The "It's Just a Desktop Distro" Problem

[jorge o. castro]

Ok, I've been using Ubuntu since the beginning, and while I haven't 
ruled it out as a distribution that I'd use as a server, but I always 
thought it was geared towards the desktop specifically. Apparently 
there's a kind of communication chasm here. I had always thought "Ubuntu 
for desktops, Debian for servers".

This was made more evident to me when I asked some friends at the bar 
"Hey ... would you guys use Ubuntu as a server?"

I was met with puzzled faces and one or two "I thought it was a desktop 
distribution?" looks. I saw some mention of this `problem` in the irc 
channel so I thought I'd bring it up. Does Ubuntu have a "desktop only" 
image problem? I think so.

[ cut out 15 paragraphs of why this problem exists, but screw that, we 
all know it's there, let's get to solutions ]

I'm a network administrator so I have some ideas on how to fix some of 
this. Of course, admin stuff is a very personal subject to admins, so 
naturally, we all have ideas on how to make this rule, so I thought I'd 
start a discussion on how to make Ubuntu more admin friendly for post-Hoary:

* Market the administrator-features better - Admins want NFS installers, 
minimal network installers that don't install everything, and more 
control overall. GDM popping up for a desktop user is great, but not on 
a server. The default desktop installation doesn't work for server 
stuff. Conservative admins are /bastards/, you say udev, kernel 2.6, 
hal, and dbus to a conservative server admin and they're having a heart 
attack. Personally, the 2.6.8 problems with XFS has ruled out Warty as a 
server-solution for me. On a random laptop that's no big deal, but man, 
on a server, that's unacceptable.

d-i has lots of expert options available, they should be more visible 
for a server audience but can still be out of the way for the general 
populace, perhaps a "server" boot option. Something like "expert" but 
more geared towards server guys. Of course, experienced d-i guys know 
how to do this stuff, but there's no easy way for a new admin to know 
this stuff is possible.

* Server Tools - Some things just need tools. I can plop any competent 
network administrator (even the non-linux ones) in front of YAST and he 
can do most of it by just fumbling around. Things likes "DNS Server" and 
"FTP Server" make it easy for new users to administer services. This 
just isn't available in Ubuntu. One central administrative interface 
where an admin can change things without even having to worry about the 
OS would be nice.

* Server Tools Part 2 - You know what rules about commercial server 
distributions? Management. For example, I can log into my Red Hat 
Network account, click 2 web form boxes, and apply security fixes on 10, 
50, or 500 boxes, click apply, and it's done. Sure, I can script and 
cron this in Ubuntu, but it's not as simple or "Just Works". Take it a 
step further, give me nice LDAP integrations tools, give me something 
that will log onto an Active Directory network out of the box, give me 
something that will replace a Domain Controller with 2 or three clicks. 
Give me Kerberos support for everything. Take a good hard look at what 
an Windows administrator can do with an Active Directory, and then look 
at at we have available. It's not even close, we're hurting. Novell has 
their stuff, and Red Hat has their newly acquired Netscape stuff .. 
Naturally, this is tough, expensive work, but charge a fair price and 
see what happens. Ask anyone who runs a decent sized network, Single 
Sign on isn't trivial, give us a competitive solution. Give us something 
where I can sit there an tell my boss "We can move to Ubuntu for this 
set of services and have the same management capability that we already 
have in Windows". (Lofty goal, I know)

* Fix the "Fame" Problem - I can nearly name the entire Ubuntu desktop 
team right off the top of my head. I can't name anyone on the server 
team (although I'm guessing some people are members of both). We read 
about all the cool desktop things and mockups on planet.gnome and 
planet.debian yet there isn't someone blogging things like "I've got 
Postgres 7.4.x in, and 8.x is prepped in the dev version, let's all go 
get drunk!" We're reading about all the cool boot time improvements and 
audio stuff from the Mataro conference, but where's the propaganda 
helping me deploy Apache2 on Ubuntu?

* Market the Debian Factor - I'm kind of unsure on this one, as Ubuntu 
is clearly its own distro, but as a long time Debian user though, I 
can't help but want to market the inherited features. Look at the forums 
and lists, lots of new users from other distributions. People need to 
know that debconf rocks for getting 90% of the server side stuff up and 
running for most use cases. How many people know that when in doubt, 
what they need to do is look in /usr/share/doc/$packagename? How many 
server admins out there are following some outdated Apache thing they 
found on google instead of letting apt and debconf do the hard work for 
them? Sure, lots of this is in the wiki and whatnot, but look at the 
typical "How to use Foo" on Oreillynet or Newsforge. Nine times out of 
then, the first 2 pages are how to install the program. LAMP takes 10 
minutes to setup with apt in Ubuntu at most, market that strength!

* Be as bold server side as you are on the desktop - Hoary is packaging 
GNOME 2.9. This naturally attracts people who want to bleed on the 
desktop. How about some experimental PHP5 and PostgreSQL 8 stuff for the 
server folk?

* High Value User - A long time ago I heard a radio interview with 
Brendan Eich, one of the mozilla.org guys, and he said something pretty 
important, something he called the "high value user". The top tier of a 
certain group, highly influential people. They targeted this group. 
Things like other developers. It's no secret that Ubuntu is pro-Python. 
There needs to be some upstream marketing here. Given Ubuntu's strong 
use of Python, surely getting projects like Plone, Zope, Moin, and 
others to promote Ubuntu as a premier Python platform would be a good 
idea. You guys are doing all the Python work and integration anyway, 
might as well drag upstream along with you. :) I can think of half a 
dozen Sun, Red Hat, and Novell desktop people that have blogged about 
how great the Ubuntu desktop is, yet I can't think of any server-side 
guys who have even mentioned Ubuntu in the same light. Having them 
publicly mention how great Ubuntu is a server and development platform 
would be great. Target them!

* Reputation - This just takes time. A good number of admins will look 
at "based on Debian Unstable" and will just take a look-and-see 
approach. Admins are conservative by default, so you guys are stuck 
here, there's no "distro of the month" experimentation like there is 
with desktop guys. Obviously the strength of each release will shape the 
overall reputation, so time will tell on this.

My 2 cents,

-jorge