Ubuntu advances: Why Ubuntu server installations will surge in 2010

I have several Red Hat licenses at $work. We give them money and they give us updates, support, and a nifty tool that tells us if patches are available. I'm not sure what applications the author is talking about. BTW, Canonical's support costs are within a few dollars of Red Hat for the base subscriptions. Red Hat does charge extra to support virtualization. It's not clear from Canonical's site if virtualization is supported under the server license.

IMO, the biggest boost for Ubuntu would be if Oracle certified Ubuntu server. Don't think that's happened yet.

Dave

I work at a fortune 100 company where the IT infrastructure runs on SLES. We originally ran redhat but switched in 2004, and have been happy with the change. However, over the past couple of years I've gotten interested in ubuntu, and migrated my own small shop and several small businesses from opensuse or SLES to ubuntu LTS server. I'm been quite impressed with the lean, mean install footprint, the ease of package management, and the overall performance and stability.

We could move all the basic unix infrastructure services at the fortune 100 firm from SLES to ubuntu and it would be a win - the problem is that we can't move our Oracle servers from SLES to ubuntu, and management seems pretty adamant about the "one flavor only" mantra.

So, Oracle is the only real obstacle to bringing in ubuntu in a wholesale replacement of SLES here. I remain hopeful over the long term. You may laugh at me, you may call me a dreamer, but:

I remember calling up Oracle one day in 1998 to ask about linux support (yeah right, HAHA) and got straight-armed, but a few days later I was at the Bastille day "Future of Linux" event in Santa Clara where Oracle folk lurked in the overflow crowd, and they got an earful. What they saw and heard there helped turn the tide, and shortly afterwards, Oracle came out in support of Linux.

Even Oracle can change, if things become obvious enough, and so, migration to ubuntu (or possibly debian) remains a long term, back burner goal for me.

"one flavor only" -> monoculture -> malware playground

Quoting: "one flavor only" -> monoculture -> malware playground

That definitely applies to windoze shops. Not sure how applicable that is to linux, certainly not to the same extent as windoze. But it is a popular meme that I could use to gain acceptance for the idea of more than one flavor of linux.

If we could run the generic unix infrastructure services on ubuntu or debian, and run Oracle on SLES I'd be happy with that state of affairs for now.

In the case of a Red Hat release (well, any distro, really), the more systems with full installations and default services, the more systems with vulnerability set X. Which RH release had that awful worm/botnet in 2000? Imagine an entire shop with just one release, all getting PWN3Z0R3D through a zero-day in a matter of minutes.

gus, can't you find an example less than ten years old? I doubt that a Linux monoculture would be very vulnerable, because it doesn't have the mechanisms that Windows (and the whole MS application stack) does to share and spread malware.

I used that example, because it's one I had to clean up.

@gus3 - was that the dns worm? I seem to recall cleaning up after a dns vulnerability around that time frame. In fact, I cleaned up a server for a friend of a friend, which led to me getting a very nice linux side gig.

IIRC, it was an FTP privilege escalation vulnerability.

gus, maybe the moral is "When your only tool is a mop, everything looks like a mess."

I will now punish myself for feeble attempt at humor.

How about some mop-based inspiration?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9W-smdTVjA

Ah, UHF - one of my favorite movies.... A cult classic!

So ubuntu has 95% of the linux desktop market - yeah, right. Stopped reading right there. I guess that's about as likely as ubuntu server installations surging in 2010. Don't waste your time with this PR nonsense. Seriously, how does the ubuntu PR department come up with this stuff.

The same way every other PR department does - very carefully selected studies and statistics. :P

To the earlier posters:

Statistics, never - if done honestly there is a good chance you will never see the numbers you need for your propaganda. That will not work. So pull what you need and believe from a dark, dank place and throw it at the wall. Hold your breath and business will follow*.

YBT

* Details require an executed, professional contract where I will tell nearly all**.

** And reasonably priced too.

When he writes "with analysts estimating their share up to 95 percent of the Linux desktop market" that means Ubuntu has an upper bound of 95% of the market. Survey a small number of users so that the standard error is large, and you've got your "up to 95 percent" number.

Made me run right over and read ubuntard.com again.

I doubt that anyone associated with Ubuntu would claim 95%, that is a ridiculous figure. I think the article author pulled it out of the air. The "Ubuntu Unleashed" book is pretty nice and deserves a bit of publicity.

aah. "up to 95%"

I always love commercials/pr reports/etc. that say such things. I immediately think "so...yer telling me it's anywhere from 0% to 95%" I guess with that terminology it's hard to be wrong, unless you are actually over 95%. :P