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Wikimedia Simplifies By Moving To Ubuntu
David Gerard writes "Wikimedia, the organization that runs Wikipedia and associated sites, has moved its server infrastructure entirely to Ubuntu 8.04 from a hodge-podge of Ubuntu, Red Hat, and various Fedora versions. 400 servers were involved and the project has been going on for 2 years. (There's also a small amount of OpenSolaris on the backend. All open source!)"
I did not know that ubuntu was a player in the server market.
In related(ly boring) news, Sun Microsystems replaced 200 old worn-out keyboards on their office workstations. Also, a handful of Microsoft employees patched their OSes, and some guy in Phoenix got a paper cut on his finger.
8.04 is a LTS release. Which is obviously the reasoning behind the version choice.
For such a large effort, it seems wild they had so many different distros running in their environment.
What do you guys think?
ACK
Cos a general purpose distribution isn't exactly ideal for providing scalability, particularly when your machines pretty much all provide the same service.
The network is the machine.
Deleted
So it's unlikely the decisions were influenced heavily from a budgetary standpoint. If they wanted to stay with a free RHEL derivative linux that's essentially identical to the one you pay for, they'd be using CentOS.
They chose Ubuntu. Maybe they just like it better? I think you can factor cost of out the equation.
With Gentoo, you have to be much more careful about what you update and when. They probably went to Ubuntu because it is based on Debian, and they can obtain support from Cannonical directly if needed.
How is this news?
Well they either should have stuck with 7.10 or waited for 8.10.
That's news...
8.04 is a long-term release. In the world of servers, that counts for something. Also, there were changes from 7.10 to 8.04 that were probably things Wikimedia wanted to take advantage of.
Bearded Dragon
I love Ubuntu, I've been playing with different distros since early 2000 and when I tried Ubuntu in 2006, I got hooked. I've been using it as my OS ever since. I've switched my parents to Ubuntu because I find it easy to administer and it makes it easy for me to help them. Plus, I can SSH into their box to solve problems remotely. Bottom line, as a desktop distribution I love Ubuntu. It may not work for everyone, but for me it's a perfect fit.
But as a server distro, I'm not so sure. I'm surprised that Wikimedia didn't go with a distribution that's more established for server needs.
It's right up there at the top of the page giving the Ubuntu version as 8.04, which is called Hardy Heron, which BTW is an LTS release (Long Term Support).
8.04 is rock-solid stable and has all the stuff in it to be a lean, mean, yet well-equipped server platform right from the base install.
I've been running Hardy Heron since May 2008 without a problem, after switcing from being a long time SuSE/OpenSuSE user.
My finger hurts too. You know those bits of skin just above and behind your nails? Part on that the left side of my left index finger has gotten torn a little and now it's like a flap. The problem is, I don't need to alter the aerodynamics of my finger because I can't fly. It's really just painful, instead of useful, like on an aeroplane.
Actually, does anyone know how that happens?
Ubuntu server edition is stripped down and customizable, as well. I assume they didn't use the desktop edition.
This may be an outdated experience, but...I ran a single server with Gentoo for a while - until updating became such a tremendous pain. Manually merging configuration changes and such is simply not a good way to spend time, and neither is reading release notes to see whether I can simply use the old config and ignore new changes. Ubuntu is nice because installing and updating apps is easy, there is a wide variety of apps available for it, and it's quick and easy to install. Gentoo distro installation was a very lengthy, manual process - has this changed?
I'd agree with others that say that CentOS may have been a better choice, but in my eyes the choice between the two comes down to preference of package management systems rather than any difference in security or performance.
I would definitely have stuck with an 8.04 LTS. I recently tried kubuntu 8.10, and the dual combination of the new Xorg ditching its config file (uh why?!? just to annoy the hell out of people, that's why), and KDE4 changing everything else just about drove me mad.
The KDE4 change reminded me of when Redhat dumped sawfish for that f-ing atrocity called Metacity (which in turn drove me to KDE). After the 8.10 nightmare, reinstalled 8.04, and now I'm hoping the LTS lasts long enough to make everything else settle out or go away.
So, the majority of the issues you had are no longer a issue.
Oh God, say it isn't so, I have to add "gzip -d |" to the command list!
Seriously... You can change the defaults if it really bothers you that much.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Ubuntu is nice because installing and updating apps is easy, there is a wide variety of apps available for it, and it's quick and easy to install.
I was going to post asking what Ubuntu has over Debian, but then I remembered Canonical.
the cuticle doesn't properly detach itself from the nail as it grows. The nail's growth slowly tears your skin apart.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
I guess that is my question then is why not run a Debian farm?
~ Ron Fitzgerald
I'm sure Xorg and KDE4 are high on their priority list for their web servers.
It isn't just going from other versions of Ubuntu, they are consolidating from several different Linux distributions. I found it interesting news anyway.. I'm even about to go and RTFA!
which is totally what she said
You wouldn't believe how much nicer Squid and MySQL look in Compiz.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I'm sure Xorg and KDE4 are high on their priority list for their web servers.
The point being 8.10, not being an LTS, they shoveled a whole bunch of radically new stuff in. That's always great fun on a server, yes?
Uh, whuh? You've obviously never had to herd a large number of machines. Most stuff running the same OS is the only way to live - jumpstart/kickstart, standard patch clusters, one local package repository server, that sorta thing.
(I do in fact do this for a living. Standardised Solaris 10 servers with Blastwave for the open-source toys, CentOS 4 when we need Linux, local repository servers for both. A few Windows boxes with a locally-served copy of Cygwin on them. May I heartily recommend Cygwin on any Windows servers you may be stuck with - it makes life so much saner.)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Last I checked, zless handles gzipped text files just fine, and it ships in Ubuntu.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
This is a good day for being a penguin and even better day if your colors are orange.
If I had stocks in ubuntu, I would be doing a happy happy joy joy dance
Support.
"Piter, too, is dead."
I second your comments on Gentoo. I had originally thought it would be a good choice for my MythTV box on older hardware... and it was fine, at first. After about two years of occasional updates, the updates got really painful. Updating config files sucked, and often packages wouldn't compile, I spent hours googling various compiler messages. At one point the mythtv package got upgraded to version 0.22, then it wanted to backdate it to 0.20. Unfortunately the desktop system I was using as a frontend was running Ubuntu, and I had version 0.21 on there, so things were all screwed up. I finally went to Ubuntu server, and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
If someone has the time to invest in understanding the whole portage system and knowing how to get exactly what they want out of it, and if they don't mind managing all of their config files after each update, then Gentoo is probably fine, and I'm sure it is ideal in soe situations. But it's definitely not for most people.
[standard Gentoo complaint]
Also, it takes a long time to compile stuff.
[/standard Gentoo complaint]
I put the story in the queue as an insight into how a top-10 free content site run by a severely under-resourced charity does its stuff. And it's all over the press this morning, fwiw.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The newsworthy part to me is that they had a hodge-podge of distros on a large number of servers, and they standardized on one distro which most people don't usually consider first when they think of a server distro.
Also, it's nice to know about what a large project like WikiMedia is using.
Right now where I work was running 6 different OS's. Right now all the Point-of-sale system are XP-based, the laptops are a mix of Dell's and Apple, the router/firewall runs off Gentoo, and they have a couple OpenSuSE workstations.
On the server side, the webservers were a mix of Debian, the application server and database server were both OpenSuSE. They remote monitor a number of digital signage/interactive kiosks using another Linux package (Debain-based I believe). At the end of the day each system had it's quirks based on the developer who worked on that particular project. Bottom line it was a mess.
It was time for new hardware and the shop is going to OSX for everything in house, Mac Mini's & MBP's, shifting to a customPOS system based on OpenBravoPOS running off a Mac Mini and then all our remotely hosted items are being shifted to all FreeBSD based servers managed by Pair.
End result is that my life becomes much easier and we can shift my attention towards development projects instead of maintaining the system.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
The article is very fallacious. So, they had a mess of different versions of RedHat and Fedora... they moved to Ubuntu and the problem is solved.
Er... How does this solve the problem at all? Moving to Ubuntu will magically prevent further mess of versions? Couldn't they just upgrade the older installations to newer versions? If stability and costs were problems, why didn't they consider CentOS? They would be able to retain the experience already built by using RedHat and Fedora.
This switch looks much more likely to be personal preference than any stability or cost arguments.
I'm running Ubuntu server 6.06 LTS for a stand-alone web server, it's been running about 18 months.
There is no substantial reason to pick Ubuntu server for me because I'm not buying support. I just picked it because I'm also running it on the desktop and I can develop & compile on the same dev platform at home.
It's been running rock-solid stable. Security fixes are rolled out promptly and install smoothly.
To be honest any distro will do for a web/java/database machine that you self-admin. The main difference will be in the quality of the support.
Hey, it worked for Vista.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You'd think that, but consider this:
If you install Redhat, it costs money, because they support it.
If you install CentOS, it's free, but if you need support, there is none. You can get support from third parties, but not Red Hat. To get support from RedHat, they'd need to move from CentOS to RHEL.
If you install Ubuntu, it's free. If you need commercial support, you can pay Canonical. They could, for example, pay Canonical for a year, and, if they can handle it on their own, not renew their support contract. They also can choose later to go back to them. That's a lot more freedom than Red Hat can give, and unlike CentOS, they have someone to fall back on if they need help.
they are running Debian - Ubuntu is Debian with, ah, lipstick on it - and it works very well.
but where the heck is Ubuntu?!
SMQ 90AE4B2BC4F6BEAF7340F0B40BA2DEF7340F6BC2D0392
Is that anything like lipstick on a hockey mom?
greed@All_Evils:~#
OK, now I'm curious. The summary mentions a touch of Open Solaris, but the article doesn't. What did they decide to use it for and, more importantly, why did they make the exception?
Strangely enough, none of the things that bother you are an issue for us. Either they were fixed over two years ago, or they don't affect us.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
Overall monoculture is bad; consistent setup and administration in a single buildout is good.
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
It's not *super* exciting, but some folks seem to be interested in hearing that Ubuntu is a perfectly good server distro, and gets used for this in the wild. ("Ubuntu: not just for desktops anymore!")
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
Just tear it off...
;-)
Warning: Animated grossness, requires QT/QT equivalent, maybe NWS depending on your work environment, but funny as hell nonetheless. And also COMPLETELY offtopic, I'll see you all in -1, Offtopic HELL!!!
I run several different distros, each one suited to a different environment / usage pattern.
My desktop is Gentoo, I update every day, and it runs like a dragster.
My servers run CentOS. Easy to maintain, kind of retarded thanks to RPM, but usable. Most importantly, it's such a widely popular distro that I can delegate tasks to practically sysadmin, in a pinch.
My boss really likes BSD for firewalls and DNS servers. It's rock-solid, low-overhead and we can pretty much forget about the machine once it's deployed. Don't even care to update it unless a vulnerability is discovered...
I would like to use Gentoo on servers, but that would require a fork. Gentoo itself is a bleeding-edge tweaker's delight. They break stuff all the time, and the user is expected to figure it out on their own. That's fine for a desktop machine, and the payoff is usually worth the effort, but on servers every minute counts. If you're down for two hours because some dutch kid broke the latest build, you're in hell!
Now if someone could spin off an ultra-stable fork of Gentoo, with the necessary glue to ensure smooth upgrades, and an official binary package repo for those time-critical panic moments, I could definitely see it gaining a foothold in the datacenter.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
*My* workstations are all Gentoo.
The workstations I *support* (about 90 of them) are not. They're all running Ubuntu 8.04. My x86 servers are all running Debian Etch.
I love Gentoo on my desktop. I can get it set up exactly like I want it. But the "fiddle factor" is very high, and I don't particularly want the workstations I support to take that much of my time, or come to that, be all that configurable.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Seriously? How are you on Slashdot? You sound like the typical manager. Are you saying that there are no commercial entities which provide support for Centos for a fee? If you want to make the argument that there is no first party support, fine. But don't say that there is no support for Centos for those who want to pay.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Your tax (deductible) dollars at work!
I wonder if they're going to take it to the next step and use a tool like cfengine or puppet to manage all of the servers in a consistent fashion. I've found that two sysadmins can effectively manage hundreds of servers using such tools, and without putting in more than a standard 40 hour work week.
According to their web site, it's only supported for five years. You must have some bizzaro-world definition of "long term."
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
[citation needed]
Regarding software, 5 years is a *VERY* long term.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
BIG, big fan of your work. Your edits are bar-none, the most fappable out there. When do you plan on adding more pics to your profile?
A nail clipper works better to remove the "flaps". And applying cocoa butter or shea butter to the area afterwards, as well as the area between the nail and the finger.
Your drooling over Gentoo kind of ignores the fact that the Gentoo developers are a bunch of screaming morons and can't seem to get straight which one's their ass and which one's their elbow.
As-is, I wouldn't even use Gentoo on a desktop. (How long has Nethack been masked because of their stupid-ass games policy?)
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I'm actually pretty surprised. I know Ubuntu == Debian in a lot of aspects, but... To go to a distro that is *mainly* geared toward the desktop market (I know they have a server version, blah) for something as huge as Wikimedia, I'd think they'd rather go to Debian since it's considered more stable (although maybe more outdated as well). I have been a Debian zealot since the mid 90's and moved my DESKTOP to Ubuntu later on - but still think Debian is a best fit for servers.
Of course, there's always the whole "Ubuntu offers real support contracts" thing. That, in itself, is enough for any larger company to make the choice, right there.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Seriously, every "Off-topic"-modded post I've seen is only -1.
Perhaps it's for the best, as a -5 offtopc-mod would surely catch the attention of everyone. Oh look at this (_(_) (_|_) (_)_) Da Buttdance!
NO! NOOO! DON'T MOD ME -5 OFF-TOPIC!
Disclaimer: Been drinking too much Chimay tonight.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Yeah, much better now, that all of their servers can be taken over at once through a single exploit...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Please, offer some suggestions for commercial support for CentOS -- because the companies that I see when I google for centos commercial support are small and extremely shady (including the overused stock photo of a smiling female support tech). I wouldn't be convinced any of those companies could manage servers for an operation as big as Wikipedia.
You have the only seniority that matters here:
12369 < 662363
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
For home computer users, yes. Not for businesses.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
It is a lot longer than 1 year
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
They did the same thing in 8.04, which is part of why it kind of sucks as a LTS release.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
>new Xorg ditching its config file
You can run xorg without a config file now, but you don't have to (I believe that was also true in xorg 7.3). And every version recently has been making more of the old config file redundant or unneeded. Instead it relies more on autodetection and sane defaults, which is a good thing. But you can still use the config file to override, if needed.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Well it's much longer than for the regular ubuntu releases though I agree it's still not really long enough. Redhat's is a couple of years longer but then redhat is a much bigger company than canonical.
Sadly linux's fast evoloution makes it pretty expensive for a distributor to provide good support for a release for a long time.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It is when a new license costs $0.00. Other than deployment costs, there's no reason not to upgrade frequently.
nice, but you forgot the big one.
"the neutrality of this article has been disputed"
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
If you install CentOS, it's free, but if you need support, there is none. You can get support from third parties, but not Red Hat. To get support from RedHat, they'd need to move from CentOS to RHEL.
Ummm... I don't think he's saying there are no commercial entities which support CentOS; he's saying that RedHat does not support it. Which is a very valid thing to point out, may I add...
Cheers
Jeez, I hate it when that happens.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
But you can still use the config file to override, if needed.
Thanks for that info. All I remember is that when I tried it, the default xorg.conf file was nearly empty, with some ambiguous line that said "whatever you set here is ignored or set elsewhere via autodetect" (or something to that effect). On my config autodetect just doesn't cut it, and I really doubt that it would autodetect some things (such as the need to have backingstore turned on for some of my apps). I tried to find some documentation on Xorg 7.4, but I don't think the docs are updated yet (and at the same time I didn't have a previous xorg.conf to try so I didn't go down that rather obvious route).
My Personal servers run Gentoo.... and since I have time to tweak the system and I'm the only one administrating it, it's perfect.
Even my uptime is pretty good considering a home server. The last reboot was because of a power outage long enough to kill my UPS
[kooty@numbserver] ~ $ uptime
15:50:39 up 62 days, 1:29, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.02, 0.00
[kooty@numbserver] ~ $ uname -a
Linux numbserver 2.6.26-kooty #4 SMP Wed Jul 30 23:13:47 MDT 2008 x86_64 Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 265 AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
The corporate servers I set up and manage are all running Ubuntu Server 8.04 though.
It all depends on how much time you are willing to put into the server, and your personal preference.
Your evaluation period for Productivity 1.0 has ended. Please purchase more coffee to continue using this product.
There is always risk involved when upgrading or deploying systems. Businesses don't upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. They will weigh the risks against the benefits and proceed if there is a clear advantage to upgrading. Like the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The cost of licenses can be minuscule compared to deployment costs, so much so that many licenses might as well be $0.00. Deployment costs can be some of your largest costs. How many people will it take to upgrade? What is their cost per hour to the business? Multiply that by the number of people involved. Have you deployed on an identical test system and tested your software to ensure that it will continue to function as required on the new production system? Do you have test scripts so that you can validate that it performs as required? Will you have to make changes to software or hardware to accommodate the upgrade? Will you need to update your documentation? What is your contingency plan should the upgrade fail? What will be the cost to the business if the system is unavailable outside of the deployment window?
Some systems, like SAP, may take years to be deployed throughout an organization. Your favorite distro might reach the end of support before deployment even completes. For other systems, your time line for product upgrades and support may not be entirely within your control. What if your system is part of a product that needs approval from the FDA? With five years of support you may have eaten up three years of that during product development and FDA approval, leaving only two years of support for the OS on your products. That could leave you with a short product lifecycle or mean that you have to perform significant upgrades in the field.
Other operating systems, such as Solaris, Windows, AIX, and HP-UX are supported for 10 and sometimes 12 years. The only saving grace for these enterprise Linux distros is that the source is available. But when the five years are up, then what? Will you still be able to pay Red Hat or Canonical to support your end-of-life Linux distro? What if they have made a business decision not to support end-of-life distros no matter what? If they will support it, it's safe to assume that your support contract will cost more than it did during the previous five years. And if you go somewhere else and hire some linux experts to support your distro, they won't have access to the information that the distro creators have. They won't have the documentation about why certain patches were applied, or specific changes were made, or other internal decisions. You better hope that your new support company is very careful and thorough.
So then, would it have been a better investment to pay for Solaris and 10 years of support, pay for 10 years of Linux support, or pay to upgrade your systems every three to five years? I don't know. It depends on your goals. Clearly Wikipedia likes to move faster than the average business. They seem to be continually upgrading their wiki software and like staying on the leading edge. From reading about their server setup, they appear to have a lot of redundancy and can reduce their risk when upgrading. Three to five years of support for their operating systems is probably sufficient for their needs. But don't let that lull you into thinking that five years is long term.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
A lot of folks seem to fail to realize that Linux has distributions. The kernel is the core of every linux system. From there, various organizations, Canonical being one of them, package the userland, a package manger, and an update service together, and call it their own. It's how Linux has worked for many years.
That being said, what you're really shopping for when seeking a Linux distribution is all the stuff around the Linux kernel. That is where Wikimedia found the benefit. Regardless the timeline, Canonical offered them a pro-bono support contract, there is evidence of long-term update availability, and an overall 'good' package set.
Also, for the record, Canonical does offer a server-edition of Ubuntu. See their website for more information.
tbh, mine never tear. They're all nice and even and smooth. Always have been. I have good cuticles ... obviously a more evolved fingernail grower :-)
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
For home computer users, yes. Not for businesses.
Compared to microsoft? Server 2003: EOL 2010.
Besides which, you're forgetting this is linux we're talking about. Support runs out? You can open the hood and support it yourself (or pay someone else to do so). It's not like ubuntu would turn down paid support beyond the 5 year lifecycle of an LTS release.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
though if we could do ZFS on Linux without jumping through scary hoops we'd happily to that instead!
How about test-driving the early ZFS support in FreeBSD 7? It's already there and can only get better with time and exposure, esp. from Wikipedia! Plus managing a bunch of FreeBSD ZFS hosts is (IMHO) way easier than managing OpenSolaris servers, esp. for people with a Linux admin background.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
can't seem to get straight which one's their ass and which one's their elbow. I'm sure comparative Goatse's of each would help them out.
I dunno. Monoculture is only bad when all of the alternatives are also bad. Then when badness hits, it's limited to one particular installation for architectural reasons. Since you deploy large numbers of identical/similar machines, you also know how much easier it is to minimize attack surfaces when your software set is uniform.
His drooling over Gentoo? It's abundantly clear from his post and yours that he is many times more insightful and rational than you. His post says something meaningful as he describes the uses of various operating systems and concluding that Gentoo is not a good choice for servers, while you're just bashing Gentoo's policies and crying about Nethack.
Of course, this is slashdot, so you get the 'insightful' moderation. Congratulations.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Interesting. You've played with Gentoo on the desktop, and you think you have a clue about its potential for use on a system for "actual work" online. Right. Sorry if I'm not entirely convinced, especially considering that many others of us are completely up to the task of administering Gentoo to do real work.
Congrats on your choice to run Ubuntu servers. I'm sure it will prove to be a solid platform for your needs. But don't presume to tell us which distros are or are not fit for "actual work" unless you have a clue.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
I would point out that RedHat now offer seven years support on their OS, for at least RHEL5 if not RHEL4 as well.
I would also point out that *any* computer hardware that is over seven years old is on it's last legs. Many of the components within will be well beyond their design life, and the whole thing could go tits up at any moment.
I have several systems like that too, for instance if i connect a computer to my TV it thinks it can only do 1080i, but you can force it to do 1080p with the xorg.conf file, i cant get windows or osx to do 1080p on that screen.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Quite frankly, if I wanted to play Nethack, I'd unmask it and compile it like any other package.
There's a reason why it's hard masked, and while some people may take offense to their beloved Nethack being called "insecure", I'm quite thankful that someone takes package management seriously enough to point out potential issues with the software I use.
It's funny how Gentoo polarizes people so much. Yes, there are quite a few imbeciles with five-mile-long CFLAGS, and there are some packages that get updated twice a day for no good reason at all, but overall it's been the most consistent, reliable, satisfying distro I've ever used. I actually like seeing the dozen patches applied to each package, as it shows there's someone actually using and criticizing the software to make it better. It also saves me a ton of effort, as I would have had to find and install those patches anyway, and many of them come directly from Gentoo users.
I guess it also matters that I'm a developer myself. When Gentoo breaks, I can usually fix it on my own with minimal effort. Obviously a non-programmer would go spam Yahoo Answers and rip all their hair out... and that's fine, everyone's free to use whatever suits them best.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The fact that your vengeful response got modded Insightful, tells me Slashdot needs to give out less mod points to less people.
I'm not drooling over Gentoo, and I'm certainly not evangelizing it to every half-bred techno-weenie on this dirt ball of a world. In fact, I wish they'd make it even _harder_ to get Gentoo, in order to weed out the non-hackers. This distro is not for them, and they will not be happy with it.
You don't waltz onto a construction site, jump in a backhoe and then yell the foreman's ears off because it doesn't have air conditioning and ABS brakes. Well Gentoo is that backhoe. Only trained people should use it, everyone else can happily putter around in their Ubuntu sedans and Fedora Civic hatchbacks...
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Enterprise-class server hardware tends to be built to last longer, and is maintained and monitored constantly to ensure it's still working within acceptable bounds. And if it's not, it can be field serviced for much less than the cost of upgrading a distro version.
Sam ty sig.
1. gentlemen will want to keep their nails trimmed short, approx. 1/8th - 1/16th of inch below the tip of the finger.
2. ladies will generally not need this howto and will not be addressed specifically.
3. file the sharp corners on your nails to a smooth edge.
4. use the edge of the nail file to press the cuticle away from the tip of your finger
5. if the cuticle will not separate. File the cuticle down to the surface of the nail.
6. If you still have problems with torn cuticles you may want to try using moisturizer. this will help to elasticize the cuticle, making it more likely to stretch and less likely to tear.
If all else fails you can a)get a girlfriend to take care of your nails (she will also likely want to pluck your eyebrows) b) ask your mom (awkward, might hurt her feelings that you don't already know also) c) get a pedicure and pay close attention, ask questions, treat it like going to the dentist.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Most businesses go bankrupt in 3 years time, so...