2c about the development of ubuntu

[Udo 'Robos' Puetz]

On Sun, 01.01.06, Ben Collins <ben.collins at ubuntu.com> wrote:

Hello Ben and List.

> On Sun, 2006-01-01 at 16:47 +0100, Udo 'Robos' Puetz wrote: 
> > And why does ubuntu have to cater the servers? Doesn't debian do this *very*
> > good? Why do you need 2.6.15 on a server? I think an admin should even be
> > kicked for using this on a server! Leave debian a little breating space and
> > the collaboration will be lots better.
> 
> Being a good server platform is not the same as what we are doing.
> Debian is great for server admins because they can install just about
> anything they want and tweak it to their hearts content.
> 
> Ubuntu-Server is a whole different type of server support. Our intention
> is to get hardware certification. Something that has been hard to do for
> Debian (through no fault of their own).

That I don't really understand. We are talking linux here, as in kernel,
right? I know that ubuntu, as debian, as fedora, suse and whoever, all have
their patches that they apply to the vanilla kernel from kernel.org. I don't
like this very much since it spreads the whole development/patch thing all
over the place but Linus likes it and his word is law.
But why does this certification have to be for the ubuntu kernel - instead
of the debian kernel? Debian is sort of the foundation of a lot of distros -
so a certified kernel there (with proper surroundings) would benefit a lot
of distros and would make a better impact than an ubuntu certified kernel,
wouldn't it? 
I know few about these high end machines but I had to install oracle 9.2i
and 10g on some small 19'' machine recently and (company decision) had used
fedora for this. Fedora isn't "certified" and yet it is the foundation of
redhat enterprise server and that is certified. All I had to do was
increment some values (max threads and such) and install some packages and
it worked.

> An admin that wants Debian running on the companies high dollar database
> server is going to find it very hard to get support from the hardware
> vendor and from the application vendor (say Oracle for example). If they
> could install Ubuntu-Server, with full support from us, and support from
> the hardware and application vendor, then they are happy (they get a
> Debian based dist), the vendors are happy, and the company running the
> system is happy (and, of course, we are happy :)

Regarding my comment above, you will inject that oracle won't help me
because I used a non-certified distro. But this is the real thing:
do we want to follow the stupid game the "big companies" play and pride us
with being "certified" - although we run the same kernel and libc as any
other disto or do we force them - yes, linux and the distros have that power
already in my humble opinion - to "certify" linux-2.6.15.tar.bz2 straight
from kernel.org and libc from gnu.org? With all the standardisation going on
with freedesktop.org, FHS and such - do we need to certify certain distros?
I mean, to some win admin or old-school unix admin a "certified" distro
might look sexy and might legitimate his decision to spend 1000$ on rhe, but
we, you and - I hope - me, know that this is rubbish. 

> Ubuntu-Server isn't meant to replace Debian running on your i486 box
> doing firewall for your home LAN (although you're welcome to use it
> there, and we appreciate it), since you can already do that with Ubuntu.
> It's a much more focused effort to go where Debian usually can't.
> 
> Disclaimer: I'm speaking as the kernel maintainer, not as someone who
> actually makes these decisions. I could be a little off on what
> Ubuntu-Server is all about, but I think this is the general idea.
> 
> Also, why wouldn't someone run 2.6.15 on a server?

Because it hasn't been tested well enough? Why shouldn't you have run 2.4.13 
(mind the 4) on the day of it's release? Because that would have been *sort
of* bad...
Cheers
Udo 'Robos' Puetz
> -- 
>    Ben Collins <ben.collins at ubuntu.com>
>    Developer
>    Ubuntu Linux
> 
> 
> -- 
> ubuntu-devel mailing list
> ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
> 

-- 
Robos - 
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