Ubuntu Is the Dominant Cloud OS 167
An anonymous reader writes: According to a new report by Cloud Market, Ubuntu is more than twice as popular on Amazon EC2 as all other operating systems combined. Given that Amazon Web Services has 57% of the public cloud market, Ubuntu is clearly the most popular OS for cloud systems. This is further bolstered by a recent OpenStack survey, which found that more than half of respondents used Ubuntu for cloud-based production environments. Centos was a distant second at 29%, and RHEL came in third at 11%. "In addition to AWS, Ubuntu has been available on HP Cloud, and Microsoft Azure since 2013. It's also now available on Google Cloud Platform, Fujitsu, and Joyent." The article concludes, "People still see Ubuntu as primarily a desktop operating system. It's not — and hasn't been for some time."
Ubuntu _is_ primarily a desktop OS... (Score:5, Insightful)
The same as MS Windows. It is just the one people know. That does not make it a good choice for the cloud, just a familiar one. Judging technological quality from numbers used by a non-expert or mixed crowd is not a valid way to judge merit and suitability.
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So what you're saying is that this is the year of Linux on the desktop... in the cloud?
Re:Ubuntu _is_ primarily a desktop OS... (Score:4, Interesting)
So what you're saying is that this is the year of Linux on the desktop... in the cloud?
So... "Cloudtop"?
Almost (Score:4, Informative)
Being the most popular does not mean the best choice, especially in Amazon's cloud where most people would be using it for development and testing, not necessarily production. The last few places I worked production was all RHEL. Development and testing projects went to EC2 and CentOS. This was not a "CentOS is better" consideration, it was exclusively a pricing consideration. Ubuntu is the same, where it's mostly free and lots of the fad followers still think Ubuntu is better than other OSes because it's simple to setup. For a workstation I'd agree that it's easier for a non Admin to setup. There is no advantages and some disadvantages when using it for a server other than a simple Web/DB server.
IMHO the problem with any of these statistics reports is that it does not demonstrate reality in any way, shape, or form. Like all statistics, it's intentionally worded to mislead people. From the title, you would think that the Hyper-visor is Ubuntu but it's not. TFA also makes a wild ass guess because Amazon said it's the most used for them and they own 57% of the cloud market. You don't have to be a math wizard to see how that speculation could easily be wrong (Amazon never said that 98% of their client nodes are running Ubuntu).
Personally, I see Ubuntu exactly like MS. It's controlled by the Brits who have more intrusion ability by the Government than the US (with US help of course). I don't trust either, and won't use either. That does not mean I'm running out to pay for RHEL licenses. I'll use a good trusted free OS like Debian or CentOS over MS or Canonical's Ubuntu. Sometimes free makes lots of sense, and other times you want the pay for support.
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Sorry to disappoint you but your attention span or lack thereof is *not* a reliable metric for the truthfulness of s.petry's assertions. TFP.
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Re:Ubuntu _is_ primarily a desktop OS... (Score:4, Insightful)
The same as MS Windows. It is just the one people know. That does not make it a good choice for the cloud, just a familiar one.
Uh, I would assume that cloud servers are running Ubuntu Server [ubuntu.com]. You know, the one which isn't a desktop OS.
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The same as MS Windows. It is just the one people know. That does not make it a good choice for the cloud, just a familiar one.
Uh, I would assume that cloud servers are running Ubuntu Server [ubuntu.com]. You know, the one which isn't a desktop OS.
And I'd bet that most windows cloud servers are running some Windows Server variant, which also is a Server OS.
Re:Ubuntu _is_ primarily a desktop OS... (Score:5, Informative)
It's almost as bloated with junk as the desktop version. I've been telling our developers to use debian over ubuntu. A base minimal container with Debian is under a 100 megs. With Ubuntu it's close to 700 megs. There's just too much stuff included by default. That means a whole bunch of things that could be potential security problems. Sure, you have to set up more in the Dockerfile since so little is included, but I consider that a feature, not a bug.
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Debian package versions usually lag behind Ubuntu. AWS's whole thing is reacting quickly to changes - and a good way to do that is to use a distro which tends to be more up to date.
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The term stable has a couple of subtuly different meanings. There is the "doesn't crash very often" meaning and the "what worked today will work in the future" meaning.
The only reasonable way to get security updates for debian testing/unstable is to keep rolling forward with them. That means you are close to the bleeding edge but it also means you are building on something that is distaincly a moving target and that can and will break your stuff. The same applies to the development releases of ubuntu.
At the
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It's almost as bloated with junk as the desktop version. I've been telling our developers to use debian over ubuntu. A base minimal container with Debian is under a 100 megs. With Ubuntu it's close to 700 megs.
Debian is a rolling release distribution, with no direct commercial support. You can't use it to achieve repeatable rollouts and provisioning unless you set up and support your own Debian mirror with all package versions freezed at some known-good, conflict-free state, and patch in security updates as necessary, while still ensuring and testing that the whole system still works. If you DON'T want to do all this yourself, there are companies who will do it for you and provide commercial support. Ubuntu is on
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Debian does releases [debian.org]. They also provide a rolling release, but that isn't the only option.
They also provide security updates [debian.org] for their releases, so normally "patching in" security updates is done using apt-get.
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Debian does releases [debian.org]. They also provide a rolling release, but that isn't the only option.
testing and unstable are rolling releases. stable is a fixed release, but it's too old for most people to use. So if you want to have a halfway recent Debian with fixed packet versions, you have to roll your own or use one of the ones that other people (like Ubuntu) already provide.
They also provide security updates [debian.org] for their releases, so normally "patching in" security updates is done using apt-get.
I know, but if you're running your own fixed-release Debian, you'd have to build those packages yourself.
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If you DON'T want to do all this yourself, there are companies who will do it for you and provide commercial support. Ubuntu is one of those companies.
Um, actually the company is named Canonical, but whatever...
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So install Ubuntu Minimal, which can get down as low as a 5MB install image.
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It's almost as bloated with junk as the desktop version. I've been telling our developers to use debian over ubuntu. A base minimal container with Debian is under a 100 megs. With Ubuntu it's close to 700 megs. There's just too much stuff included by default. That means a whole bunch of things that could be potential security problems. Sure, you have to set up more in the Dockerfile since so little is included, but I consider that a feature, not a bug.
Unless you are trying to install it on a Raspberry Pi or other toyware, 600MB are not a significant amount of disk space.
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Ubuntu is Debian Sid plus some additional cruft, some of it actually useful but nothing indispensable.
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Ubuntu and desktop and Ubuntu server are essentially the same, the only substantive difference is which packages are initially installed.
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I'd consider that quite a big difference. But then I'm not a junglebunny
No, actually you are a knuckledragging slavering imbecile. If it has roofracks and a trailer hitch, is it a different car? Oh wait, it's a different color too!! And there are fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror!!!
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Its just the same with another choice of default packages.
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You might be surprised to learn Ubuntu has this entire operating system underneath the graphical portion and that you can just leave off the graphical portion. The same as MS Windows- though in recent years that separation is artificially eliminated for all intents and purposes.
Linux = Ubuntu = CentOS = RHEL = OEL etc.. They're all descriptions of the complete OS + giant set of packages. There are subsets to all of that.
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The same as MS Windows. It is just the one people know. That does not make it a good choice for the cloud, just a familiar one. Judging technological quality from numbers used by a non-expert or mixed crowd is not a valid way to judge merit and suitability.
Not quite. Ubuntu is a descendent of Debian, and Debian's greatest strength has always been the desktop, but Ubuntu started adapting a lot of the Enterprise features from Red Hat about a decade ago. It often was a strain, since there's some big differences between architecture and packaging relative to Red Hat, but they're always had an eye towards the Enterprise.
Much of the cloud and container advances have been coming from Ubuntu.
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You are seriously claiming that Debian is a desktop OS while Ubuntu is not? You must be the "far-left side of the graph" Dunning-Kurger specimen here.
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No I'm not. The world isn't the binary place that the political pundits want us to believe it is.
Ubuntu is quite definitely a desktop OS, just like Fedora. But both Ubuntu and Fedora have connections to enterprise services. Fedora's is more direct, since it's the proving ground for Red Hat, but Ubuntu has its enterprise contributors as well. And some of them are doing more than just porting Red Hat these days - they're doing original work in their own right.
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Except for Ubuntu Server, with a long-term support version that makes it perfect for application server operations because you know you'll continue getting patches and fixes.
Signed, someone with over 80 Ubuntu Server 14.0.4 LTS instances running on Amazon EC2.
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The same as MS Windows. It is just the one people know. That does not make it a good choice for the cloud, just a familiar one.
I would absolutely prefer not to, but the work we use linux servers for doesn't require an install of scientific or similar. We deploy ubuntu based on the all seeing theory.. if we are hit by the ever feared busses, some idiot is going to have to maintain the servers. Odds are good that the linux experience on the new hires CV will be Ubuntu, so we build to that lowest common denominator. Sanity in that? Maybe.
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Though clearly 'suitable' based on its usage, it may not be ideal. That's the distinction you're looking for. If N% of the active cloud market aren't sitting idle doing nothing. Hell, I'm sure there are use cases where Windows is a more ideal environment for a given scenario, but I still wouldn't use it unless I had to.
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How is Ubuntu Server a desktop OS?
apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
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Please don't advise people to use Kubuntu. They'd be expecting to get KDE, and they'd be badly disappointed.
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Kubuntu works for me, I don't really think about it any more, which is the best compliment for a desktop. The biggest issue is the akonadi idiocy, but that comes from upstream KDE.
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Maybe they've fixed it by now, but the last couple of times I've tried Kubuntu, KDE was messed up, with bits missing that might not have mattered to the Ubuntu folks, but they did matter to me.
I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu in any case. Always seemed kind of dumbed-down to me, and the default UI has always been a sort of Fisher-Price horror show.
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it used to be the desktop os with kernel's CONFIG_HZ set to 100 instead of 250. but since ubuntu 12.04, the server installation CD image carries the 'generic' kernel and not the 'server' one any more. so ubuntu server IS the same as ubuntu desktop.
different options in 'tasksel' during installation does not make it a different OS in any way.
wohoo the almighty cloud (Score:3)
no surprise, what people use at home they use ther (Score:3, Interesting)
RedHat got into the datacenter by being a popular desktop distro, people setting things up in the datacenter used what they were familiar with.
People have been predicting that RedHat would run into this sort of problem ever since they abandoned the home/workstation market. It's taken a lot longer than I expected, but it's happening.
RedHat was able to hold this off for a while by getting the datacenter managers to mandate standardization, but in AWS such rules are far less enforced.
David Lang
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Nobody in the datacenter uses Ubuntu desktop. they use server. and in fact I see far more CentOS/Redhat than Ubuntu simply because enterprise tools like Oracle has support for redHat.
Ubuntu desktop is an abomination unless you install Kubuntu or Xubuntu. nobody sane like standard Ubuntu, just like how nobody sane likes windows 8/8.1
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"Nobody in the datacenter uses Ubuntu desktop. they use server."
Is there *any single package* that is different between the server and desktop versions? I mean, is it the postfix package from the server version any different from the desktop one?
In other words, is there any difference at all if you are using "desktop" or "server" versions?
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The default packages selected, mostly. Used to be that the server LTS version was supported for longer, but no longer true.
My last project, I chose CentOS 6. But I literally had it down to which LTS OS had the most recent release so I didn't have to worry about a distro upgrade for longer.
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"They used to use a different kernel package with different tunings, but that hasn't been the case since 12.04."
No. All kernels were available in both the "server" and "desktop" versions. It was the one installed by default, at most.
Re:no surprise, what people use at home they use t (Score:5, Informative)
RedHat got into the datacenter by being a popular desktop distro, people setting things up in the datacenter used what they were familiar with.
People have been predicting that RedHat would run into this sort of problem ever since they abandoned the home/workstation market. It's taken a lot longer than I expected, but it's happening.
RedHat was able to hold this off for a while by getting the datacenter managers to mandate standardization, but in AWS such rules are far less enforced.
David Lang
I don't feel like RedHat abandoned the home/workstation market, both my home and work desktop run Fedora 22.
As for AWS who is using those machines? My gut is these are individuals or small shops willing to pay for cloud hosting but unwilling to pay the extra for support. For instance CentOS is beating RHEL 29% to 11%, granted I'm not sure what support you get for RHEL in AWS but I doubt there's any reason to use CentOS over RHEL in the cloud aside from cost. I tried switching to Ubuntu for my personal cloud server but went to CentOS instead.
My hunch is the vast majority of those Ubuntu VMs aren't paying any support and thus wouldn't really impact RedHat's bottom line anyway. It's when paid businesses go to Ubuntu they have to worry, but the requirements of the customers willing to pay out big money for licenses and support are vastly different than those of desktop users.
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I run an Ubuntu server in EWS, it hosts my Teamspeak 3 server so that I don't have to worry about my home server's uptime.
Re:no surprise, what people use at home they use t (Score:4, Interesting)
It's when paid businesses go to Ubuntu they have to worry, but the requirements of the customers willing to pay out big money for licenses and support are vastly different than those of desktop users
And here's the rub, they made the desktop platform pretty bleeding edge (major kernel changes are inflicted in routine updates, breaking things like nvidia driver if you choose to use it, not merely being mostly unhelpful about closed source realities but actively making it more painful). Even if drivers didn't break, updates can change things dramatically at a whim, and there's no blessed 'long term' servicing branch that so nearly matches their 6 month cycle releases like Ubuntu does. RedHat is making the free situation needlessly complicated and risky to push people to RHEL, but instead are giving ubuntu the free market. Like you say, the free market by itself is no huge threat, but it influences the commercial market in the long term.
You could also say RedHat has very little to lose by having something more like Ubuntu in lifecycle out there for free. Those folks won't pay for anything, but their mindshare is valuable among the audience that will pay.
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It's when paid businesses go to Ubuntu they have to worry, but the requirements of the customers willing to pay out big money for licenses and support are vastly different than those of desktop users
And here's the rub, they made the desktop platform pretty bleeding edge (major kernel changes are inflicted in routine updates, breaking things like nvidia driver if you choose to use it, not merely being mostly unhelpful about closed source realities but actively making it more painful). Even if drivers didn't break, updates can change things dramatically at a whim, and there's no blessed 'long term' servicing branch that so nearly matches their 6 month cycle releases like Ubuntu does. RedHat is making the free situation needlessly complicated and risky to push people to RHEL, but instead are giving ubuntu the free market. Like you say, the free market by itself is no huge threat, but it influences the commercial market in the long term.
So maybe not all people like the bleeding edge and new fancy stuff like I do though I suspect Fedora's primary trouble comes from RedHat seeming too corporate and people going to what looks like a more community oriented distro.
You could also say RedHat has very little to lose by having something more like Ubuntu in lifecycle out there for free. Those folks won't pay for anything, but their mindshare is valuable among the audience that will pay.
That matters for sure, but when you're looking at an IT system responsible for millions or even billions of dollars then things like enterprize support and a dedicated server OS designed with stability in mind become really important. Whether or not you enjoy using that particular Li
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The problem for RH becomes that on top of being wildly successful in the free market, Canonical also promises 24x7 commercial support. People can bitch and moan about their opinion of the quality of that support, but RH simply cannot pretend that they are the only ones that check off that marketing bullet point.
This further reinforces my opinion that RH has pretty much nothing to lose by making RH 'free' and charging for support, rather than this 'sort of not quite' in between state that they are in now by
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Not true. I brought RedHat into a number of data centers, though I was using slackware. RedHat was just way better. IMHO it's better then debian/ubuntu. I keep giving ubuntu a chance, keeps disappointing me. Sometimes not even installing such that it will boot. When it does, it often won't even sync with the wifi. Something they lifted from RedHat - works there and works well, however. Maybe I'll try it again soon.
Debian is a joke. Some secure baseline groups, I haven't seen a posting in years. It's like *
Centos = RHEL really (Score:5, Informative)
Centos was a distant second at 29%, and RHEL came in third at 11%
Apparently the poster does not realize that these are really the same thing?
Re: Centos = RHEL really (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Centos = RHEL really (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Centos = RHEL really (Score:2)
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A clone of something is not necessarily the "same thing" and keeping distributions with subtle differences such as cost separate in statistics creates a whole new set of datapoints, such as not only which distributions are popular for their features, but which are popular for their cost.
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Maintenance and support?
Red Hat is not really a paid product, you are paying for support. It is still open source, which CentOS takes advantage of.
Re:Centos = RHEL really (Score:4, Interesting)
Ubuntu is a fine distro, I just don't like the company and the leadership. RHEL is a fine distro, but it purposely has a slower update cadence. I love the RedHat company and how committed they are to OSS. Everything they buy (and they've spent a lot on acquisitions over the years), they open source.
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This is a huge part of RH's problem IMO, that they go to great pains to distance functionally identical things. For Ubuntu, the free and supported client base aren't so visibly separate, so it's hard to get a read on how many folks actually pay for it. So stories like this happen, where the gap between RHEL and Ubuntu is presented as hopelessly wide when reality is that they are surprisingly close...
hacks (Score:2, Insightful)
What makes Ubuntu Server unsuitable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ubuntu is a good enough OS for desktops, but servers are precisely where it should not be used.
Could you explain in more detail why you believe Ubuntu Server is unsuitable for servers? What change from Debian makes it unsuitable? Or is Debian likewise unsuitable?
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Ubuntu is a good enough OS for desktops, but servers are precisely where it should not be used.
Could you explain in more detail why you believe Ubuntu Server is unsuitable for servers? What change from Debian makes it unsuitable? Or is Debian likewise unsuitable?
Yes, Debian is likewise unsuitable ;)
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I prefer the server version of WIndows. Linux is a fun toy, however.
Re:What makes Ubuntu Server unsuitable? (Score:5, Informative)
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Is FreeIPA "free" as in beer? Because I really like IPAs [wikipedia.org].
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Could you explain in more detail why you believe Ubuntu Server is unsuitable for servers?
Not enough funroll. That's why I use Gentoo. Of course, if I subtract off the time when it's compiling from the uptime, I get 9.9999%, which is still 5 nines as far as I see it.
Re:What makes Ubuntu Server unsuitable? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can:
I would ( and do ) use Debian STABLE for servers. I would NOT use Debian UNSTABLE or TESTING on anything other than a test server. Ubuntu is based on snapshots of Debian UNSTABLE that Ubuntu devs try to bug fix. Like all bugfixing, introduction of more and new bugs is inevitable, and to date the quality control track record in Ubuntu hasn't been near as reliable as Debians stringent rules for UNSTABLE > TESTING > STABLE migration. Probably because of Debian being upstream and having more Dev manpower, as well as Ubuntu deciding to release every six months no matter what. This is fine for a DESKTOP, where newer kernel and hardware support may be needed, but isn't a very good idea for servers.
As far as I know, even the LTS versions of Ubuntu are based on snapshots of TESTING. Still not something I would want to run on any servers that uptime is critical on.
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Debian STABLE is not Debian without bugs. Debian UNSTABLE is not Debian with bugs.
Debian STABLE is a snapshot of the rolling release that Debian actually is with the promise/guarantee that no part of the system will ever get an update except for security fixes. That means that when a Debian STABLE is released with kernel version 2.6.25, than 8 years later the kernel version will still be 2.6.25 even when kernel version 5.2.3 is available. What the Debian people do however is to port any security fixes back
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The only problem with Ubuntu versus some other offerings like Red Hat is that the support time of the LTS version of Ubuntu is pretty short (only 5 years). It really depends on your project whether this is good enough for your situation. Debian doesn't even have such a LTS version. You only have to guess when Debian stops supporting their OS.
Debian does have LTS support [1] which means that stable releases are supported for (at least) 5 years. You also don't have to 'guess' anything - EOL dates are also provided at [1] (and in a few other places).
[1] https://wiki.debian.org/LTS [debian.org]
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Sure. In server environments, your aggressive patch management schedule should only target security updates. That's right, RHEL/CentOS separates security updates with feature updates. Ubuntu doesn't do this, which really puts it in a class of a hobby/garage server or desktop.
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LTS (Score:2)
That's right, RHEL/CentOS separates security updates with feature updates. Ubuntu doesn't do this
In my experience, an Ubuntu LTS release doesn't get feature updates other than hardware support. Feature updates come every two years to the LTS track. What am I missing?
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Features, apparently.
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Not the OP, but Ubuntu does have the point releases (i.e. 12.04.1, 12.04.2, etc.) on LTS. You're not generally not required to use them, except if there's a security patch which applies to a package included in a point release. In this case I believe Ubuntu will only publish a patch on the updated package.
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That's right, RHEL/CentOS separates security updates with feature updates. Ubuntu doesn't do this, which really puts it in a class of a hobby/garage server or desktop.
If only that were true it would be a nice payout. Ubuntu provides a dedicated program to install JUST critical security updates which you could have found yourself with 2 seconds of googling or by reading the Ubuntu Sever documentation [ubuntu.com].
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Great to hear that Ubuntu is starting to catch up. It hasn't been this way for very long, I assure you.
According to the chart... (Score:1)
Ubuntu is more popular than Linux? Remind me again how that works.
Re:According to the chart... (Score:4, Informative)
Well, if you could read instead of just looking at the pretty pictures, you would see that what is labeled Linux is Amazons own Linux image.
We can math (Score:1)
That's just a dramatic way of saying “>67% market share.”
Re:We can math (Score:4, Insightful)
"Ubuntu has approximately 135,000 instances. In second place, a long, long way back, you'll find Amazon's own Amazon Linux Amazon Machine Image (AMI), with 54,000. Lagging even farther behind, there's Windows with 17,600 instances. In fourth and fifth place, you'll find CentOS, 8,500, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), 5,600."
There are 220,700 instances accounted for, and Ubuntu has a 61% share among those. As other smaller OSs are accounted for, the Ubuntu share only decreases. In other words, it's plainly NOT twice as popular as the rest put together. If I can make as assumption, I think he probably meant that it was "as popular as all others put together." That seems closer to reality.
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Not only that, but TFS says
Given that Amazon Web Services has 57% of the public cloud market, Ubuntu is clearly the most popular OS for cloud systems.
You clearly can't say that from the given data. 61% * 57% = about 35%. The most you can infer then is that Ubuntu has at least 35% of the cloud market, if you assume that the remaining cloud providers are negligible.
TFA did not say that (Score:2)
Ubuntu was great on the desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
I know if I were to setup a Linux server, Ubuntu or Mint would be my first choices. Not because they are best suited for a server environment. Because I am familiar with them on the desktop.
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Or, if you're running a Fedora desktop, then you're well familiar with RHEL/CentOS. Do people not know this?
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I think most people here will agree that Canonical has lost the plot with regards to usability, but Ubuntu's release cadence is something that it still has going for it. As a developer, one thing I hated about developing for RHEL is that it ships with ancient versions of libraries. You either have to bring in your own newer versions (and all transitive dependencies) or make do with missing features and incompatibilities.
Ubuntu LTS ships often enough to stay fresh, but not too often to be a maintenance burde
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Since Ubuntu was/is a very easy to use desktop environment, it has become familiar to a lot of people. Those people ended up developing cloud services and stuck to what they are familiar with, Ubuntu. It's that simple.
I moved from Fedora to Kubuntu on the desktop circa 2008 or so. Not long after my servers went from CentOS to Debian, then to Ubuntu. The real kicker for me was the seamless integration of sudo, which allows for per-user accountability even when performing commands with elevated privileges. Sure, I could have hacked sudo onto CentOS 5 or 6, but Ubuntu already had that and other niceties set up.
A poster above mentions that Ubuntu does not separate out feature updates from security updates. However, on any
Goodbye Redhat, keep making the same mistake.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Redhat was extremely stupid to just think Linux as a server business and completely let go the Desktop. They aimed at only being a competitor of old server unixes instead of generating a new market.
They still have time to turn this one around (specially as Ubuntu is now wasting resources on going mobile), but as long as they keep supporting a controversial desktop environment (Gnome 3) and don't care about being friendly to new users (Fedora is nowhere near as friendly or usable as Ubuntu), they'll lose the battle in the long run.
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RH also has a pretty heavy dose of 'not invented here' for an 'open source' sort of company. It's cool that they fund so much open source effort mind you, but they are actually a pretty difficult company to collaborate with, even if you are willing to be totally open source.
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They are also trying to introduce a proper management layer using WBEM. But it doesn't stop at just installing an OSS WBEM server. They are building out an entire management interface which in turn requires them to write more p
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WBEM is a monstrosity. That's chasing the tail of Windows WMI from over a decade ago. WBEM is a horrible horrible road to go down.
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That is not accurate nor fair. True, RedHat turned control of Fedora over to the community, but they still invest both code and financial resources in it.
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I've been running RedHat/Fedora since 4.0.4, so as far as I can tell, RedHat has never left my desktop. One box has been updated for each release since RedHat 9. That included switching to x86_64 when I replaced the motherboard, but kept the HDD.
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I still don't like Unity. I miss Gnome v3. In fact, I miss many old stuff! Frak the newer WIndows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc. :(
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So Ubuntu got volume, are they making any money? Nobody can tell, since they're a black box private company but Red Hat got 7300 employees, $1.5 billion in revenue and turned a $178 million profit last year so they're making money. That's why Red Hat dropped RHL, it was a money sink with no end and no signs of improvement. Who cares if Ubuntu got 100000 installations making $0? I'd probably use Ubuntu over CentOS for an unsupported server too, but if I wanted support I'd probably go Red Hat. Without knowing
cloud and desktop synergy (Score:2)
from the ./ summary:
"People still see Ubuntu as primarily a desktop operating system. It's not — and hasn't been for some time."
Well there is a distinction between Ubuntu being the primary desktop Linux OS and it being primarily a desktop operating system. The poster conflates those claims by asserting the first while prior surveys supported the latter. And he is too quick to dismiss, and therefore to overlook, what is likely critical to Ubuntu cloud adaption: We want to run in the could what we already run on the desktop. It's familiar. We know how the package manager works and we do not have re-learn all th
Important Takeaway (Score:4, Informative)
This just demonstrates one very valuable fact for any hopeful cloud OS wannabe: If your desktop environment sucks 'because you're a cloud OS', then you won't be a Cloud OS.
If the admin can't get familiar with your OS on their personal desktop, they are not going to think of using you in a mission critical place. The best server OS has to be a good personal OS too or it will never become popular enough. RHEL started off as just RedHat, one of the better distributions for Linux. 'EL' was just a backend change to the same comfortable front end, just as Windows Server is familiar for those who use Windows as their primary desktop.
Re:Important Takeaway (Score:4, Interesting)
At the lab, we replaced centos on our cluster with ubuntu, and almost none of my colleagues are running ubuntu on their laptop (I'm running debian - if that counts). The motivation was that gcc was so fucking old it didn't had half the C++11 functionalities we're using. We could have gone for debian testing or sid, but it's not something you want to do on a cluster that's going to run month long simulations...
Frankly, I think ubuntu server is the best choice today if you need a compromise between stability and bleeding edge. That probably more why it has all the market.
Re: (Score:1)
A cloud OS is comprised of a distro that somebody has laying around somewhere that can be stuffed into an underspecd VM that is shared on old hardware with every other half brained project your developers have dreamed up over the years. Most are so unstable, they are spun up anew each day. Other more serious projects are usually sitting on a crusty, noisy, HP/Compaq with a note taped to them that says "don't turn off". For people willing to spend the extra money on Amazon, you get to use their old crap, bu
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds right.
Re: (Score:2)
It's even less of a surprise when an AC can't punctuate his meaningless complaint about someone's language correctly.
Re: (Score:2)