[kwlug-disc] topic request

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 6:56 PM, unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca> wrote:

> Khalid Baheyeldin wrote, On 05/03/2010 5:03 PM:
>
>  On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 4:41 PM, unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca> wrote:
>>
>>  From the original post, it would be more interesting to compare CentOS
>>> vs.
>>> Kubuntu (Debian), 1/2 night each, in each of these areas.
>>>
>>> To put it poorly, in essence, popular desktop maintenance vs. popular
>>> server maintenance.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Why the false dichotomy?
>>
>
> It's not false.
>
> The sense I have from the list is that in business / servers, CentOS or
> RHEL is more prevalent, while on desktops it is Ubuntu.
>
> Thus, having an understanding of both seems appropriate.


Yes, that is a common perception, and it has historical reasons.

First, RedHat had commercial support and support for certain hardware
that does not have the same support in Debian (and therefore Ubuntu).
This makes certain server stuff (e.g. RAID controllers).

Second, there was the "Debian is hard" which was true until a few years
ago.

Third, RedHat supported proprietary service based thingies that were
common on web hosts (e.g. cPanel, WHM, ...etc.), and support for Debian
was lagging for these.

However, lately things have swung in favor of Debian, with Ubuntu Server
Edition gaining traction everywhere. One of the reasons is that it is Debian
with all the APT goodness there is. Another is that it has a vast central
repository with everything in it. And yet another is the familiarity with
the
desktop provides easy switching rather than a different one for each.

And with virtualization, support for hardware is not that much of an issue
if you are managing VPSs.

So hopefully more people will see the light and switch to Debian/Ubuntu
on the server.
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
http://2bits.com
Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
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