Ubuntu as a server

As this guy says, Debian Stable is really starting to drag. It is so far behind the times it is becoming a joke, and so much for testing as an attempt to speed up the release process. Most of the time its just a slow-security-release root-kit-target-waiting-to-happen. In order to use even some of the current simple applications for a server, you basically have to be running Sid.

There doesn’t seem to be any slow up to the rate of packages being updated in Sid and I wonder if anyone is placing odds on Sarge being released next year. I’d say they aren’t that long. Just go ahead and freeze Sid, get the damn thing out already! Personally also think its becoming a real job for the Security Team to keep back porting patches into centuries old applications.

I’m started wondering if its better to look at something like Ubuntu as a server, their wiki has a short blurb about how to set this up with their current release: Ubuntu – Custom or Server Installation.

I’ve played around with a test install of Ubuntu, on a spare desktop. Seemed very nice. I much prefer KDE over Gnome, so its unlikely I’ll move my desktop to Ubuntu any time soon. However, it might be interest to try an experiment between Sarge/KDE and Ubuntu/Gnome desktops when I finally get around to building my NX server at work. Especially if I can get the two running on Xen or UML and get some of my users doing week long trials with either install.

3 Comments

  1. Nicholas Lee Said,

    February 1, 2005 @ 9:18 pm

    From a recent slashdot. Can remove GUI in ubuntu via “dpkg -P ubuntu-desktop”.

  2. @ Said,

    August 7, 2005 @ 9:08 pm

    you can install kubuntu which is the same as ubuntu but with a kde envi.

  3. Nicholas Lee Said,

    August 7, 2005 @ 9:43 pm

    Yes, with apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. kubuntu/hoary still needs some work to bring it to the level of integration that ubunutu has.

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