I have actually used Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Red Hat in production environments. All of them have quirks about each. Gentoo is completely compiled from source. So you may see a little performance gain in doing that but the draw back is patching takes forever. At the time I had a distcc cluster helping compile the code but even then patching was taking way too long. If you are running servers that don't require 24/7/365 services and can spend hours patching, gentoo may be a good option though most of the time this isn't the case. Also when the emerge fails (Gentoo update system) it is up to the Gentoo community to help fix these problems. I have seen emerge fail a handful of times while apt-get update/upgrade I have never seen fail. Another thing I require is to have a local mirror for updating my servers. Ubuntu/Debian are great about this because I can update the local mirror, patch development and testing environments, test to make sure nothing breaks, and then patch production. Then repeat. Red Hat requires subscription fees in order to update the servers. So I don't believe you can actually run a local mirror. I could be wrong but since I don't want the companies I work for spending a fortune on operating systems I use Ubuntu. Another thing I really like is that Ubuntu has a server edition while the default Red Hat installs include a GUI. I never need a GUI on my servers and I don't want the overhead of even running one on my servers. Yes you can remove the GUI stuff during the install but that is why I love the Ubuntu Server edition. Just the minimum set of packages in order to run the server efficiently. Ubuntu server edition is such a great product for enterprise solutions. I have over 50 production servers and probably another 200 in testing & development between Amazon EC2 and a data center I use. Ubuntu Server edition is certainly not a student/homePC os. I also absolutely love the LTS (Long Term Support) editions. Knowing I can focus on the services that the server is running and know it will be supported for 5 years is so nice. Ubuntu will be my choice for linux distro for the rest of my life. Ubuntu has done an excellent job. <div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Eliezer <<a href="mailto:eliezer@fullmetal1.dyndns.org">eliezer@fullmetal1.dyndns.org</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">i would ask him to show me the differences between ubuntu and RH or SUSE. it's almost the same kernel and almost the same software. the only thing is that there are other people working on maintaining the release packages and other stuff. i must say that john just kicked everything from your client words!! i had an thing with a friend at work about comparing gentoo and ubuntu on performance and scalability, if you want to take a system that works period you use ubuntu. if you want to start from almost scratch you will use gentoo. but just remember that every time you need to install new software or just update something you will need to recompile many things. and one of that major things about OS is that you can use and maintain it almost instantly. well my opinion<div class="im"> On 08/12/2010 17:47, Loïc de la Goutte wrote: </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im"> Hi Everybody, My company provides a Virtual Appliance based on Ubuntu JeOS. 1. Unfortunately, I am challenged by one of our customers who asks : “Why did you build your appliance on Ubuntu, as my vision is that Ubuntu is considered on the market place more as a student/homePC OS than an enterprise-OS as RedHat ?”. I want to convince him that we have objectively done the good choice. So, do you have such a white paper, that could lists : - Key differentiators of Ubuntu JeOS ? - VMware recommendation ? - List of Enterprise-grade appliances built over Ubunto JeOS ? Thanks in advance, Regards from Paris, France. </div><div class="im"> cid:image001.jpg@01CB5E4D.25DD3D60 Loïc DE LA GOUTTE Director of Product Management, Capacity Management EMEA </div> *Web* <a href="http://www.systar.com" target="_blank">www.systar.com</a> <<a href="http://www.systar.com/" target="_blank">http://www.systar.com/</a>><div class="im"> *Tel* +33 (0)1 49 11 45 28 *Cell* +33 (0)6 34 99 33 30 </div></blockquote> -- <div><div></div><div class="h5"> ubuntu-server mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com" target="_blank">ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server</a> More info: <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam</a> </div></div></blockquote></div>