Linux, Damn it.
It has always amazed me that when it comes to a “server OS”, people fight Linux distribution wars. RedHat-based vs. Suse-based vs. Debian-based … Everyone thinks theirs is “better” and know what? Everyone is wrong. Everyone is also right. This is like arguing that the cheese burger in your Burger King Kids Meal is better than the cheese burger in someone elses McDonalds Kids Meal. It’s a goddamned cheese burger! Sure, one person may prefer charbroiled vs. however-the-fuck-McD’s-cooks-theirs, and sure maybe when comparing fat or cholesterol one is “better” than the other, but that’s that.
Linux isn’t “fragmented” as a lot of FUD-spewers would have you believe. The different distros are, at the kernel-and-console-level, only trivially different. When someone says something like “while Ubuntu has been many people’s desktop Linux choice for a few years now, with its Debian heritage, you can see what kind of server it could be. Slap that on the new Sun 1Us with the new Niagra T1’s CPU, the one that’ll have four, six or eight cores each, and go to town.” … I want to tear my hair out of my scalp, because if you slap ANY modern Linux distro on the same hardware you’ll get the same.. exact.. thing. (Never mind the assumptive start of that quote… I won’t get into THAT).
Linux, as a kernel, and GNU/Linux as an operating system, are “the same” (keep in mind the burger analogy) across the distros. The differentiators are installation, packaging, and GUI.
Installation
I believe I’ve installed every Linux distribution out there at least once. Suse, I feel, actually has “the best” installation system. Does that mean it’s “better” than the rest? No. “The best” is the difference between a cheese burger with 1 slice of cheese vs a cheese burger with 1 slice of cheese and some catsup. We’re not talking about lights-out here.
Packaging
Packaging actually has 2 pieces: how applications are packaged (called “packaging format”) and how those packages are organized/interrelate (called “package organization”).
First, I hate packaging formats. All of them. I still rue the day that binary distributions got popular. I recognize its necessity in order to make Linux accessible, and fully support it… I just hate how dependant we’ve become on them. Whenever the thought of “compiling from source” starting making Linux admins quiver, we lost a lot… Anyhow, almost every distribution used the RPM Package Management format. There are a few others out there (notably the DEB format used by Debian-based distros). RPM vs. DEB is a war among itself. They’re the same thing, although neither side can admit that. It’s cheese burger with fries vs cheese burger with onion rings.
Package organization, however, is a big thing… It’s also a big problem. Organization is left up to whomever makes the package. One packager might decide that a given application should be broken into smaller parts packaged separately, another might those parts in one package… One packager might put various files in one location, while another packager might decide to put them in another location. To someone who can think autonomously, this is but a minor obstacle. To someone who can’t think for themself, this is drive-through vs going into the burger place and ordering at the counter.
GUI
GUI is the only, and I mean ONLY thing that really differentiates distros at a non-trivial level- And for server OS’s, this is moot. If you run a GUI on your server’s you obviously don’t work in a big enough shop to be able to take advantage of the 1337 features of this distro vs. that distro, so your arguments are crap. If you want to argue about Linux on the desktop, that’s fine.. But that your little brain thinks that KDE or Gnome is so much better than the other means nothing on the servers. That distro X has “better GUI tools” than distro Y means nothing on the servers. Yes, some people will argue with me that running a GUI on a server is very important and should be part of the equation… Again, I don’t think you know what managing several dozen (or several hundred (or several thousand)) GUI-laden servers would be like. Anything less, and you’re essentially arguing your desktop IS a server, and you’re right. That’s not what we’re discussing though.
