Ubuntu Advanced?

[Peteris Krisjanis]

2009/8/25 Jan-Michael Heller <jan at mail.hansis-braindump.de>:
> Hi there,
>
> is singed up this mailinglist, because i thought of having an
> Ubuntu-flavor for corporate use.
> I experienced that ubuntu in its form now (8.04~9.04) is a bit too automatic to
> handle well and leave customers long-time unsupported. I know for some
> people out there, the fact that sometime anything automates wrong in
> ubuntu, gives money to them, because they get payed for support.
> But aren't we all interested in a system, that we can hand-out to anybody
> and it will just run and be easy to maintain?
> Full automation is one aspect, that makes it easy for homeusers. But in
> a corporate environment a teached person (should) handle with the
> problems the users have.

You are talking about LTS here :) Dapper LTS was very strongly
supported and was very very polished. Hardy is still the same but I am
using bloatin edge versions, so I can't surerly say that it is rock
stable. However, again, it was very polished and robust last time I
used it.

> What, if there would be a long-time-supported or what ever called
> flavour of ubuntu, that is easy to maintain, meaning:
> No automated driverbuilds at bootup and
> no changings in versions, of course

Those drivebuilds happens only after you upgrade. Hardy had nice bunch
of upgrades for nvidia and stuff, but now I think it is rather calm.
LTS doesn't change versions of software unless you're using backports
repository (which is disabled by default).

> only security updates

You can do it already by yourself. Just disable all other repositories
excluding security ones - via /etc/apt/sources.list or System =>
Administration => Software Sources.

> great robustnes:
> - linux - just proofen hardware-detection at bootup, no underlying

Just ensure boxes have up-to-date hwdata package. Otherway, I think it
is already there.

>  skripts, that generate configurationfiles, for everything they see and
>  keep it forever
> - better tested (community is there to help, some unixers would like
>  easy-to-maintain systems for ther families too)

But it is already tested a lot and it is easy to maintain for
families, there are lot of stories about grandma using Ubuntu floating
around.

> - A centralized configuration that is under /etc/ and not too often
>  changed by scripts, only if that is explicitly necessary.

It is already done, as a basic principle of Debian and therefore Ubuntu too.

>  And a bit more tidied-up configuration-tools that really use /etc/
>  like the admin does.

Yes, I agree, some nice guis for some uncovered system settings would be nice.

> Ubuntu was so nice and tidy, because of its debian-flavour in the
> beginnig and now its too much affected by many skript-features, that
> make your life hard.

For example? As far as I know, you still can turn off all scripts and
run the tidy ship.

> Maybe someone knows, how Canonical thinks about corporate use of Ubuntu,
> but good unix-systems are known for their robustness, and this is
> something, that ubuntu is still missing a bit (make it just a little bit more like
> Knoppix)

What exactly it miss? So far as I have seen there is no streamlined
practice/doc/knowhow places about it, but Ubuntu is used in corps.
Anyway, it is question to ask Canonical directly, but they offer lot
of choices even for individual users now - begining with phone/email
support and ending with serious problem solving. And even so - there
are at least bunch of companies with very compentent specialists who
dig Ubuntu/Debian as they work with such systems every day in their
daily work.

> And I am not an enemy of scripts, but they should be used with care.
>
> I hope someone understands me.
>
> regards
>
> Jan

If you about serious about implementing Ubuntu in Enterprise and have
concrete qestions about implementation - I suggest contact Canonical
about it, because it will require serious expertise.

Cheers,
Peter.