Score: 5, Interesting
      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.

      --
      Penny - plain text accounting
  17. apt-get is not a Linux distribution by WebCowboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sun is endorsing Ubuntu, a Linux-based operating system. There isn't anything indicating that they are favouring any particular software packaging system. Dpkg/apt-get might be the way Ubuntu keeps its own house in order but nothing prevents anyone from installing and maintaining RPM packages on a machine running Ubuntu.

    Merits of dpkg aside, SUN may give standards compliance a high priority in its products, and like it or not in order to comply with ISO23360 the operating system MUST support the installation and management of RPMs (it need not be the native package system of the OS, but ALL ISO23360 compliant applicaitons are distributed as RPM packages). SUN could very likely contribute its resources towards making Ubuntu comply with ISO23360. Mark Shuttleworth himself stated that this was a goal for upcoming Ubuntu releases so they would be on the same page. Therefore if the ISO23360 standard gains traction it could mean that installing RPMs on Ubuntu machines could become more common than you'd think, especially for companies like my employer--large enterprises that salivate over anything with "ISO##### Compliant" on it...and guess what SUN's customer base is?

    Oh yeah...perhaps I should explain what this ISO23360 is. Basically it is a standard that specifies a set of requirements for Linux-based OSes (file structures, included shared libraries, software packaging format, etc) to allow compliant application software to be easily deployed and executed on any compliant OS without the need to recompile and/or re-package for each OS as is the case today with Linux systems. It is more commonly known as LSB3.1 ;-)

  18. Re:Java support for Debian at last? by kbmccarty · · Score: 5, Informative

    Perhaps we'll see a repository for Java .debs at last, eh?

    You must have missed the big news: official packages of Sun Java .debs were uploaded into Debian's non-free archive yesterday.

    The announcement

    Link to the page for the "source" package (I put "source" in quotes since it actually contains tarballs of the binaries, but you can obtain real source code in the sun-java5-source binary Debian package.)

    License and FAQ about the license under which these packages are made available (note in particular that it permits sublicensing for derived distributions).

    --
    - Kevin B. McCarty
  19. As an aside... by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 3, Informative

    Linux on Sun boxes also calls their disks sda, sdb, hda, hdb, etc.
    Conversly, Solaris 10 on opteron == /dev/rdsk/cXtYdZsQ galore.

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
  20. I don't buy it. by abelikoff · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.
    1. Re:I don't buy it. by Orrin+Bloquy · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      No, I believe that violates several of Apple's patents.
      --
      "Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on /. and I must look smart."
  21. Didn't Ian Murdock try this already? by tomcres · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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)?

    1. Re:Didn't Ian Murdock try this already? by xenocide2 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Partly, it's a matter of timing. When Progeny started, it was 2000. Perhaps the height of the .com bubble. There were a lot of competitors to Debian. Redhat was still officially supporting a free desktop OS. GNOME hadn't yet recieved a critical look via a Usability study that demonstrated that half the crap in it was not only useless, but confusing. Distributing an .iso was feasible but finding software to burn them was still arcane. Crappy modem support was still a fundamental problem. A notable constants though: Debian stable was two years old, and woudn't be out for another year.

      By the time Ubuntu came out, Fedora had taken (and partly dropped) the torch, GNOME was vastly improved, KDE wasn't in danger of being placed in non-free, and a lot of Linux providers dropped out after the .com crash.

      The other half of the equation was simple: goals. Shuttleworth aims to be truly successful, not just something to feed himself and his kids (*cough* his progeny *cough*). He capitalized on the fact that Debian stable was so sorely out of date that when everyone else stated they'd not be packaging xfree 4.4, debian had just gotten 4.3 into unstable. Ubuntu's release schedule is (usually) designed to be synchronized with GNOME so that, for a brief moment, Ubuntu is one of two places to go for the latest (the second being CVS). Shuttleworth recognized that a number of people didn't have access to windows based CD burning software, or perhaps the knowhow to find some, and funded ShipIt.

      While Murdock was aiming for NOW (network of workstations), Ubuntu's initial focus was on laptop support. Even in 2000, the question was asked "why do you think your SSI will succeed in today's environment?" If the answer was "it's open source," well that answer clearly wasn't adaquate. NOW assumes a very specific kind of resources, and adds a lot of complexity to gain something that rapidly falls in price. It might be interesting, but you have to own more than a couple workstations to make it worth your time, and it doesn't really aid mysql or apache much.

      It almost seems like Canonical learned from Progeny that half of selling Debian support was going to be making people want it, instead of capitalizing on some imaginary underserved market segment looking for ways to reduce the cost of Debian deployment. As always, sales, sales, sales!

      --
      I Browse at +4 Flamebait

      Open Source Sysadmin

  22. RPM in ubuntu :: HOWTO by hummassa · · Score: 3, Informative

    Alternative 1 (dirty, two steps):

    $ sudo apt-get install rpm
    $ sudo rpm --force-all -ivh PACKAGE.rpm

    Alternative 2 (cleaner, four steps):

    $ sudo apt-get install rpm alien fakeroot
    $ fakeroot alien PACKAGE.rpm
    $ sudo dpkg -i package.deb
    $ sudo apt-get -f install # will install any dependencies

    Alternative 3 (suppose multiverse is in sources.list)

    $ sudo apt-get install package ## it is probably there :-)

    --
    It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
  23. 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