11 ms·

A big reason why it dominates the cloud is tons of web developers use Ubuntu as their desktop Linux of choice. It's really very convenient to develop and deploy

A big reason why it dominates the cloud is tons of web developers use Ubuntu as their desktop Linux of choice. It's really very convenient to develop and deploy on the same OS. I don't think its accurate to say "The desktop is a nice add-on, but it's not Canonical's focus nor should it be."

vacri 11y ago
> The desktop is a nice add-on, but it's not Canonical's focus nor should it be. Given that one of Canonical's main projects is it's own desktop system that works the same on desktop and mobile, that statement just simply isn't true.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Even more so given that Ubuntu started as a desktop Linux distro.
mreiland 11y ago
I run Ubuntu locally because it tends to work better as a vmware guest. You can get other distro's to work with the quality of ubuntu, but not without a lot more hassle. If I get to choose I'll run arch linux, but inside vmware it's ubuntu hands down.
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  >but not without a lot more hassle. Have you tried the latest versions of Fedora? The only thing I needed to do on Fedora was install video codecs and flash, which weren't automatically installed as they are in Ubuntu.
  - mreiland 11y ago
    I have not, perhaps I was being a bit hyperbolic but I think in general the sentiment is still mostly true.
    - Alupis 11y ago
      If we're talking about Desktops running on VMWare, Fedora should give you what you need. Of course it's personal preference, so Ubuntu will work as well. However, if you are using it as a server of sorts, you really shouldn't use either of those distros. Use CentOS or RHEL, or something purpose built for a long term stable server. Yes I"m aware of Ubuntu and Fedora server editions -- but both distros are focused on being jacks-of-all-trades instead of purpose built as a server only. Clearly, saying Ubuntu works best on VMWare is a fallacy. Any Triple-A distro will work fine with minimal fuss.
      - mreiland 11y ago
        Thank you for not being a jackass who starts preaching to me about what I should or should not be doing with absolutely no knowledge of my work or my use case. I'm so glad you avoided doing that.
        Alupis 11y ago
        I'm not sure why you feel you need to be so disingenuous here - you're all over this thread arguing with everyone about Ubuntu being the best. But I'll bite. From your several posts, it's become clear you are running an Ubuntu guest as a desktop on top of VMWare. It seems rather silly to pay for a full VMware license to just run some desktops, not to mention hypervisors like VMware and Xen really aren't great at doing just desktop guests. You make claims that Ubuntu works better "hands down" on VMware than any other distro - which is absurd. It's far more likely you either haven't tried, or did something wrong. The things you point to that are "better" on Ubuntu are virtually (or literally) the same things on other distros, or have zero bearing of whatever distro the guest is (pause and resume are features of the hypervisor, not your distro). In any event, everything I previously said still holds true. If you need a server, use a server-focused distro.
        mreiland 11y ago
        You misunderstood me, but it looks like you're not the only one who did so I probably could have worded it better. > If I get to choose I'll run arch linux, but inside vmware it's ubuntu hands down. What I mean is the distro I reach for first is Arch Linux unless it has to run in vmware, then the choice for me is Ubuntu, hands down. I was making no comment about it being the best vmware distro "hands down". The entire post was just a quick note that I choose to run Ubuntu for reasons other than the environment reasons cited by the poster I was responding to. Having said that, this will be the last time I respond to you. You've obviously got some strange personal stake in what I consider to be a good linux distro and I have better things to do than argue with you about it.
  - anonbanker 11y ago
    Friends don't let friends use RPM.
- otis_inf 11y ago
  I use Mint 17.2 inside VMWare and didn't have a single problem. Not sure what VMWare version you're using, but 'hands down' suggests other distros have a lot of problems, but I don't see them.
  - tribaal 11y ago
    That would be because Mint is pretty much Ubuntu (it uses the Ubuntu archives and packages). There is added UI customisation on top, but that's irrelevant to it working better or not as a VMware guest.
    - otis_inf 11y ago
      I'd still be interested what massive probs other distros have on e.g. VMWare?
      - mreiland 11y ago
        Your wording there 'massive probs' is disingenuous. What I said was simply "works better", I never said anything about major problems. In fact, I specifically said the other distro's can be made to work just as well, but it takes more effort. But to answer your question, I've found desktop performance to be better in Ubuntu for the same specs, many distro's don't play well with pause/unpause (it can cause time skew that messes with things like https certs), and things of that nature. Then of course there's the "easy install", although a few other distro's feature it as well. Nothing that doesn't have fixes, but as someone who is more interested in getting the work done than tinkering with the linux install, I just go with Ubuntu.
      - merb 11y ago
        It's a burdon to install VMWare Drivers into systems other than ubuntu, either you use open-vm-tools and loose some functionality or you try to compile vmware tools by yourself, which is really hard on anything other than ubuntu. However open-vm-tools are getting better and better every day. In the past I had lots of trouble with them and up to Fedora 18 you mostly needed to rely on the vmware native tooling. arch had the same. Currently the only thing which open-vm-tools is missing is the 'unity'-mode. However on Arch you need to rely on AUR to get the filesystem driver and the network driver, which is really aweful on Fedora you can't install these in a easy way aswell. Only ubuntu has it which is mainly caused since open-vm-tools-dkms is not 'free'.
- jokr004 11y ago
  My experience with debian inside virtualbox on my local machine has been perfect. I've also had no issues with running it on vsphere, but I haven't tried with vmware workstation.
  - mreiland 11y ago
    I tried virtualbox a while back and the reason I eventually moved back to vmware is because vbox requires you to hit some API's in order to run a vm detached, which I do for a few of my VM's. VMWare you can do it by setting a preference and closing the window. It's not a big thing, but I was already established with vmware so I decided it wasn't worth the effort to work around it. I've also read that vmware is more performant than virtualbox both in general and in terms of hardware accelerated gpu. All 3 of those just pushed me to staying with vmware. However, I will say, I vastly preferred the UI for virtualbox. I've seen internet fights about it, but for me, virtualbox most definitely has the better UI.
    - jamiesonbecker 11y ago
      > vbox requires you to hit some API's in order to run a vm detached Not anymore. You can just launch the box without any GUI with one command line: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html#vboxheadless https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html#vboxheadless
      - mreiland 11y ago
        That's good to know, it always seemed strange that they didn't have a simple way of doing it.
    - hitgeek 11y ago
      assuming detached means without the window: you can also hold down the shift key when clicking the start button and it will run without opening the separate windows.
    - j_s 11y ago
      Setting up VirtualBox without a GUI is a royal pain! All of the command line parameters are documented, but there are no complete examples of a typical setup. Not too many people bother with it either, so examples online in blog posts are only semi-useful. I wound up setting one up on a different machine then working through the various commands required to get my config to match my example.
teekert 11y ago
I used to run Arch but as you say, it is so much more convenient to run the same OS local as you have on the server. Quickly testing scripts or even running a full Nginx/PHP/MariaDB stack locally to test things before uploading to a server environment that is (almost) identical is a nice thing.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
odiroot 11y ago
Exactly, my first job doing web development basically every developer worked on Ubuntu or derivative. And it was years ago.
- photosinensis 11y ago
  At my current company, those using Linux use Ubuntu. One guy is on Xfce, I'm using e17, and I don't know what the others use, as they're on a different team. I've become known for advocating its use.
SEJeff 11y ago
Honestly, the wave of containerization with things like docker make this entirely irrelevant. Me, I'm a fedora desktop user :)
- tribaal 11y ago
  I'd say your choice of OS is very relevant, on the contrary: A big part of that wave (namely LXC and LXD) is a Canonical project. That's what docker used for a long time (until, in my humble opinion, they decided they needed to differentiate and un-tie themselves) Source: https://linuxcontainers.org/ https://linuxcontainers.org/ (page footer)
  - SEJeff 11y ago
    They used LXC until they realized it was pretty flaky, yes. Then they realized that all it was is just a thin veneer around linux kernel namespaces and control groups, which they could easily write in golang. So they wrote libcontainer :)
    - tribaal 11y ago
      I'm going to ask you for your source here. Not because I don't take your argument at face value, but because I'm interested to know what exactly they consider flaky.
      - SEJeff 11y ago
        Source: the libcontainer release announcement: https://blog.docker.com/2014/03/docker-0-9-introducing-execution-drivers-and-libcontainer/ https://blog.docker.com/2014/03/docker-0-9-introducing-execu... """ Thanks to libcontainer, Docker out of the box can now manipulate namespaces, control groups, capabilities, apparmor profiles, network interfaces and firewalling rules – all in a consistent and predictable way, and without depending on LXC or any other userland package. This drastically reduces the number of moving parts, and insulates Docker from the side-effects introduced across versions and distributions of LXC. In fact, libcontainer delivered such a boost to stability that we decided to make it the default. """
arca_vorago 11y ago
I agree with this, but sometimes this is due to outside factors as well. Right now on my main laptop I am running Ubuntu, but the main reason is it's a Macbook Pro 2014 and Ubuntu was the only distro that just worked. Fedora 22 beta/OpenSuse came a close second, and Arch had some weird wifi issues I didn't want to spend two weeks digging into to fix.
- cauthon 11y ago
  Been debating between Ubuntu and Fedora on the same machine. What made Fedora fall short?
  - arca_vorago 11y ago
    Video card drivers, but it was because the the RPM fusion repos for 22 beta weren't out at the time, and so you were basically pulling in 21 drivers. I've been considering trying 22 again now it's out or even 23 alpha. I would like to know how it works for you if you try. Protip: Since I am gaming/gamedeving, I need video drivers to work, and on the MBP you HAVE to boot/install from BIOS mode and not UEFI mode if you want things to work well. Also, that whole experience of trying every distro known to man on the MBP made me hate apples weird u/EFI setup, and UEFI in general. /gimme bios back!
    - snuxoll 11y ago
      > Protip: Since I am gaming/gamedeving, I need video drivers to work, and on the MBP you HAVE to boot/install from BIOS mode and not UEFI mode if you want things to work well. Also, that whole experience of trying every distro known to man on the MBP made me hate apples weird u/EFI setup, and UEFI in general. Yes, please do hate Apple's garbage EFI implementation, maybe someday they'll actually get the hint and release UEFI compliant firmware. I use UEFI daily on four different systems in my house (Lenovo W540, Surface Pro, XPS 13 (2014), custom-build desktop) with no issues, but god help you if you try to boot anything but OS X on a Mac without using BIOS Emulation.
- mindcrime 11y ago
mindcrime 11y ago
A big reason why it dominates the cloud is tons of web developers use Ubuntu as their desktop Linux of choice. This is exactly why people were screaming at Red Hat back when they decided to kill their (then) consumer offering, and later when they started actively eschewing talk about desktop Linux. Everybody knew that developers drive adoption of server OS's and that once developers started moving away from Red Hat derived distros on the desktop that they would eventually start moving away server-side as well. But I guess the higher-ups at RH either didn't believe, or didn't care. Personally I still use Fedora as my personal desktop OS and mostly run CentOS, Fedora or Amazon Linux on servers. I never saw the appeal in Ubuntu. From what I recall, their main claim to fame had always been "we pre-ship all the proprietary audio/video codecs that RH won't ship" and the supposed superiority of apt over yum. I use Ubuntu on the desktop on my work provided laptop and it works well enough, but I don't see any particular advantage over Fedora. And I prefer yum (now dnf) to apt, so I doubt I'll switch anytime soon. Still, if RH cares about this sort of thing, they really should start embracing "Linux on the desktop" again.
- slgeorge 11y ago
  Seeing as you can recall as far back as before the "Enterprise" appellation to RedHat you're clearly a long-term user of Linux! If you've been using Linux for that long I'm pretty sure that all the distributions are basically the same, no? Technically they all draw from pretty much the same pool of code, with various different choices due to timing. And, if something isn't quite right you can always remember how to install things from source as we did in the "old days". Sure, there are plenty of differences, but these are mostly the equivalent of vim vs emacs - if you're good enough you can make either work. They're mostly just matters of personal preference. Though many users don't have the benefit of your level of experience. And, there should always be room for new users benefiting from Linux. So Ubuntu's tended to focus on being a Linux that works "by default" on the desktop and make sensible choices for developing in the Cloud.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    Yeah, I started with Linux about 1997 or so, and by about 2000 or 2001 was running Linux exclusively as my desktop OS. The distros certainly have a lot in common, but each has its quirks and idioms, and once you learn them, it's annoying to have to bother learning another. Like, once I've memorized how to do a lot of things with RPM and Yum, it becomes "friction" to suggest that I learn to do the same things with apt. I don't have any problem with Ubuntu, and I think it's fine for new users. I stick with Fedora really for two reasons: 1. The aforementioned familiarity. and 2. They are more ideologically committed to software freedom, in terms of not shipping things like mp3 support, where you have patent encumbrance issues. I have been trying to gradually shift my life to a place where I don't need that stuff at all, or where I do, I use OSS / free software to interact with it. I mean, I'm pragmatic enough to use VLC to watch DVD's, but I don't go out of my way to use any content that isn't in a free format, etc.
schnevets 11y ago
Not to mention all of those developers are writing their own "Getting started with AWS!!!" blog posts that recommend Ubuntu as well. If I were Amazon (and if I really cared which OS my customers used), I would rebrand Amazon Linux. Having the company name in the title just screams "vendor lock-in" to management.
- wyaeld 11y ago
  What else are they supposed to call it? Its Amazon's tweak and modifications to the Fedora/Enterprise Linux family, tuned and tweaked for their platform
ajross 11y ago
That's partly true, I'm sure. But the other half IMHO is that Ubuntu's LTS releases are available for free. Fedora is arguably a better distro, but the 18 month upgrade cycle is just too rapid for typical server deployments. RHEL costs a ton, and CentOS and Debian lack corporate backing. So if I need to throw up a server right now that I'm reasonably sure will be supported for the ~5 year lifetime of the image and I don't have funding and a Red Hat sales rep already set up for licensing new instals, then an Ubuntu LTS is really the best option available.
- Alupis 11y ago
  > CentOS and Debian lack corporate backing. Not anymore, CentOS is fully backed by Red Hat now.
stephengillie 11y ago
> It's really very convenient to develop and deploy on the same OS. That's also seen in the Microsoft ecosystem. Server 2012 R2 is very similar to Windows 8.1, right down to the UI. Every major release since 2003/XP has been a joined pair of Server and Desktop OSes, with only minor differences between them, such as a few DLLs and background/foreground prioritization. You can literally build an MVP by adding the IIS feature to your desktop OS and grabbing the demo of SQL Server, and run it from there too. Of course, you'll want to scale them onto separate servers once you get any kind of load, but you can prove that your code works from a single desktop. Windows 10/Server 2016 is almost a break in the above pattern. But they are close enough time-wise that I'm sure they use mostly the same binaries again.

vacri 11y ago

> The desktop is a nice add-on, but it's not Canonical's focus nor should it be. Given that one of Canonical's main projects is it's own desktop system that works the same on desktop and mobile, that statement just simply isn't true.

digi_owl 11y ago
Even more so given that Ubuntu started as a desktop Linux distro.

mreiland 11y ago

I run Ubuntu locally because it tends to work better as a vmware guest. You can get other distro's to work with the quality of ubuntu, but not without a lot more hassle. If I get to choose I'll run arch linux, but inside vmware it's ubuntu hands down.

zxcvcxz 11y ago
>but not without a lot more hassle. Have you tried the latest versions of Fedora? The only thing I needed to do on Fedora was install video codecs and flash, which weren't automatically installed as they are in Ubuntu.
- mreiland 11y ago
  I have not, perhaps I was being a bit hyperbolic but I think in general the sentiment is still mostly true.
  - Alupis 11y ago
    If we're talking about Desktops running on VMWare, Fedora should give you what you need. Of course it's personal preference, so Ubuntu will work as well. However, if you are using it as a server of sorts, you really shouldn't use either of those distros. Use CentOS or RHEL, or something purpose built for a long term stable server. Yes I"m aware of Ubuntu and Fedora server editions -- but both distros are focused on being jacks-of-all-trades instead of purpose built as a server only. Clearly, saying Ubuntu works best on VMWare is a fallacy. Any Triple-A distro will work fine with minimal fuss.
    - mreiland 11y ago
      Thank you for not being a jackass who starts preaching to me about what I should or should not be doing with absolutely no knowledge of my work or my use case. I'm so glad you avoided doing that.
      - Alupis 11y ago
        I'm not sure why you feel you need to be so disingenuous here - you're all over this thread arguing with everyone about Ubuntu being the best. But I'll bite. From your several posts, it's become clear you are running an Ubuntu guest as a desktop on top of VMWare. It seems rather silly to pay for a full VMware license to just run some desktops, not to mention hypervisors like VMware and Xen really aren't great at doing just desktop guests. You make claims that Ubuntu works better "hands down" on VMware than any other distro - which is absurd. It's far more likely you either haven't tried, or did something wrong. The things you point to that are "better" on Ubuntu are virtually (or literally) the same things on other distros, or have zero bearing of whatever distro the guest is (pause and resume are features of the hypervisor, not your distro). In any event, everything I previously said still holds true. If you need a server, use a server-focused distro.
        mreiland 11y ago
        You misunderstood me, but it looks like you're not the only one who did so I probably could have worded it better. > If I get to choose I'll run arch linux, but inside vmware it's ubuntu hands down. What I mean is the distro I reach for first is Arch Linux unless it has to run in vmware, then the choice for me is Ubuntu, hands down. I was making no comment about it being the best vmware distro "hands down". The entire post was just a quick note that I choose to run Ubuntu for reasons other than the environment reasons cited by the poster I was responding to. Having said that, this will be the last time I respond to you. You've obviously got some strange personal stake in what I consider to be a good linux distro and I have better things to do than argue with you about it.
- anonbanker 11y ago
  Friends don't let friends use RPM.
otis_inf 11y ago
I use Mint 17.2 inside VMWare and didn't have a single problem. Not sure what VMWare version you're using, but 'hands down' suggests other distros have a lot of problems, but I don't see them.
- tribaal 11y ago
  That would be because Mint is pretty much Ubuntu (it uses the Ubuntu archives and packages). There is added UI customisation on top, but that's irrelevant to it working better or not as a VMware guest.
  - otis_inf 11y ago
    I'd still be interested what massive probs other distros have on e.g. VMWare?
    - mreiland 11y ago
      Your wording there 'massive probs' is disingenuous. What I said was simply "works better", I never said anything about major problems. In fact, I specifically said the other distro's can be made to work just as well, but it takes more effort. But to answer your question, I've found desktop performance to be better in Ubuntu for the same specs, many distro's don't play well with pause/unpause (it can cause time skew that messes with things like https certs), and things of that nature. Then of course there's the "easy install", although a few other distro's feature it as well. Nothing that doesn't have fixes, but as someone who is more interested in getting the work done than tinkering with the linux install, I just go with Ubuntu.
    - merb 11y ago
      It's a burdon to install VMWare Drivers into systems other than ubuntu, either you use open-vm-tools and loose some functionality or you try to compile vmware tools by yourself, which is really hard on anything other than ubuntu. However open-vm-tools are getting better and better every day. In the past I had lots of trouble with them and up to Fedora 18 you mostly needed to rely on the vmware native tooling. arch had the same. Currently the only thing which open-vm-tools is missing is the 'unity'-mode. However on Arch you need to rely on AUR to get the filesystem driver and the network driver, which is really aweful on Fedora you can't install these in a easy way aswell. Only ubuntu has it which is mainly caused since open-vm-tools-dkms is not 'free'.
jokr004 11y ago
My experience with debian inside virtualbox on my local machine has been perfect. I've also had no issues with running it on vsphere, but I haven't tried with vmware workstation.
- mreiland 11y ago
  I tried virtualbox a while back and the reason I eventually moved back to vmware is because vbox requires you to hit some API's in order to run a vm detached, which I do for a few of my VM's. VMWare you can do it by setting a preference and closing the window. It's not a big thing, but I was already established with vmware so I decided it wasn't worth the effort to work around it. I've also read that vmware is more performant than virtualbox both in general and in terms of hardware accelerated gpu. All 3 of those just pushed me to staying with vmware. However, I will say, I vastly preferred the UI for virtualbox. I've seen internet fights about it, but for me, virtualbox most definitely has the better UI.
  - jamiesonbecker 11y ago
    > vbox requires you to hit some API's in order to run a vm detached Not anymore. You can just launch the box without any GUI with one command line: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html#vboxheadless https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html#vboxheadless
    - mreiland 11y ago
      That's good to know, it always seemed strange that they didn't have a simple way of doing it.
  - hitgeek 11y ago
    assuming detached means without the window: you can also hold down the shift key when clicking the start button and it will run without opening the separate windows.
  - j_s 11y ago
    Setting up VirtualBox without a GUI is a royal pain! All of the command line parameters are documented, but there are no complete examples of a typical setup. Not too many people bother with it either, so examples online in blog posts are only semi-useful. I wound up setting one up on a different machine then working through the various commands required to get my config to match my example.

teekert 11y ago

I used to run Arch but as you say, it is so much more convenient to run the same OS local as you have on the server. Quickly testing scripts or even running a full Nginx/PHP/MariaDB stack locally to test things before uploading to a server environment that is (almost) identical is a nice thing.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

odiroot 11y ago

Exactly, my first job doing web development basically every developer worked on Ubuntu or derivative. And it was years ago.

photosinensis 11y ago
At my current company, those using Linux use Ubuntu. One guy is on Xfce, I'm using e17, and I don't know what the others use, as they're on a different team. I've become known for advocating its use.

SEJeff 11y ago

Honestly, the wave of containerization with things like docker make this entirely irrelevant. Me, I'm a fedora desktop user :)

tribaal 11y ago
I'd say your choice of OS is very relevant, on the contrary: A big part of that wave (namely LXC and LXD) is a Canonical project. That's what docker used for a long time (until, in my humble opinion, they decided they needed to differentiate and un-tie themselves) Source: https://linuxcontainers.org/ https://linuxcontainers.org/ (page footer)
- SEJeff 11y ago
  They used LXC until they realized it was pretty flaky, yes. Then they realized that all it was is just a thin veneer around linux kernel namespaces and control groups, which they could easily write in golang. So they wrote libcontainer :)
  - tribaal 11y ago
    I'm going to ask you for your source here. Not because I don't take your argument at face value, but because I'm interested to know what exactly they consider flaky.
    - SEJeff 11y ago
      Source: the libcontainer release announcement: https://blog.docker.com/2014/03/docker-0-9-introducing-execution-drivers-and-libcontainer/ https://blog.docker.com/2014/03/docker-0-9-introducing-execu... """ Thanks to libcontainer, Docker out of the box can now manipulate namespaces, control groups, capabilities, apparmor profiles, network interfaces and firewalling rules – all in a consistent and predictable way, and without depending on LXC or any other userland package. This drastically reduces the number of moving parts, and insulates Docker from the side-effects introduced across versions and distributions of LXC. In fact, libcontainer delivered such a boost to stability that we decided to make it the default. """

arca_vorago 11y ago

I agree with this, but sometimes this is due to outside factors as well. Right now on my main laptop I am running Ubuntu, but the main reason is it's a Macbook Pro 2014 and Ubuntu was the only distro that just worked. Fedora 22 beta/OpenSuse came a close second, and Arch had some weird wifi issues I didn't want to spend two weeks digging into to fix.

cauthon 11y ago
Been debating between Ubuntu and Fedora on the same machine. What made Fedora fall short?
- arca_vorago 11y ago
  Video card drivers, but it was because the the RPM fusion repos for 22 beta weren't out at the time, and so you were basically pulling in 21 drivers. I've been considering trying 22 again now it's out or even 23 alpha. I would like to know how it works for you if you try. Protip: Since I am gaming/gamedeving, I need video drivers to work, and on the MBP you HAVE to boot/install from BIOS mode and not UEFI mode if you want things to work well. Also, that whole experience of trying every distro known to man on the MBP made me hate apples weird u/EFI setup, and UEFI in general. /gimme bios back!
  - snuxoll 11y ago
    > Protip: Since I am gaming/gamedeving, I need video drivers to work, and on the MBP you HAVE to boot/install from BIOS mode and not UEFI mode if you want things to work well. Also, that whole experience of trying every distro known to man on the MBP made me hate apples weird u/EFI setup, and UEFI in general. Yes, please do hate Apple's garbage EFI implementation, maybe someday they'll actually get the hint and release UEFI compliant firmware. I use UEFI daily on four different systems in my house (Lenovo W540, Surface Pro, XPS 13 (2014), custom-build desktop) with no issues, but god help you if you try to boot anything but OS X on a Mac without using BIOS Emulation.
mindcrime 11y ago

mindcrime 11y ago

A big reason why it dominates the cloud is tons of web developers use Ubuntu as their desktop Linux of choice. This is exactly why people were screaming at Red Hat back when they decided to kill their (then) consumer offering, and later when they started actively eschewing talk about desktop Linux. Everybody knew that developers drive adoption of server OS's and that once developers started moving away from Red Hat derived distros on the desktop that they would eventually start moving away server-side as well. But I guess the higher-ups at RH either didn't believe, or didn't care. Personally I still use Fedora as my personal desktop OS and mostly run CentOS, Fedora or Amazon Linux on servers. I never saw the appeal in Ubuntu. From what I recall, their main claim to fame had always been "we pre-ship all the proprietary audio/video codecs that RH won't ship" and the supposed superiority of apt over yum. I use Ubuntu on the desktop on my work provided laptop and it works well enough, but I don't see any particular advantage over Fedora. And I prefer yum (now dnf) to apt, so I doubt I'll switch anytime soon. Still, if RH cares about this sort of thing, they really should start embracing "Linux on the desktop" again.

slgeorge 11y ago
Seeing as you can recall as far back as before the "Enterprise" appellation to RedHat you're clearly a long-term user of Linux! If you've been using Linux for that long I'm pretty sure that all the distributions are basically the same, no? Technically they all draw from pretty much the same pool of code, with various different choices due to timing. And, if something isn't quite right you can always remember how to install things from source as we did in the "old days". Sure, there are plenty of differences, but these are mostly the equivalent of vim vs emacs - if you're good enough you can make either work. They're mostly just matters of personal preference. Though many users don't have the benefit of your level of experience. And, there should always be room for new users benefiting from Linux. So Ubuntu's tended to focus on being a Linux that works "by default" on the desktop and make sensible choices for developing in the Cloud.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  Yeah, I started with Linux about 1997 or so, and by about 2000 or 2001 was running Linux exclusively as my desktop OS. The distros certainly have a lot in common, but each has its quirks and idioms, and once you learn them, it's annoying to have to bother learning another. Like, once I've memorized how to do a lot of things with RPM and Yum, it becomes "friction" to suggest that I learn to do the same things with apt. I don't have any problem with Ubuntu, and I think it's fine for new users. I stick with Fedora really for two reasons: 1. The aforementioned familiarity. and 2. They are more ideologically committed to software freedom, in terms of not shipping things like mp3 support, where you have patent encumbrance issues. I have been trying to gradually shift my life to a place where I don't need that stuff at all, or where I do, I use OSS / free software to interact with it. I mean, I'm pragmatic enough to use VLC to watch DVD's, but I don't go out of my way to use any content that isn't in a free format, etc.

schnevets 11y ago

Not to mention all of those developers are writing their own "Getting started with AWS!!!" blog posts that recommend Ubuntu as well. If I were Amazon (and if I really cared which OS my customers used), I would rebrand Amazon Linux. Having the company name in the title just screams "vendor lock-in" to management.

wyaeld 11y ago
What else are they supposed to call it? Its Amazon's tweak and modifications to the Fedora/Enterprise Linux family, tuned and tweaked for their platform

ajross 11y ago

That's partly true, I'm sure. But the other half IMHO is that Ubuntu's LTS releases are available for free. Fedora is arguably a better distro, but the 18 month upgrade cycle is just too rapid for typical server deployments. RHEL costs a ton, and CentOS and Debian lack corporate backing. So if I need to throw up a server right now that I'm reasonably sure will be supported for the ~5 year lifetime of the image and I don't have funding and a Red Hat sales rep already set up for licensing new instals, then an Ubuntu LTS is really the best option available.

Alupis 11y ago
> CentOS and Debian lack corporate backing. Not anymore, CentOS is fully backed by Red Hat now.

stephengillie 11y ago

> It's really very convenient to develop and deploy on the same OS. That's also seen in the Microsoft ecosystem. Server 2012 R2 is very similar to Windows 8.1, right down to the UI. Every major release since 2003/XP has been a joined pair of Server and Desktop OSes, with only minor differences between them, such as a few DLLs and background/foreground prioritization. You can literally build an MVP by adding the IIS feature to your desktop OS and grabbing the demo of SQL Server, and run it from there too. Of course, you'll want to scale them onto separate servers once you get any kind of load, but you can prove that your code works from a single desktop. Windows 10/Server 2016 is almost a break in the above pattern. But they are close enough time-wise that I'm sure they use mostly the same binaries again.