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Monday, 15 January 2007 |
After a series of recent frustrations with Fedora I decided to see if I could find a Linux distribution that better fit my needs. If have a few beefs with Fedora.
First, now that FedoraLegacy is out of business, the lifecycle of releases is too short. I recently completed an upgrade of this server from Fedora 4 to Fedora 6 and it was a considerable undertaking (restore the system to an offline server, practice the upgrade, fix all the stuff that breaks, document it all, then do the upgrade on the production box). Going forward, I'll have to go through the same process about once every 9 months.
Second, the updates to Fedora are not production quality, especially on less popular packages. I've never had an ssh update go bad, but I've had to rollback two upgrades on one Fedora server I have setup at home as a Xen server when the updated Xen kernels wouldn't boot. I've had similar problems running Fedora as a desktop OS, running yum-update broke enough stuff often enough that I always took snapshots before running yum (I was running Fedora as a desktop in VMWare). It was bad enough that I didn't run updates as often as I should.
Finally, I found I was uncomfortable with the positioning of Fedora with RedHat. They spin Fedora as their a "combination of stable and cutting-edge software". In practice, it's more a beta testing ground for the next version of RedHat Enterprise. RedHat will not provide support, even if you're willing to pay.
I decided to give Ubuntu a go. I tried it a while back, and while I was impressed with their approach I wasn't ready to make a move and didn't want to hop on the bandwagon of a new distro that might not be around in a year. Three releases and a year and half later, I decided it was time for another go.
I tried Ubuntu in three different capacities and it has met or exceeded my expectations in all three.
First, I tried it in a VMWare workstation VM. This is my "weekend computer" and was previously a Fedora 6 install. I downloaded the ISO, installed Ubuntu, and moved all my data from Fedora in about an hour. Ubuntu revealed a few advantages here. The install fits on one CD (Fedora spans 5 CDs), it is blazingly fast, the pace of updates are bearable and don't break stuff.
Second, I downloaded the server build and used it to create my homebrew NAS. Again, the whole thing fits on one CD, installs fast, and just works. With a bit of reading I now have a 600GB raid 5 array!
After that I was pretty impressed and feeling lucky so I decided to try it as an everyday operating system installed on a laptop. I happened to have access to a Dell D620 for at least a few weeks and dove right in. I was a little bummed out when X windows crashed as the install started, but a quick google around bailed me out and also included instructions to install support for the video card and widescreen display. MP3 support was a few more clicks away, and in less than an hour I was able to setup QEMU to create a virtual machine to run XP when I need it (alas, my day job requires it and I still reluctantly rely on Microsoft Money). I haven't switched from my regular laptop (a Lenovo T60 with Windows XP), but with the XP VM running now, a complete switch may not be too far away...
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 16 January 2007 )
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