HP servers still half-cold to Ubuntu

No one can watch everything all the time in the fast-paced IT sector. But it's pretty hard to do something - or not do it - and get it past the readers of El Reg. Recently, a reader told us that server maker Hewlett-Packard was no longer offering support for the Debian distribution of Linux on its servers. And according to HP's …

[dgp]

So what?

What exactly would the advantage be of running ubuntu on a "server". I can see why maybe people would want CentOS vs RHEL (Redhat skills, but no cash for Redhat subscriptions). But really Ubuntu instead Debian? Why would anyone bother.

[Happy Skeptic]

RE: So what?

As someone who administers RHEL servers for a living I can tell you there's one major advantage of Ubuntu, Debian and even Mandriva and openSuse over RHEL/Centos: The availability of packages.

RHEL + the EPEL and Dag repos (which conflict and contain some duplicates when combined) contains only a fraction of the avilable packages that Ubuntu or even my home Mandriva system does (at best 7 or 8000 vs 20-25000 for Ubuntu, Debian and Mandriva)

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple...

...it's econmonics. Unless lots of people with a big wads of cash, say I want specific Ubuntu support, they won't offer it.

Cash going in from customers > cash going out to support = profit

Simples....

[Mike Watt]

Wish they would

I wish they would support it. Ubuntu is so much easier to setup and manage than any other distro and it's the only one I can get to work properly with Active Directory. HP's official support is the only stopping us from making it our distro of choice right now. :(

[Matt Bryant]

Surprised vendors push the most popular distros (and Larry's)?

As regards Ubuntu support, I can't say I'm surprised. RHEL, SLES and OEL seem pretty locked down and in-tune with the vendors, whereas Ubuntu seems a bit more bleeding-edge. I'm not bashing Ubuntu, it's not a distro I use professionally so my comments are very much as an observer rather than a convert, I just value RHEL's stability. And it is obvious why OEL gets better billing than Ubuntu - hp wants to be on best terms with Larry, so Oracle's Linux will always get preferential treatment. Besides, underneath OEL is largely RHEL with some minor tweaks, so it probably isn't that hard to validate if they have already covered RHEL.

[cmw]

Because

Ubuntu is important because because it is a competitor to RH and Novell that can bring a debian based distribution to the enterprise. Complete with a centralized management platform (Landscape) that can rival the Red Hat Network for a fraction of the cost. Potentially Canonical can fill this gap without charging extortionate costs. Hopefully this won't change, but you can never tell in a world of corporate greed.

[Anomalous Cowherd]

@ So What

So what indeed. I'm running it now on my 8-core Proliant ML110 - why? Because Etch wasn't up to the job at the time. Something about booting off RAID from memory, but either way Ubuntu JEOS was the path of least resistance - with no desktop or X11, the basic packages essentially comprise a more up-to-date and better documented Debian.

[dgp]

Re: Re: So What

@Happy Skeptic

Yes, but there's no point using Ubuntu. If you want a Debian-like system just run Debian.

@Anomalous Cowherd

One machine? Wow, HP needs to get some Ubuntu support lined up quick!

Better documented? Really really laughable.

[cmw]

2 reasons for Ubuntu or RH

1.) Having a base Ubuntu Jeos boot in 3 seconds (approx) is brilliant.

2.) RH is a dependency nightmare. I would rather install 2 Ubuntu packages as opposed to 40 rpms.

[Anonymous Coward]

@cmw

Oh wow, the old dependency nightmare myth again. Have these clowns never heard of yum?