Ubuntu vs Debian for Enterprise Production Servers

[email.listen at googlemail.com]

Am Fri, 17. November 2006 02:51 schrieb GNU Linux:
> Hello all,
>
> I'm not creating a flame war here but I just want to get suggestions
> especially from those who administers enterprise production servers.  I
> am still confused on what to use in the future.  Can you list some pros
> and cons on using either of the two distributions?  Let's base the
> comparison between the Dapper Drake LTS and probably the next stable
> release for Debian which is Etch.  Also, I am more particular with an
> AMD64 architecture.

For Enterprise Production Servers it is a must to have security updates for 
all applications used. So have a look to the universe and multiverse 
repositories and if you dont need any of the applications in there you may 
use Ubuntu for your needs.  
So if you don't need a virus scanner as clamav or amavis(-ng/-new), snort and 
acidbase for traffic monitoring, aide for intruder detection, afbackup or 
amanda or backula for server-client backups, heimdahl for kerberos 
authentication, ..., ..., ...

In the moment I would say that using Ubuntu for Enterprise Production Servers 
is a no-no due to the missing security support for a lot of packages which 
are mostly used on servers. 

This if you plan to set up the servers and do the support by yourself. 

But I'm shure this will change if Ubuntu is interested to win potential users 
in this field. 

In the moment there are no Ubuntu based Server distributions as there are 
RH-Enterprise Server or SUSE Enterprise Server or Univention Coorporate / 
Communicatio Server (Debian based) which come along with a lot of pre 
configured services running out of the box after the installation.


But IMHO this is only one side of the coin. 
There is also a need for highly qualified on-site support, at least in most 
cases. Here in Germany there are some very competent small and midrange 
companies who offer such a service as there are credativ, intevation, SerNet, 
tarent, univention and others. You will find a list of companies on the home 
page of live (Linux Verband) [1] which is a alliance of Linux Companies.
As far as I know only credativ is offering support for Ubuntu. But you will 
find companies who offer Ubuntu Support on the Ubuntu Home Pages.

So if you find a company who will do the security support for Ubuntu packages 
on your server than Ubuntu may be a choice too.

[1] http://www.linux-verband.de/

regards,
thomas