Linux Distribution Preferences?

I use Ubuntu for development and production, it is rock solid.

Thanks,

Sunday Olutayo

----- Original Message -----

From: "Gavin Flower" <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz>
To: "Shaun Thomas" <sthomas@optionshouse.com>
Cc: "pgsql-general@postgresql.org" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2013 11:44:42 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Linux Distribution Preferences?

On 14/01/13 07:27, Shaun Thomas wrote:

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870 sthomas@optionshouse.com ______________________________________________

See http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/ for terms and conditions related to this email

I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider Cent OS (or RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the plague.

Cheers,
Gavin

On 14/01/13 07:27, Shaun Thomas wrote:

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870
sthomas@optionshouse.com

______________________________________________

See http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/ for terms and conditions related to this email

I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or
RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the plague.

Cheers,
Gavin

Ubuntu did the marketing for linux and many more. Some people are just haters. Can you tell us about upstart?

Sent from my LG Mobile

Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:

On 14/01/13 13:07, Chris Ernst wrote:

On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or
RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the
plague.

I happen to be doing my own research on this matter. I tend to lean
more toward RHEL or CentOS for production servers just because there
seem to be more people using it in that capacity and it seem to be
easier to get solid support or advice for those. But I prefer Ubuntu
for my laptop mainly because of the size of the community, available
PPAs, ease of administration, etc...

Ultimately, it seem to come down to what you are most
familiar/comfortable managing. I don't see much practical difference
between the distributions other than the versions of various software
that they ship with by default. But that is usually rather easy to
change according to your needs anyway.

I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning. Can you
(or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe
Ubuntu should be avoided?

- Chris

4 reasons:

1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
default.

2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
not significant.

3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
ant-privacy features features.

4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.

If I were to change from Fedora, I would probably go back to Debian.

Cheers,
Gavin

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or
RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the plague.

I happen to be doing my own research on this matter. I tend to lean
more toward RHEL or CentOS for production servers just because there
seem to be more people using it in that capacity and it seem to be
easier to get solid support or advice for those. But I prefer Ubuntu
for my laptop mainly because of the size of the community, available
PPAs, ease of administration, etc...

Ultimately, it seem to come down to what you are most
familiar/comfortable managing. I don't see much practical difference
between the distributions other than the versions of various software
that they ship with by default. But that is usually rather easy to
change according to your needs anyway.

I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning. Can you
(or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe Ubuntu
should be avoided?

- Chris

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Chris Ernst <cernst@zvelo.com> wrote:

I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning. Can you (or
anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe Ubuntu should
be avoided?

I switched from Ubuntu to Debian a while ago, mainly on account of the
desktop environment, but moving servers as well for consistency.
Ubuntu has its advantages. At the moment, I'm half way through
patching a Debian system to the latest kernel and a recent Upstart
(rather than sysvinit), but Ubuntu already comes with a fairly recent
kernel and Upstart is the default.

So far, I haven't seen any particular reason to detest Ubuntu or
Debian. Both of them quite happily run everything I want, although
once it's been a year or two since the OS release, there's a strong
tendency to build stuff from source rather than rely on the aptitude
repositories - the repos lag a bit. But I'm okay with that. Maybe it's
an issue for other situations, though, in which case it's a
recommendation for Ubuntu probably.

In terms of PostgreSQL, I've always been using the OpenSCG package,
and have had no problems whatsoever (9.1).

ChrisA

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On Jan 13, 2013, at 10:27 AM, Shaun Thomas <sthomas@optionshouse.com> wrote:

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought.

Either would be fine. RHEL is a bit more Enterprisey - which is either good or bad, depending on your use case. They're more conservative with updates than Ubuntu - which is good for service stability, but can be painful when you're stuck between using ancient versions of some app or stepping into the minefield of third party repos. (CentOS is pretty much just RHEL without support and without some of the management tools).

Ubuntu LTS is solid, and has good support for running multiple Postgresql clusters simultaneously, which is very handy if you're supporting multiple apps against the same database server, and they require different releases. I've been told that they occasionally make incompatible changes across minor releases, which is Bad, but it's never happened anywhere I've noticed - I've no idea if it's an actual issue or "Well, back in the 2004 release, they…" folklore.

I run both in production, both on VMs and real metal. I tend to use Ubuntu LTS for new installations just because I'm marginally more comfortable in the Ubuntu CLI environment, but there's really not much to choose between them.

Cheers,
Steve

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On 14/01/13 13:07, Chris Ernst wrote:

On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or
RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the
plague.

I happen to be doing my own research on this matter. I tend to lean
more toward RHEL or CentOS for production servers just because there
seem to be more people using it in that capacity and it seem to be
easier to get solid support or advice for those. But I prefer Ubuntu
for my laptop mainly because of the size of the community, available
PPAs, ease of administration, etc...

Ultimately, it seem to come down to what you are most
familiar/comfortable managing. I don't see much practical difference
between the distributions other than the versions of various software
that they ship with by default. But that is usually rather easy to
change according to your needs anyway.

I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning. Can you
(or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe
Ubuntu should be avoided?

- Chris

4 reasons:

1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
default.

2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
not significant.

3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
ant-privacy features features.

4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.

If I were to change from Fedora, I would probably go back to Debian.

Cheers,
Gavin

Please don't top post, add your comments at the end as per the norm for
this group.

On 14/01/13 12:06, SUNDAY A. OLUTAYO wrote:

Ubuntu did the marketing for linux and many more. Some people are just haters. Can you tell us about upstart?

Sent from my LG Mobile

Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:

On 14/01/13 13:07, Chris Ernst wrote:

On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or
RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the
plague.

I happen to be doing my own research on this matter. I tend to lean
more toward RHEL or CentOS for production servers just because there
seem to be more people using it in that capacity and it seem to be
easier to get solid support or advice for those. But I prefer Ubuntu
for my laptop mainly because of the size of the community, available
PPAs, ease of administration, etc...

Ultimately, it seem to come down to what you are most
familiar/comfortable managing. I don't see much practical difference
between the distributions other than the versions of various software
that they ship with by default. But that is usually rather easy to
change according to your needs anyway.

I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning. Can you
(or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe
Ubuntu should be avoided?

- Chris

4 reasons:

1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
default.

2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
not significant.

3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
ant-privacy features features.

4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.

If I were to change from Fedora, I would probably go back to Debian.

Cheers,
Gavin

I don't know much about 'upstart' - Fedora uses systemd:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd

Cheers,
Gavin

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On 01/13/2013 04:07 PM, Chris Ernst wrote:

On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning. Can you
(or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe Ubuntu
should be avoided?

My take is that you have to look at Ubuntu as two distinct lines of
distributions, desktop and server. I got into it for the desktop and
stayed for the server. The "avoid like a plague" tag tends to apply to
the desktop line and to an extent is valid. Canonical seems to be
leading a parade of one on a new graphical look for the desktop. So if
you use the desktop version and follow the six month release cycle you
are in for a ride. You can avoid that somewhat by using a LTS desktop,
but the change will come and you will have to deal.

The server line on the other hand avoids the graphical desktop issue, so
it tends to be less 'interesting'. If you stick with the LTS releases
then it becomes even more stable. The nice part is that with PPAs you
can backport newer releases of software to older LTS releases. For
example and to get back on topic the Postgres PPA maintained by Martin Pitt:

https://launchpad.net/~pitti/+archive/postgresql

- Chris

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@gmail.com

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

Em 13/01/2013 16:27, Shaun Thomas escreveu:

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870
sthomas@optionshouse.com

______________________________________________

See http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/ for terms and conditions related to this email

I do use CentOS 5 and 6 for servers - they run without any glitches in
decent servers. Don't use then on self made servers with
strange/alternative SATA Raid controlers, it is the hell on earth. Use
good hardware and you will be fine.
Check the HCL of RedHat Enterprise.

Edson

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat
curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid
PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between
RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else
thought.

We run CentOS (mixture of 5 and 6, but 6 in all newer installations).
I've never used Ubuntu so can't comment on it.
We get PG from the PGDG repository, after disabling the distribution's
PG installation in order to maintain tight control over the build/version.

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 4:06 PM, SUNDAY A. OLUTAYO <olutayo@sadeeb.com> wrote:

4 reasons:

1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
default.

2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
not significant.

3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
ant-privacy features features.

4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.

Not one of those is a good reason to avoid Ubuntu server for pgsql.
There are reasons to not use it, but those are not them. I've run
PostgreSQL servers on Redhat (before RHEL existed and there was JUST
Redhat) 5.1, RHEL 4, 5 and 6, Debian Lenny and Squeeze, just one on an
old version of Suse, and on Ubuntu server 8.04LTS and 10.04LTS and
12.04LTS.

My preference personally is for debian based distros since they
support the rather more elegant pg wrappers that allow you to run
multiple versions and multiple clusters of those versions with very
easy commands. RHEL is great for building a stable but not
necessarily ultra faster server, and if you can afford their
commercial support it IS top notch. Debian and Ubuntu feel much the
same to me, from the command line, on a server.

The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
regressions for their initial LTS release. I.e. they'll choose a
3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
til the LTS becomes stable. This is especially problematic the first
6 to 12 months after an LTS release. Ubuntu support is a pitiful
thing compared to RHEL support. I've reported bugs for RHEL that were
fixed within weeks, or at least a workaround came out pretty quick.
I've reported LTS bugs that are now YEARS old and Canonical has done
NOTHING to fix them. There's a bug in 10.04LTS workstation for
instance that meant you couldn't have > 1 profile for a given WAP.
Never fixed. Only recommendation was to upgrade. From an LTS. sigh.

There are reasons TO use Ubuntu as well. Of if you are running very
late model hardware you can't get good support from an older release,
and using a more recent, possibly not LTS release is a good way to get
best performance. I have often installed a late model release like
11.10, to get support for odd / new / interesting / high performance
hardware, and then at a later date could update that platform to an
LTS release for stability. Note that I often waited til a good 3 or 4
months after the next release before I even started testing it, let
alone upgrading to it. Ubuntu often has fairly late model versions of
many packages like pgsql or php or whatever that more RHEL like
distros will not get due to their longer release cycles. It's easier
to add a ppa: repo to debian or ubuntu than to add an RPM repo to RHEL
and I've found they're usually better maintained and / or more up to
date.

Simple answer of course is that there is no simple answer.

Frequently released / updated distros (fedora, ubuntu non-LTS, debian
beta and so on) are GREAT for doing initial development on, as once
the stable branch based on it comes out you'll be deploying against
something with a long stable release branch. So the latest version of
Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and so on are on the server, as are the
latest, or nearly so, versions of pgsql and slony and other packages.

Long term distros (debian stable, Ubuntu LTS, RHEL) are all good for
deploying things on you don't need the latest and greatest hardware
support nor the absolute fastest performance but instead stability are
paramount. When downtime costs you $10k a minute, using the latest
code is not always the best idea.

Most importantly, if you've got LOTS of talent for one distro or
another, you're probably best off exploiting it. If 95% of all the
developers and ops crew run Ubuntu or Debian, stick to one of them.
If they favor Fedora / RHEL stick to that. If they work on windows,
find a new job if at all possible.

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

Em 14/01/2013 01:46, Scott Marlowe escreveu:

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 4:06 PM, SUNDAY A. OLUTAYO <olutayo@sadeeb.com> wrote:

4 reasons:

1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
default.

2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
not significant.

3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
ant-privacy features features.

4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.

Not one of those is a good reason to avoid Ubuntu server for pgsql.
There are reasons to not use it, but those are not them. I've run
PostgreSQL servers on Redhat (before RHEL existed and there was JUST
Redhat) 5.1, RHEL 4, 5 and 6, Debian Lenny and Squeeze, just one on an
old version of Suse, and on Ubuntu server 8.04LTS and 10.04LTS and
12.04LTS.

My preference personally is for debian based distros since they
support the rather more elegant pg wrappers that allow you to run
multiple versions and multiple clusters of those versions with very
easy commands. RHEL is great for building a stable but not
necessarily ultra faster server, and if you can afford their
commercial support it IS top notch. Debian and Ubuntu feel much the
same to me, from the command line, on a server.

Do you have any fact that support RHEL being slower than others?
I would like to improve our servers if we can get some ideas - so far,
we have tried Ubuntu LTS servers, and seems just as fast as RHEL for
PostgreSQL (tests made by issuing heavy queries).

Thanks,

Edson

The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
regressions for their initial LTS release. I.e. they'll choose a
3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
til the LTS becomes stable. This is especially problematic the first
6 to 12 months after an LTS release. Ubuntu support is a pitiful
thing compared to RHEL support. I've reported bugs for RHEL that were
fixed within weeks, or at least a workaround came out pretty quick.
I've reported LTS bugs that are now YEARS old and Canonical has done
NOTHING to fix them. There's a bug in 10.04LTS workstation for
instance that meant you couldn't have > 1 profile for a given WAP.
Never fixed. Only recommendation was to upgrade. From an LTS. sigh.

There are reasons TO use Ubuntu as well. Of if you are running very
late model hardware you can't get good support from an older release,
and using a more recent, possibly not LTS release is a good way to get
best performance. I have often installed a late model release like
11.10, to get support for odd / new / interesting / high performance
hardware, and then at a later date could update that platform to an
LTS release for stability. Note that I often waited til a good 3 or 4
months after the next release before I even started testing it, let
alone upgrading to it. Ubuntu often has fairly late model versions of
many packages like pgsql or php or whatever that more RHEL like
distros will not get due to their longer release cycles. It's easier
to add a ppa: repo to debian or ubuntu than to add an RPM repo to RHEL
and I've found they're usually better maintained and / or more up to
date.

Simple answer of course is that there is no simple answer.

Frequently released / updated distros (fedora, ubuntu non-LTS, debian
beta and so on) are GREAT for doing initial development on, as once
the stable branch based on it comes out you'll be deploying against
something with a long stable release branch. So the latest version of
Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and so on are on the server, as are the
latest, or nearly so, versions of pgsql and slony and other packages.

Long term distros (debian stable, Ubuntu LTS, RHEL) are all good for
deploying things on you don't need the latest and greatest hardware
support nor the absolute fastest performance but instead stability are
paramount. When downtime costs you $10k a minute, using the latest
code is not always the best idea.

Most importantly, if you've got LOTS of talent for one distro or
another, you're probably best off exploiting it. If 95% of all the
developers and ops crew run Ubuntu or Debian, stick to one of them.
If they favor Fedora / RHEL stick to that. If they work on windows,
find a new job if at all possible.

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On 14/01/13 16:46, Scott Marlowe wrote:

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 4:06 PM, SUNDAY A. OLUTAYO <olutayo@sadeeb.com> wrote:

4 reasons:

1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
default.

2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
not significant.

3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
ant-privacy features features.

4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.

Not one of those is a good reason to avoid Ubuntu server for pgsql.
There are reasons to not use it, but those are not them. I've run
PostgreSQL servers on Redhat (before RHEL existed and there was JUST
Redhat) 5.1, RHEL 4, 5 and 6, Debian Lenny and Squeeze, just one on an
old version of Suse, and on Ubuntu server 8.04LTS and 10.04LTS and
12.04LTS.

My preference personally is for debian based distros since they
support the rather more elegant pg wrappers that allow you to run
multiple versions and multiple clusters of those versions with very
easy commands. RHEL is great for building a stable but not
necessarily ultra faster server, and if you can afford their
commercial support it IS top notch. Debian and Ubuntu feel much the
same to me, from the command line, on a server.

The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
regressions for their initial LTS release. I.e. they'll choose a
3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
til the LTS becomes stable. This is especially problematic the first
6 to 12 months after an LTS release. Ubuntu support is a pitiful
thing compared to RHEL support. I've reported bugs for RHEL that were
fixed within weeks, or at least a workaround came out pretty quick.
I've reported LTS bugs that are now YEARS old and Canonical has done
NOTHING to fix them. There's a bug in 10.04LTS workstation for
instance that meant you couldn't have > 1 profile for a given WAP.
Never fixed. Only recommendation was to upgrade. From an LTS. sigh.

There are reasons TO use Ubuntu as well. Of if you are running very
late model hardware you can't get good support from an older release,
and using a more recent, possibly not LTS release is a good way to get
best performance. I have often installed a late model release like
11.10, to get support for odd / new / interesting / high performance
hardware, and then at a later date could update that platform to an
LTS release for stability. Note that I often waited til a good 3 or 4
months after the next release before I even started testing it, let
alone upgrading to it. Ubuntu often has fairly late model versions of
many packages like pgsql or php or whatever that more RHEL like
distros will not get due to their longer release cycles. It's easier
to add a ppa: repo to debian or ubuntu than to add an RPM repo to RHEL
and I've found they're usually better maintained and / or more up to
date.

Simple answer of course is that there is no simple answer.

Frequently released / updated distros (fedora, ubuntu non-LTS, debian
beta and so on) are GREAT for doing initial development on, as once
the stable branch based on it comes out you'll be deploying against
something with a long stable release branch. So the latest version of
Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and so on are on the server, as are the
latest, or nearly so, versions of pgsql and slony and other packages.

Long term distros (debian stable, Ubuntu LTS, RHEL) are all good for
deploying things on you don't need the latest and greatest hardware
support nor the absolute fastest performance but instead stability are
paramount. When downtime costs you $10k a minute, using the latest
code is not always the best idea.

Most importantly, if you've got LOTS of talent for one distro or
another, you're probably best off exploiting it. If 95% of all the
developers and ops crew run Ubuntu or Debian, stick to one of them.
If they favor Fedora / RHEL stick to that. If they work on windows,
find a new job if at all possible.

I have zero experience of setting up Linux as a _PRODUCTION_ server.

If I had to support one myself, I would probably consider RHEL. Anyhow,
I would do some serious research before making a final decision. Even
if I had made such a decision a year ago, I would still need to reassess
the situation if I had to do it again - things keep changing.

I would be very reluctant to choose an Apple or Microsoft O/S for a
production server.

Cheers,
Gavin

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com> wrote:

Most importantly, if you've got LOTS of talent for one distro or
another, you're probably best off exploiting it. If 95% of all the
developers and ops crew run Ubuntu or Debian, stick to one of them.
If they favor Fedora / RHEL stick to that. If they work on windows,
find a new job if at all possible.

+1. It's the little things that make the difference; I can casually
switch across from any of our client boxes to any of our servers,
because they ALL run Debian Squeeze. And my home boxes and my personal
server are also all either Debian Squeeze or some flavour of Ubuntu.
Keep things as similar as possible and you avoid wasting time over
trivialities like whether you can run ifconfig without becoming root
first, or which shells and scripting languages you have available (for
me, Python, bash, and Pike cover all my normal needs). Downtime costs
you, yes, but also, don't keep your developers waiting, child! Why,
their time is worth a thousand pounds a minute (in 1871 currency).

And +1 to the last comment, too :)

ChrisA

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On 2013-01-14 00:44, Gavin Flower wrote:

On 14/01/13 07:27, Shaun Thomas wrote:

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat
curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid
PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between
RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else
thought.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870
sthomas@optionshouse.com

______________________________________________

See http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/ [1] for terms and
conditions related to this email

I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS
(or RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like
the plague.

Cheers,
Gavin

Links:
------
[1] http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/

I use Slackware and for me it's the perfect one. Some words are
rotating in my mind:
There is no good or bad linux, exists only one that which you know and
can work.

Cheers,
Hristo

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Shaun Thomas <sthomas@optionshouse.com>wrote:

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat
curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid
PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL,
CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought.

Find the one that suits *you* (or rather your employer/client) and use that
;)

We can debate the pros and cons of each and every distro, and in the end
it'll be the one that suits your (or your client/employer's) needs and
makes you (or your client/employer) happy that'll win the battle.

In the bigger enterprises, RHEL and SuSE typically wins.
As you go down the Centos/Fedora/Ubuntu/Debians start to become more
prevalent (license costs etc.)

The questions you'll need to ask and investigate:
1) Do I want license/support that I can pay somebody to look into my OS
troubles?
2) How "active" is the community for this distro?
3) Which distros are the people around you using? (ie.
replacement/backups/etc.)
4) Do you want bleeding/leading/stable/old releases?
5) Can you compile from source for this?
6) What OSes are your hosting/etc. supporting? (for the servers on the net
out there)
7) Am I/company/client happy with this choice?

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 8:54 PM, Edson Richter <edsonrichter@hotmail.com> wrote:

Em 14/01/2013 01:46, Scott Marlowe escreveu:

My preference personally is for debian based distros since they
support the rather more elegant pg wrappers that allow you to run
multiple versions and multiple clusters of those versions with very
easy commands. RHEL is great for building a stable but not
necessarily ultra faster server, and if you can afford their
commercial support it IS top notch. Debian and Ubuntu feel much the
same to me, from the command line, on a server.

Do you have any fact that support RHEL being slower than others?
I would like to improve our servers if we can get some ideas - so far, we
have tried Ubuntu LTS servers, and seems just as fast as RHEL for PostgreSQL
(tests made by issuing heavy queries).

It's not that RHEL is real slow. But in a lot of orgnizations you
might be running a 3 or 4 year old release, which may or may not be
real fast on newer hardware. This isn't just RHEL, it's any old
release. A lot of older kernels don't get the best of performance out
of numa or late model RAID controllers and so on. OTOH they're often
very stable. If RHEL5 is say 10% slower than the latest Fedora
release, that's likely a fair tradeoff of stability and support versus
performance. I've been working with an older Debian release lately
and it's definitely quite a bit slower than ubuntu 12.04 on the same
biggish iron hardware.

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

On 14/01/13 22:24, Hendrik Visage wrote:

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Shaun Thomas
<sthomas@optionshouse.com <mailto:sthomas@optionshouse.com>> wrote:

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was
somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for
a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and
forth between RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering
what everyone else thought.

Find the one that suits *you* (or rather your employer/client) and use
that ;)

We can debate the pros and cons of each and every distro, and in the
end it'll be the one that suits your (or your client/employer's) needs
and makes you (or your client/employer) happy that'll win the battle.

In the bigger enterprises, RHEL and SuSE typically wins.
As you go down the Centos/Fedora/Ubuntu/Debians start to become more
prevalent (license costs etc.)

The questions you'll need to ask and investigate:
1) Do I want license/support that I can pay somebody to look into my
OS troubles?
2) How "active" is the community for this distro?
3) Which distros are the people around you using? (ie.
replacement/backups/etc.)
4) Do you want bleeding/leading/stable/old releases?
5) Can you compile from source for this?
6) What OSes are your hosting/etc. supporting? (for the servers on the
net out there)
7) Am I/company/client happy with this choice?

In essence...

It is that most irritating replies a highly paid consultant can give:
"It depends!"

You have to decide what are the important criteria for your situation,
the above list is a good starting point. I would add 'security" &
'performance' requirements. I am well aware, that if I had attempted to
provide a list, that I would have missed some of the questions Shaun
raised. I am sure other people can add good questions as well.

A lot depends on your actual situation, and your intended use cases.

In a few months, I may have to go through the same exercise for real. :-(

Cheers,
Gavin