ZDNet reports that Larry Ellison might announce some sort of pre-configured Linux distribution during this week’s Oracle OpenWorld. Network World says Oracle’s version of Linux will likely be based on Ubuntu.
Oracle’s goal is to give enterprise customers a complete software stack; Ellison told the Financial Times in April that he’s missing an OS. Ars Technica points out that while Ubuntu is new to enterprise IT, it (unlike Red Hat, after its acquisiton of JBoss) has no conflict of interest with Oracle.
(red = Ubuntu, blue = Red Hat, graph = search volume)
Oracle’s backing would certainly enhance Ubuntu’s exposure, but it’s getting plenty of attention on its own. So my question is, why hasn’t there been more Ubuntu uptake among dedicated server providers? I did a quick OS survey, and it’s only available at Hostway:
Hostway offers Fedora, FreeBSD, CentOS, RHE, Ubuntu
–
APlus.Net offers Fedora and FreeBSD
DedicatedNow offers CentOS and FreeBSD
EV1Servers offers FreeBSD and RHE
FastServers offers CentOS, FreeBSD, Gentoo, RHE and SUSE
GoDaddy offers Fedora and RHE
LayeredTech offers CentOS, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, RHE
LiquidWeb offers CentOS
Server4You offers CentOS, Debian, Fedora, RHE
ServerBeach offers CentOS and RHE
SoftLayer offers CentOS and RHE
Superb Internet offers Fedora and FreeBSD
ThePlanet offers CentOS, Debian, FreeBSD and RHE
ValueWeb offers Fedora
PS – Check out Scott Yang‘s (whose comment I did not delete!) argument for giving Ubuntu a try:
I guess CentOS providers a stable platform, well supported by control panel vendors, long term continuous updates – these make them great OS to install on production boxes, run regular yum update and never need to be touched it again.
However it won’t excite a developer with its list of old packages. Python 2.3? PHP 4.3? Apache 2.0.52? Anyone still develops for these things? But they are part of CentOS 4.4 released 2 months ago. I’ve seen many cases where an in-house developed software failed to run after uploaded to the shared hosting environment, because ISP is running one of those rock-solid enterprise Linux distribution that is just way too old. Feeling familiar?
