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It's kinda scary that there are so few mainstream Linux distros that people are willing to trust on their servers. Debian, RHEL, that's about it. And only one o

It's kinda scary that there are so few mainstream Linux distros that people are willing to trust on their servers. Debian, RHEL, that's about it. And only one of those is commonly supported by major vendors like Dell, HPE and EMC.

einpoklum 4y ago
Both of those have systemd, so some people are actually not willing to trust them...
sofixa 4y ago
What do you mean? Ubuntu is hugely popular (i recall some cloud provider saying it's the most popular distro they host), and so is SUSE in certain parts of the world (like Germany). I don't recall having problems with Dell server-related packages on Debian, even if their own crapware (OpenManage Essentials and then Enterprise, legitimately one of the worst pieces of software I've ever had the displeasure of using) for managing iDRACs and firmware came as a CentOS-based appliance.
- INTPenis 4y ago
  Well first of all Ubuntu is Debian based, so choosing one over the other is mostly semantics. And secondly, even if you can use Dell software, it's not supported. EMC for example will not support you if you don't use supported distros. It's still a frighteningly low number of distros considering we used to have an abundance of distros to hop around on for desktop use. Distrowatch.com for example, but for all those distros, when it comes to servers we narrow ourselves down to less than a handful.
  - mekster 4y ago
    How has desktop based distro got anything to do with server side distro? I don't care if DistroWatch shows bunch of random newbie friendly distro in the upper ranking, they're not corporate supported. Debian doesn't do clean 2 years LTS release cycle nor has 10 years extended support.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > EMC for example will not support you if you don't use supported distros. Support you how and with what? What does your storage vendor have to do with your server's distros? Even the distro running on the server itself doesn't matter, really, because it's not like Dell/HP are writing distro-specific userspace drivers.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      >What does your storage vendor have to do with your server's distros? Operating systems have a hardware compatibility list (HCL). If your product is not on the HCL for the operating system vendor and you have a problem--at least one somehow plausibly related to the interaction between your product and the server--neither vendor is obligated to support you. (They may well try but there's no guarantee.)
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
Many people, myself included, don’t trust Debian. They patch too much sometimes for dubious reasons and have a poor trail record when it comes to introducing bugs. I wouldn’t use it for anything work related. I have seen Gentoo used as a base to deploy binary packages veted by the org in the past. Gentoo provides tooling to do that and it worked fine. Oracle also still sell a distribution.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  What distro do you use?
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    For my personal server? ArchLinux, something I would never use professionally but enjoy on my machine. Packages are mostly vanilla and are updated quickly. The last software company I worked for used CentOS.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  Debian is well known for being the most stability and security focused among the major distros.
  - HNDV 4y ago
    https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number_b.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number... >On May 13th, 2008 the Debian project announced that Luciano Bello found an interesting vulnerability in the OpenSSL package they were distributing. The bug in question was caused by the removal of the following line of code from md_rand.c > MD_Update(&m,buf,j); > [ .. ] > MD_Update(&m,buf,j); /* purify complains */ >These lines were removed because they caused the Valgrind and Purify tools to produce warnings about the use of uninitialized data in any code that was linked to OpenSSL. You can see one such report to the OpenSSL team here. Removing this code has the side effect of crippling the seeding process for the OpenSSL PRNG. Instead of mixing in random data for the initial seed, the only “random” value that was used was the current process ID. On the Linux platform, the default maximum process ID is 32,768, resulting in a very small number of seed values being used for all PRNG operations. The most security focused uh? the distro where a maintainer modifies code he doesn't understand because valgrind complains about it? In one of the most important packages of a linux distribution? No. Anyone who has had memories of this event would treat anything stamped with debian's name as nuclear waste. Debian has had many conflicts with upstream projects for their relentlessly idiotic patching. Firefox once prohibited Debian from using the FF trademarked name and debian in turn renamed firefox "Iceweasel" in their distribution to continue shipping their tainted version. I'd trust any of these : RHEL/Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo and Arch over debian any day.
fcantournet 4y ago
Ubuntu is the largest deployment footprint, then debian, then RHEL. I wonder where Centos users went, given it is not the same anymore, but it used to run all of facebook at some point.
1MachineElf 4y ago
Don't forget SUSE.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  As an involuntary SUSE user, I urge you to please forget SUSE.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    What's wrong with Süse?

einpoklum 4y ago

Both of those have systemd, so some people are actually not willing to trust them...

sofixa 4y ago

What do you mean? Ubuntu is hugely popular (i recall some cloud provider saying it's the most popular distro they host), and so is SUSE in certain parts of the world (like Germany). I don't recall having problems with Dell server-related packages on Debian, even if their own crapware (OpenManage Essentials and then Enterprise, legitimately one of the worst pieces of software I've ever had the displeasure of using) for managing iDRACs and firmware came as a CentOS-based appliance.

INTPenis 4y ago
Well first of all Ubuntu is Debian based, so choosing one over the other is mostly semantics. And secondly, even if you can use Dell software, it's not supported. EMC for example will not support you if you don't use supported distros. It's still a frighteningly low number of distros considering we used to have an abundance of distros to hop around on for desktop use. Distrowatch.com for example, but for all those distros, when it comes to servers we narrow ourselves down to less than a handful.
- mekster 4y ago
  How has desktop based distro got anything to do with server side distro? I don't care if DistroWatch shows bunch of random newbie friendly distro in the upper ranking, they're not corporate supported. Debian doesn't do clean 2 years LTS release cycle nor has 10 years extended support.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > EMC for example will not support you if you don't use supported distros. Support you how and with what? What does your storage vendor have to do with your server's distros? Even the distro running on the server itself doesn't matter, really, because it's not like Dell/HP are writing distro-specific userspace drivers.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >What does your storage vendor have to do with your server's distros? Operating systems have a hardware compatibility list (HCL). If your product is not on the HCL for the operating system vendor and you have a problem--at least one somehow plausibly related to the interaction between your product and the server--neither vendor is obligated to support you. (They may well try but there's no guarantee.)

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

Many people, myself included, don’t trust Debian. They patch too much sometimes for dubious reasons and have a poor trail record when it comes to introducing bugs. I wouldn’t use it for anything work related. I have seen Gentoo used as a base to deploy binary packages veted by the org in the past. Gentoo provides tooling to do that and it worked fine. Oracle also still sell a distribution.

candiddevmike 4y ago
What distro do you use?
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  For my personal server? ArchLinux, something I would never use professionally but enjoy on my machine. Packages are mostly vanilla and are updated quickly. The last software company I worked for used CentOS.
goodpoint 4y ago
Debian is well known for being the most stability and security focused among the major distros.
- HNDV 4y ago
  https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number_b.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number... >On May 13th, 2008 the Debian project announced that Luciano Bello found an interesting vulnerability in the OpenSSL package they were distributing. The bug in question was caused by the removal of the following line of code from md_rand.c > MD_Update(&m,buf,j); > [ .. ] > MD_Update(&m,buf,j); /* purify complains */ >These lines were removed because they caused the Valgrind and Purify tools to produce warnings about the use of uninitialized data in any code that was linked to OpenSSL. You can see one such report to the OpenSSL team here. Removing this code has the side effect of crippling the seeding process for the OpenSSL PRNG. Instead of mixing in random data for the initial seed, the only “random” value that was used was the current process ID. On the Linux platform, the default maximum process ID is 32,768, resulting in a very small number of seed values being used for all PRNG operations. The most security focused uh? the distro where a maintainer modifies code he doesn't understand because valgrind complains about it? In one of the most important packages of a linux distribution? No. Anyone who has had memories of this event would treat anything stamped with debian's name as nuclear waste. Debian has had many conflicts with upstream projects for their relentlessly idiotic patching. Firefox once prohibited Debian from using the FF trademarked name and debian in turn renamed firefox "Iceweasel" in their distribution to continue shipping their tainted version. I'd trust any of these : RHEL/Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo and Arch over debian any day.

fcantournet 4y ago

Ubuntu is the largest deployment footprint, then debian, then RHEL. I wonder where Centos users went, given it is not the same anymore, but it used to run all of facebook at some point.

1MachineElf 4y ago

Don't forget SUSE.

einpoklum 4y ago
As an involuntary SUSE user, I urge you to please forget SUSE.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  What's wrong with Süse?