The website of Tate Johnson
"Welcome to tatey.com, the transmission belt for my random (and sometimes communist) propaganda. Please, grab a beer and poke around, you may even find something interesting – Cheers, Tate"
The individuals unaware of Zingers may mistake a computer that sits in the cupboard of my bedroom for a tasty KFC burger. Not to be confused with Ashley’s server appropriately named Cupboard because of it’s [previous] similar location. Previously, tatey.com and its various other sites humbly resided on Popcorn (formally Shoebox) a HTPC in my lounge room. Eventually, a new task was assigned to Popcorn and Zingers was born. I purposely purchased a cheap PC from a local computer retailer and loaded Gentoo on. For many months I was satisfied with the progress of Zingers until I decided that it became too much of a hassle to maintain a Gentoo server. I felt that I was no longer prepared to commit the extra time required in maintaining a Gentoo-based server relative to a Debian one. As a result, I migrated from Gentoo to Debian. An appropriate choice you would think for a “production” server. Certainly after all the web server administrators rave on about Debian. Undoubtedly, Sarge is great – stable and mature packages coupled with a strong focus on security. Unfortunately for Debian, I found it rather incompatible with my Macintosh keyboard that I use on my PC (That’s whole story in itself) and iBook. After poking around Google and various other websites for 2322131 hours, I decided it was impossible. I opted to put up with misbehaving keys until Ubuntu 6.06 was scheduled to be released.
Ubuntu is a Debian-based distribution and enjoys the same benefits that all Debian administrators do. It is my honest opinion that Ubuntu 6.06 server is an up-to-date Debian. That is, MySQL5 and PHP5 are fully supported under Ubuntu 6.06 but not Debian Sarge. More importantly, Ubuntu 6.06 includes LTS which ensures that I’ll have security updates for at least the next 5 years if I choose to not upgrade any time before then. Furthermore, I’m wrapped that my Mac keyboards now function correctly and the key’s that I push correspond with their symbols. While I understand that some people will be quick to criticise Ubuntu as an immature distribution, I think they’re denying the credit that it deserves. It even includes a LAMP stack that automatically sets up Apache, MySQL and PHP. You’re still able to further configure these packages to your hearts content and they’re up to date. Overall, I feel that I’ve made the right choice and I’m certainly satisfied with my Ubuntu server. It is my intention that I will not have to touch this box for a very long time. Let’s hope that I can keep to my word.
June 6th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Do you have Ubuntu stickers? :-O That is a whole load posher than I thought. What are the specs on your machine again?
June 6th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
No, I don’t have any Ubuntu stickers. Though, I’d really like some, and I even found “Designed for Ubuntu” stickers on the Ubuntuforums.org. Similar to the “Designed for Gentoo” ones I created last year.
Zingers specifications:
Intel Pentium III 550MHz
196MB PC133 RAM
20GB 7200RPM HDD
Intel EEPRO100 10/100 NIC
Admittedly, nothing fancy but it’s suitable for the task at hand.
June 7th, 2006 at 10:28 am
That’s my green thumb! HERRRR
June 7th, 2006 at 11:13 am
I don’t see you planting any trees, that’s hardly a green thumb
June 7th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Ubuntu FTW.
Over the uni holidays I’m definitely going to install it and give it a go.
Though Boxen will probably stay Gentoo — not really sure why you think it’s a hassle to maintain it; I just do an # emerge -u world every coupla-weeks and she’s sweet.
June 7th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
I certainly look forward to seeing you undertake your own migration to Linux, specifically Ubuntu. Maybe when you’re a little more confident you could check out Arch.
In reference to the latter part of your post, MySQL 5 is still not marked as “Stable” in portage. This means that I am required to unmask it which will then require a lot of other things to be unmasked and this is when it starts to become a headache to maintain. Especially when it’s marked stable and you need to start marking stuff you end up with blocks and other problems. Furthermore, portage takes *ages* to update and it’s not going to get any better until somebody rewrites it which is a big job in itself.
One of the biggest problems is version control. When a new version is introduced into a stable production system it has the potential to break something. This is what administrators attempt to avoid. With Ubuntu and Debian, security vulnerabilities are patched and backported to existing, stable versions. This is probably my biggest gripe with Gentoo.