On 13 October 2011 15:12, Dom Latter <bitfolk-users(a)latter.org> wrote:
> I trust I can ask this sort of question here without sparking a
> religious war - but what advantages are there in using Ubuntu on
> a server? I've been an Ubuntu desktop user for some years [1],
> but for servers I generally stick with Debian.
Based on about 8 years of running 1-3 low-usage personal servers on
Debian and 6 months running ~150 Ubuntu server hosts professionally:
Ubuntu Pros:
- Hardware certification. I can buy hardware with a reasonable
expectation that it'll work with a specific release without spending
hours attempting to find out how well individual hardware components
work. It's not a perfect scheme, but it's a start.
- Vendor support. Dell, VMware and others package various useful bits
of software and put them in their own repos. They don't all do a
brilliant job at it (e.g. VMware's kernel modules are often several
ABI versions behind the latest kernel security release) but they do
it. [1]
Ubuntu Cons:
- Security releases. The Debian security team seem to ship patches
first and the Ubuntu ones lag a bit.
I don't think there's a hugely compelling reason to migrate between them.
G
[1] Whether or not you trust an organisation enough to add their repos
to your apt sources is another matter. I tend to download the debs and
stick them in a local apt repo, but this is significantly less work
than packaging the software myself.
