[Media] 8.04 Servers - Wikipedia

[Michael Hutchinson]

Hello everyone,

I just read the whole thread of this topic. It would appear that
computer geeks (or technicians, whatever you call yourselves) could do
with employing better communication and understanding.

I, for one, have to completely agree with everything Res said about
employing Distro's on production servers - but then I am a long time
Slackware user. The last thing anyone should have to do on a server is
"apt-get upgrade" possibly causing hundreds of Megs of download - over a
production link (real great for serving html then eh..).

If a distribution is "stable", why do updates come out for it,
consistently? As Res has already said - packages get messed with, and
therefore more packages need to come out. You may as well run your
Operating System over the internet.

When I have used Slackware as a production server, I've not had to
update anything to get it to work. It just works - and blow me down,
doesn't fall over either.

Now, before all the Ubuntu peeps get angry at me: Ubuntu is great too...
but for different reasons. It is a good desktop operating system that
isn't windows. As for using it as a server - sure, I've done this and it
is OK as a Virtual Server to use for testing and setting up minor
services upon. I am actually required to install Ubuntu LTS on a
production server at work soon - the boss made the O/S choice for this
one - if I had the choice it would be something more solid.. but hey we
don't get everything we want.

I do remember switching to Linux O/S's a long time ago for one reason
and one reason only: "Windows Updates". At the time they were busy
messing the computer up, not fixing anything. The whole apt-get thing is
just too close to that for me to be 100% comfortable with it.

I think that a lot of people have misinterpreted Res. He is obviously a
bit old-school in some respect (hence the preference for Unix-like
environments) - And can truly appreciate what an Operating system that
doesn't continually update itself is like to use (Extremely reliable). A
lot of you younger crowd simply wont get this because you've only ever
had access to, or, installed a Linux O/S that sucks down packages all
the time.

Understandably Res tried to make a point on deaf ears. 

Cheers,
Michael Hutchinson
Manux Solutions Limited