Strong Growth for Debian (Netcraft) [LWN.net]

Netcraft has published a report on web server operating systems which shows that Debian is growing faster than the others. But it doesn't stop there: "The most successful newcomer is CentOS, which repackages the same software as commercial rivals, while offering free community-based support... In fact the non-commercial distributions are growing faster than the commercial Linux distributions across the board at present. Fedora is growing almost as fast as Debian. Gentoo continues to grow strongly, passing 100,000 active sites in November, while SuSE and Mandriva are making relatively small gains."

to post comments

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 7, 2005 16:49 UTC (Wed) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] (9 responses)

With no mention of Ubuntu, and no information on methodology that I could find, this report is not up to Netcraft's usual standard.

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 7, 2005 16:59 UTC (Wed) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846) [Link] (7 responses)

My guess is that so few webservers use Ubuntu that it doesn't figure in the statistics. That's because 1. Ubuntu is a fairly new distro, compared to all the others on Netcraft's list, so conservative sysadmins may not have gotten around to trying it; and 2. as a webserver OS, Ubuntu has no advantages over plain old Debian (webservers don't need an up-to-date GNOME -- they don't even need X).

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 7, 2005 18:19 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (1 responses)

Another possibility is that if Ubuntu hasn't changed the relevant packages that come from Debian, Netcraft might detect Ubuntu as Debian.

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 8, 2005 3:11 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Probably not. This is what out-of-the-box Ubuntu Apache2 reports as:

Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Ubuntu) PHP/4.4.0-3

I think that Ubuntu's greatest strength is its desktop and Gnome integration. That's just not necessary on a web server. In fact, it's a liability. Therefore, people will tend to shy away from Ubuntu when setting up web servers.

Breezy/5.10 has a Server install mode. Wonder if this will help put Ubuntu in the server room...

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 8, 2005 11:08 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (4 responses)

I think most sysadmins (including myself) appreciate Debians slowly moving stable tree. I wouldn't want to go through a dist-upgrade twice a year to stay on the supported side of things.

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 8, 2005 17:51 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (3 responses)

Ubuntu states they support each release for at least 18 months, FYI. No need to upgrade to every new release just to get support.

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 8, 2005 19:51 UTC (Thu) by loening (guest, #174) [Link] (2 responses)

Yeah, but Debian proper seems to have a support cycle of around 3 years (or more). A lot of hardware goes obsolete in that time frame, so you may never even have to upgrade the box.

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 8, 2005 20:14 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, Debian has an official statement that they support one major release back. There's no explicit timeframe involved with this. However, Debian "benefits" from the fact that major releases come out every couple of years, so in effect you get quite long support times.

If Debian ever solves the "getting releases out more often" dilemma, then you won't be able to rely on security fixes being available for 3+ years any longer. I doubt too many people are concerned about this however :-)

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 9, 2005 1:15 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

The thing about Debian Stable that is nice, is that it's stable.. unchanging.

But that's not all.

Debian supports all the software in main. Ubuntu has all that software also, but only officially supports a small subset of it.

Ubuntu is nice because is has a sane default install for desktop use. Debian doesn't have this.. but that isn't helpful for server stuff.

Now if Ubuntu was to do something like tie it's Server version to closely support it's Desktop version with sane defaults... then that would be wonderfull! (IMO).

That's exactly what Windows has and it's a big advantage over most Linux deployments.

For isntance with Debian I have a Kerberos/OpenLDAP-based domain setup.. but it's difficult and you have all these packages to deal with and all these configurations. I dont' think most admins are capable of accomplishing it successfull, and out of those that can aren't going to want to. It's complicated and security misconfigurations can be devistating. Window's AD is much better in comparision. It's easier to setup and deadly misconfigurations are more easily avoided.

Now if I could...

Take Ubuntu Server install it and setup users.. then install Ubuntu desktop and select a configuration option in the installer to hook up to the Ubuntu server by default for user and group accounts. Then that would be nice. (maybe fedora ldap server?)

Then maybe I could also have sane defaults for tying Ubuntu server user and group accounts to webmail then that would be nice. And maybe have a default setup for ODBC connectors to mysql, firebird, or postgresql (what ever is most suitable) for applications like OpenOffice.org 2 or use in corporate things like internal webforum software.

So you would have a close affiliation between Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Desktop for most things with sane defaults that can be easily modified for specific purposes. So that they compliment each other.

But where is Ubuntu?

Posted Dec 7, 2005 21:39 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

[...] this report is not up to Netcraft's usual standard.

Well, I love their free services, think they are very professional and would probably use their commercial offerings if I had to; but their reports are usually terse to say the least. Even their famed web server survey only has two or three short paragraphs accompanying the graphs -- which, to be fair, say it all.