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Canonical Chases Deal to Ship Ubuntu Server OS
Kurtz'sKompund writes "Canonical, the company that supports Ubuntu Linux, is trying to work out a deal with hardware vendors such as Dell to make Ubuntu available pre-installed on servers. 'Canonical, despite obviously supporting such a deal, had little to do with Dell's decision. Dell said it was merited by customer demand. Likewise, the decision of whether Ubuntu Server will ship pre-installed will be determined the same way.'"
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Dell said it was merited by customer demand.
In other words, "No, Microsoft, we haven't been talking to other OS vendors. It was the customers' fault. honest. Put down that chair."
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
If it comes with an install CD with all of the necessary drivers included ... awesome!
Even with imaging WinXP, you'll need the drivers. You'll have to find the drivers. Somewhere. And build your image with them.
It's fantastic to see such purported demand for Ubuntu, but I have trouble envisioning the conversion of our servers to their distro. The article itself reports that the server product is in its early days and that there are gaps in its functionality, and the biggest gap seems to be in support. I seriously doubt that Dell is going to pick up the bill for enterprise-level 24x7 support, and the offerings from Canonical seem to be local individuals who put their name on Ubuntu's website, so there's little guarantee regarding their expertise or availability.
I just can't help but worry that Canonical is overextending themselves (even if it is in reaction to Dell asking them to do so), and that the distro will eventually cave once bad PR builds up from a few high-profile failures at the enterprise/corporation level. Those in the FOSS community might not care about bad corporate PR, but it would certainly set Linux back quite a bit adoption-wise to have its golden front-runner made to look extremely foolish.
I'm currently running Debian stable on all my servers. Why would I want to get the next with Ubuntu? Would it be just as stable?
/etc/cron*). So I wouldn't really gain any time.
The install with netinst is very fast. What takes a long time is all the configuration of the needed services, and customization (backup scripts, various checks and email alerts, etc. In short everything one adds to
Am I not seeing some advantage that a pre-installed Ubuntu would bring? Maybe compatibility with newer hardware. I had to use backports a few times, and that was a hassle. Any other advantage I'm overlooking?
Let's look at the possible scenarios that lead to "failure".
#1. Hardware dies. Only an idiot would blame this on Canonical/Ubuntu. If it's under warranty, Dell should be able to replace it.
#2. Software corruption. This would be Canonical's/Ubuntu's fault. But I've run their stuff for years without any problems. Why would there be problems now?
#3. Driver problem. Well, this is why you have these "partnerships" so the software vendor can work with the hardware vendor to solve these problems BEFORE you purchase their products.
#4. Stupid admin problem. Yeah, like there's anything Canonical or Dell can do to prevent that.
So, the only real potential problem looks like the exact thing that such a partnership would be designed to resolve. I'm not seeing the problem here.
I already mentioned this in response to another post, but yes, it's really really supported. http://canonical.com/support
The wiki article on Canonical says that it has 90+ employees. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_Ltd Mark Shuttleworth himself is rich but not remarkably so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth
Given that other Linux distros have more employees backing them, it is pretty impressive that Ubuntu has made the progress it has. Given all of the above, I am led to the conclusion that Mark Shuttleworth is indeed a very smart guy. In that light, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the servers ship and sell well.
As a user of Ubuntu Server on a 60+ machine deployment for $work, Canonical is seriously going to have to take the server distro up a notch before this could possibly work. The server distro, in stark contrast to Desktop, is a horribly hacked together mess that gives off the impression that it isn't really studied much at all. While Desktop shows the best and brightest of Linux integration, the server distro is just as barebones as the alternative distro, and manages to screw things up in terms of out of box experience.
Am I looking for a UI? No. I want a few basic things.
1: A proper, usable deployment system. debian-installer is good for the basics, but it's a pain in the behind to set up, and doesn't support scripting a RAID/mdadm install, or LVM. This "sucks". Take a look at Redhat or CentOS for a little inspiration.
2: A boot screen that doesn't look like vomited output. Why does the login prompt appear before services have finished loading? I support being able to use the machine before services have stopped. I do not need "Starting PostgreSQL" appearing as I'm entering my login credentials locally.
3: A server kernel that always installs. Why does the installer give me the generic kernel when I'm installing the server distro? Why do I have to manually install the server kernel on boot up, and then remove the generic kernel?
4: Easily add services. You get 'LAMP server' or 'DNS server' or nothing. I had to create a custom installer just to have openssh-server install by default on first load, without apache or MySQL, or other crap floating around in there as well.
It sounds whiny, I know, but we really like the debian-style package management system with the modern services Ubuntu provides. It's great for that purpose. As a real server distro, though, long way to go yet.
I hope this lights that fire under Canonical to pay some attention to Server.
- oZ
// i am here.
I recently had the displeasure of attempting to install Red Hat Enterprise Server 4 on an HP ML115. Apparantly it's supported but naturally the Red Hat you get from them doesn't have all the necessary drivers. There is a driver page on the HP website, though exactly which driver(s) you may need to make your particular hardware see the disks seems to be left up to guess work. So you try them all one by one and it still won't work.
A lot of wasted time and frustration and for the people paying me by the hour wasted money. Not to mention uncertainty over how external drivers will work with future OS updates.
They are now looking at getting machines that are pre-installed so compatibility won't be an issue going forwards.
If Ubuntu had pre-installed servers her in Aus I'd be on them lickety-split.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Sorry for asking this here, I hope I do not get modded offtopic as, it in fact is related to this story (see tags).
I have seen in some slashdot stories this !Ellobo , but I have absolutely no idea of what does it mean. Does anyone knows the reference?
Thank you in advance
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
baha, they develop in paint.net ? come on, this is just trolling, there are no open services installed by default, so the box should be reasonably safe, as long as you aren't a complete moron. But yeah, i also use debian stable for work, but for the stability, not for security.. it's not windows 98 you know. So yeah, i'd say that they are amateurs speaking out of their asses.
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
I want a live CD that has drivers for all of the hardware, and applications to test with. This way if the machine acts up, I can put the install CD in, and know immediately whether the problem is hardware or software related. Preferably the disk would have recovery applications, and the ability to connect to the manufacturer for screen sharing initiated by the user.
Of course, for installing on a hard disk, I want to make my own choices in hardware.
One frequently repeated argument is "people don't have to wait on windows, why should they on linux?"
The degree of ignorance shown about basic things is staggering.
Actually if it weren't for the massive boat anchor known as Netware pulling their numbers down Novell would be having a pretty amazing year. Their Linux business is doing very well.
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."