I'm a strong believer in using a distribution which is well supported, has plenty of software pre-packaged in a sensible format, but still allows you to roll your own packages without pulling teeth. It shouldn't include X11 as standard, but should include useful things such as LVM and the software raid stack.
In my mind, the key players of the Linux distribution world, which most people seem to consider fo servers are:
- Debian;
- Ubuntu;
- RHEL;
- CentOS;
- Fedora; and
- SUSE.
RHEL, Fedora and CentOS
RHEL
While it can't be denied that RHEL is well supported, it's hardly an affordable level of support. You buy support on a per-processor and virtual-guest level with prices from around $399/year. Of course, there will doubtless be a variety of discounts, bulk discounts, educational discounts, yadda yadda, etc, etc, but it hardly makes for an affordable model if you're running servers which aren't mission critical. If you're a bank, and downtime costs you serious money, then I'm sure that it's worth buying, but for most, it's very difficult to justify.Fedora
As a result, many people seem to use Fedora. My main reason against using Fedora is it's bias towards a desktop system. I'm not someone who wants their servers to have X11 installed, or all of the junk that you get with a window manager such as Gnome, or KDE. Fedora loses my vote primarily for this reason. The other real gripe that I have with Fedora is it's lack of support. The release cycle for Fedora is every six months, with that release being supported until your release + 2 has been out for a month. That means that, given the 6-monthly release cycle, you have security support for approximately 13 months if you install that server on day 1 of the release. Sure, you can jump from release, to release, to release, upgrading constantly, but the upgrade 'process' (if you can really call it that) is somewhat convoluted, and it's not really polite to cause a deliberate and avoidable downtime to all of your users every 6-12 months is it just because you choose to use a Desktop distribution for your server.CentOS
I imagine that many users who are perfectly happy running Fedora on their desktops, but don't want to pay out for the exorbitant cost of RHEL support, therefore run CentOS. CentOS seems to be the mythical beast which perfectly encapsulates the issues I've already raised. It's a free system, with community support; and the support life cycle for each major version is seven years with releases made available 4-8 weeks after Red Hat publish the Source RPMs for RHEL. Minor releases seem to be made available approximately every 5-10 months.So CentOS seems to be a really viable solution. I do have a couple of issues with it, mostly related to how they handle packages, or rather how they just don't seem to exist! Of course, a number of core packages do exist - things like Postgres, Apache, Perl, etc. But centos.org doesn't have a method for searching the list of available packages. It doesn't have many perl modules available (as far as I can tell) for example.
Of course, if you want to run software which isn't available out of the standard distribution packages, you probably want to roll your own packages anyway. You can, of course, build your own RPMs but again, it doesn't seem to be something that many people do. Instructions are available from Fedora and are valid for CentOS too.
Debian and Ubuntu
Debian
I should admit now, that I'm already a Debian convert. I use it for my work desktops, and all of my servers. The release cycle has recently changed to use a bi-annual freeze with the distribution released once that release is considered stable. Support for a release is available for about 1 year after it's moved to old-stable and, thus far, the support has been pretty good IMO. DSAs tend to be addressed pretty quickly, with packages generally released quickly too (sorry no stats for this) and few regressions caused by these.On the packaging side, over 25,000 packages are available and cover a wide variety of software. Perl modules are well-catered for, as are python modules. Debian developers may only become an official developer after going through a pretty stringent process involving having your GPG key signed by other developers, and having a period of sponsorship by another developer. All packages are signed and verified which adds that warm-fuzzy feeling too.
Creating packages is also pretty well supported and very well documented and really is a breeze.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu is a derivitive of Debian which was created back in 2004 when Debian wasn't creating release cycles frequently enough for many. It still uses many of the same packages and much of the work done feeds back into the Debian project. Releases are every 6 months, but a Long-Term Support option is available which is released every second year and has support for five years.Packages are the same as in Debian, and often newer versions of packages are available than in Debian.
However, I have a few niggles with Ubuntu which do put me off it a little. Only the core repository is supported, and only some of these packages are themselves supported. There have also been a fair few regressions in Ubuntu security releases which concern me.
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