Debian is the default distro for enterprise/production?
Posted by sdns575@reddit | linuxadmin | View on Reddit | 134 comments
Hi
In another post on r/Almalinux I read this:
"In general, what has your experience been? Would you use AlmaLinux in an enterprise/production setting to run a key piece of software? I imagine Debian is still the default for this"
How much of this is true? Is debian the default distro for enterprise/production?
Thank you in advancrme
SuperQue@reddit
Debian and Debian-based (Ubuntu) are very common in the tech / web space where there was no history of other UNIX use.
RedHat and derivative distros tend to be used in "Classic Enterprise" where proprietary UNIX was used.
AviationAtom@reddit
Red Hat is very much designed for the enterprise. If you want something that matches the level of enterprise manageability that Windows offers then Red Hat is it. Ubuntu has some features that Red Hat offers but Red Hat seems the king to me, hands down. Price is what sucks for Red Hat but if you're poor then Rocky Linux fills the gap. The support you can get from Red Hat is worth it though, if you can afford the licenses.
nickbernstein@reddit
What does rh have that other diestros don't when it comes to managability? I feel like all those problems have been solved for a long time.
renderbender1@reddit
The commercial offerings for Ansible Tower, Lightspeed, and Satellite are rather good. Not saying you can't run the upstream versions yourself or use other tools, but if you want to pay Red Hat a pile of money for everything, you can get a nice stack and a TAM to help you with all of it.
corey_sheerer@reddit
Was also going to I mention RHEL
barthvonries@reddit
I still don't understand why they killed CentOS, it was the "free RedHat" for most companies I worked for/with.
kbuley@reddit
Because it was free. CentOS users don't pay for RH licenses...
barthvonries@reddit
But companies which wanted a 100% homogeneous IT environment used RHEL for critical servers, and CentOS for "the rest".
Now a lot of them have moved away from the RH environment. I'm sure people at RH did the analysis and maybe it was worth losing those customers in the long run.
carlwgeorge@reddit
These days companies don't even have to do that split. Red Hat will literally give them free RHEL for non-production environments. It's crazy to me how often this gets overlooked.
barthvonries@reddit
Most of my "Red Hat friendly" customers used CentOS in production, for non-critical components.
carlwgeorge@reddit
And they never file Red Hat support cases against the RHEL systems for problems they encounter on the CentOS systems, right?
Ssakaa@reddit
Before or after reproducing the issue on RHEL?
carlwgeorge@reddit
You're missing the point. The Red Hat business model works (and thus funds a ton of open source work) by scaling with subscriptions. Compare the following examples.
Customer A pays for 100 production RHEL systems for a year. They open 10 support cases in that time, and 2 of those result in engineering escalations with features/fixes directly going into RHEL because they asked for them. They also don't have to open support cases for all the fixes and features that are delivered with regular updates, which take a lot of engineering effort to deliver.
Customer B also has 100 production systems, but only pays for RHEL on 10 of them, and uses RHEL clones on the other 90 to cut costs. They also file 10 support cases, with 2 engineering escalations, all against the 10 RHEL systems. They also benefit from the same standard updates they don't have to file cases for. They tell themselves this is fair because they reproduced all their clone issues on the real RHEL systems before reporting them.
Customer A and B cost the same amount to support. Customer A is paying their fair share of both the overall RHEL engineering effort and the engineering specific to them. Customer B is only paying 1/10th of their fair share, driving up the costs for all other customers to keep the same engineering effort going. See the problem yet?
I'm sure people will accuse me of just being a corporate shill, but these are the facts. Everyone readily admits that Red Hat contributes a ton to open source, possibly more than any other company. That doesn't happen by magic. It only works because the subscription model works to keep Red Hat profitable and employing engineers. Customers like customer B put the whole model at risk, and that eventually leads to engineers getting laid off and having to get new jobs that do not let them work on open source as much as Red Hat did.
AviationAtom@reddit
Answered their own question š
Free is always good as a consumer but it's pretty hard to monetize as a business needing to pay workers.
wired-one@reddit
It's not dead, it's now CentOS stream, the upstream to RHEL.
The old CentOS, was an unsupported rebuild or RHEL and while that met some people's needs, it pulled a lot of people into thinking that it was just as good. It wasn't. It didn't get patched on time, the users didn't contribute back to the upstream or provide big fixes in general.
So Red Hat ended the traditional CentOS project, one that they had financially bailed out, and moved it into the upstream as CentOS stream, a rolling distribution that allows upstream testing closer to RHEL than Fedora does.
CentOS stream is pretty cool, and may be worth exploring for your use cases, but RHEL remains as the enterprise product.
idkau@reddit
Centos stream is useless in enterprise therefore dead to me.
gordonmessmer@reddit
What makes it useless?
quebexer@reddit
I was distrohopping between CentOS Stream and AlmaLinux but I ended up with Alma, because while based on CentOS Stream, the AlmaLinux Team has been able to add patches quicker than RH. And they try to keep a parity with RHEL. Furthermore, I've noticed that large companies and Institutions like CISCO, and CERN have moved to AlmaLinux and contribute to it.
carlwgeorge@reddit
It's worth noting here that in most of those instances, the Alma team got those patches from CentOS and just released them before the upcoming RHEL minor version. So quicker than RHEL, but not quicker than CentOS. They have also done some patches that aren't in CentOS or RHEL at all, which is a great benefit of their newer development model, letting them do interesting and unique things for their users.
There are still a huge number of patches that are in CentOS first and no where else yet, so if you run across one of those you desire it may be worth giving CentOS another look. Those patches could also be candidates for Alma to backport if you file bugs and ask them.
wired-one@reddit
Alma is a good citizen here, actively participating in CentOS Stream and I think they differentiate themselves well from RHEL by adding support back for older hardware.
That's value that they add in, and they provide value back to everyone by contributing back to the main Stream project in an upstream first manner.
barthvonries@reddit
But many companies don't have/won't spend their budget on RHEL licenses. And want stable distributions to use in prod, and a rolling release distro can't fill that gap.
Many of my customers now use Debian as their go-to distro, when they were 50/50 between Debian and CentOS 10 years ago. Same for the schools I teach in : 10 years ago, we split the courses between the 2 OSes, now we focus on Debian.
I know it's only anecdotal evidence, but to me it feels like a change and many companies just think "RHEL = too expensive" and prefer not entering the RH ecosystem at all. While 10 years ago it was more like "we use CentOS for 95%Ā§ of our servers, and a few RHEL licences here or there for really critical stuff". Now they use debian everywhere, and pay guys like me to maintain them.
gordonmessmer@reddit
Well, the good news is that CentOS Stream is a major-version stable distribution, just like CentOS was, and just like Debian is. Stream and Debian are very similar release models. (Though I think that CentOS Stream is much simpler than Debian
wired-one@reddit
I agree, a stable distribution is absolutely important.
Companies also need to understand that Linux has a cost, either in paying the subscriptions on systems or in paying the sysadmins and engineers to implement and support the systems. They tend to not blink when paying for Windows licenses, but they perceive Linux as less.
CentOS as a strategy for these companies was the same. They wanted something that had intrinsic value, an Enterprise Operating System that was stable enough for production, but they didn't want to pay for it. They often forced systems administrators and IT departments into impossible situations as well, telling them to build out Dev and Test environments to match the upstream RHEL releases, but RHEL might actually be ahead of CentOS because of the time it took for the community to rebuild from source, or documentation that didn't "quite" match, or the fact that the DISA STIG was not certified for CentOS at all.
I was corrected in my first post about CentOS stream rolling nature, it does have major releases, and that makes it appropriate for most people to use in a business or Enterprise setting, especially if it's being used with content-views in The Foreman, where rpms can be locked in time and systems are able to be patched to the same date. One could also use a local rpm repository mirror to ensure the rpm versions all match as well across an enterprise.
The value that is sought in these experiences though, are exactly what companies pay for in RHEL. The ability to LEAPP, the EUS support, the DISA STIG baseline profiles. They are all inherit to the RHEL value proposition.
Debian is a great option, but as more organizations adopt Debian, they will need to ensure financial support to the project. I'm also a Debian user and I love everything that it brings in its stability for a few of my systems, while I live in the leading edge of Fedora most days.
carlwgeorge@reddit
You are largely correct here but I would like to clarify a few points.
The project never ended. The project used to create a distro named CentOS Linux. Then we started offering a new variant of the distro named CentOS Stream. Because of the problems with CL, which CS solved, the project board decided that offering two variants was a mistake and cut losses by setting a much earlier EOL date for CL than people expected. It was a horrible way to transition, but regardless the project existed through it all.
It's not a rolling release, it has major versions and EOL dates.
wired-one@reddit
Thanks for the corrections!
drdidg@reddit
CentOS is alive and well. Just not in installed form. CentOS stream 9 is still available and still getting updates.
AviationAtom@reddit
Rolling releases are not ideal for many enterprise environments though
thewrinklyninja@reddit
CentOS Stream 9 is as much as rolling release as Debian 12 is.
gordonmessmer@reddit
CentOS Stream is no more a rolling release than CentOS was (and by extension, no more than AlmaLinux is, or Rocky Linux).
In all of the rebuild cases, there is only one release channel, and when updates are released, the only supported configuration is fully updated. You can't safely cherry-pick updates in any of them, so you can't patch an old release for security while you test a new minor release.
If you want something more stable than CentOS Stream, only RHEL actually allows you to remain on a minor release and apply security patches while you test a new minor release (or to support a minor release for 4-5 years).
carlwgeorge@reddit
It's not a rolling release, it has major versions and EOL dates.
AviationAtom@reddit
True, it's not a rolling release by traditional definition, but it mimics one in a fair amount of ways. Continuously updated distribution is probably the more technical term. It's definitely no longer a RHEL clone.
quebexer@reddit
RHEL is a CentOS Stream Clone.
carlwgeorge@reddit
How does it mimic one? The defining characteristics of a rolling release are having a single release, with no version number, that gets updates forever with no need to reinstall (i.e. no EOLs). None of that is true for CentOS Stream.
Continuously updated is just a fancy way to say it doesn't have minor versions. I regularly have conversations with board members that we need to remove that phrasing because it causes too much confusion.
No one is claiming it is, no need to make a strawman.
ghenriks@reddit
Because the people in charge didnāt understand
They only saw āfreeā and decided that CentOS was āstealingā revenue
They didnāt understand that CentOS served the part of the market that couldnāt YET afford a RHEL license and made sure they were running a distribution that made upgrading to RHEL a no brainer when the money was available - because if you choose Debian as your free you are unlikely to leave the Debian based ecosystem for RHEL, youāll go Ubuntu when you need paid support
gordonmessmer@reddit
Red Hat did not change the CentOS release process for financial reasons, they did it for technical reasons.
The evidence of that is that Red Hat has significantly expanded the availability of free-of-cost licenses for RHEL, with the individual developer licenses and Developer Subscription for Teams licenses. And, CentOS Stream remains available as a community distribution, which serves the same market niche that CentOS did in the past, while fixing some serious problems like the 2-3 months of the year that CentOS didn't ship patches to users.
gordonmessmer@reddit
Red Hat did not kill CentOS, they fixed a number of long-standing technical and cultural problems in the CentOS distribution. They also expanded their free RHEL licensing. Today, RHEL has much better free-of-cost options than it used to. And its community release is actually open to the community, where it wasn't in the old model.
CentOS was free-of-cost, but it was never RHEL. RHEL releases are minor-version stable releases, most of which are maintained for 4-5 years, in a major-version sequence of 11 releases, with a support contract. CentOS was a less stable release model, being only a single major-version stable release, with long periods (4-6 weeks, twice a year) where no updates were delivered to users, even when there were security patches upstream, and no support.
ScotchyRocks@reddit
Aren't those licenses still cheaper than Windows though?
ChaoPope@reddit
It depends on how you license from MSFT. At my job Windows licenses are cheaper than RH. RH used to be cheaper for us but after IBM bought RH, our license cost went up significantly.
tecedu@reddit
Isnāt it mainly just the amount of cores? Windows licensing is somewhat cheaper with less host cores
ChaoPope@reddit
I'm on the Linux side, so I don't know the details we'll, but we have to add a license fee for customer VMs on RHEL whereas there is no license charge for Windows. With our MSFT enterprise license, Windows is effectively no cost for servers.
gordonmessmer@reddit
That's definitely not how MS licensing works, and if I were you I would avoid making statements like this in public forums. Either you don't understand your employer's license agreement, or your employer isn't conforming to the terms of their agreement with MS.
An enterprise agreement does still include per-device and per-VM core license counts, but the costs of those are reviewed and set annually during a "true-up" process.
ChaoPope@reddit
Windows server licenses are effectively free from the customer view because they are built-in to the base cost of the VM. With RHEL, the license fee that is built-in isn't enough to cover the license so we have to add an additional charge. Either way, MSFT or Red Hat is paid for the license.
gordonmessmer@reddit
That statement only makes sense if you're using a hypervisor platform that charges you per-VM, regardless of the OS, and bundles a windows server license into the VM cost.
What hypervisor does that?
ChaoPope@reddit
It's all about how we bill. The hypervisor licensing is per socket. There is a formula used to determine what portion of the hypervisor license and hardware costs are attributed to any given VM.
tecedu@reddit
Uhhh pretty sure itās the same unless it has changed in the past two months but both rhel and windows have a standard and data centre license. Data centre license entitles you to officially using VMs and licensing for those. Rhel is the same afaik. With windows you need the license even if youāre just using it as a hypervisor and have other vms whereas for rhel itās only when you have to use rhel vms. Also windows licensing being in 16 core packs
ChaoPope@reddit
All I know is that we have to charge a license fee for RHEL servers and we don't for Windows, regardless of the number of cores and as long as it's a VM. When we have to deploy on physical hardware it's different, but RHEL is still more expensive than Windows for the customer.
tecedu@reddit
Do you mean windows server or normal? Because you definitely have to do it for server
AviationAtom@reddit
IBM definitely seems like Broadcom, in their desire to extract maximum value. My hope is they don't implode Red Hat with any of their decisions.
ChaoPope@reddit
RH support used to be great and has gone downhill since IBM bought them.
AviationAtom@reddit
My current position is too poor to afford licenses, so I haven't been able to experience that first-hand. But it's interesting to hear and I'm not surprised.
ChaoPope@reddit
I'm at an EDU, so our licenses are heavily discounted. I can only imagine how bad the pricing is in the private sector.
AviationAtom@reddit
Ouch
UnkleRinkus@reddit
This is a pets vs cattle thing. Companies, or areas in companies, that have pets like Redhat, for solid reasons. I work for a SaaS outfit, we have cattle. Debian works well for our images.
voidwaffle@reddit
Amazon Linux is very popular on AWS and is fully supported if you purchase enterprise support.
e_t_@reddit
I had my company's production running on Amazon Linux 2, which was basically CentOS 7 with some customization. But it's going EOL this year. I looked at Amazon Linux 2023 and wasn't impressed. AL2 could get packages from EPEL, but that support is gone in 2023, so you're limited to the packages Amazon chooses to provide or what you compile yourself. I ultimately decided to push for a move to Debian as our replacement for AL2.
CarryAcrobatic8847@reddit
We're in a similar position. Tried moving one of our dev stacks to AL2023 and the lack of EPEL killed the idea before we got very far. We're trying out the Debian-based world now and things are looking much more promising.
voidwaffle@reddit
I canāt overemphasize why you should not do this. Iāve spent way too much time on Debian kernel bugs due to poor quality control. Leap second added to NTP? Caused large scale outages on Debian distros. Bugs with huge page sizes? One guy said on the mailing list āI think this patch will fix itā. That was the end of our time on Ubuntu. Iāve never had issues similar to these and more on RHEL distros. Iāve seen dozens of large scale companies move off Debian distros, never the other way around. If youāre running some basic PHP apps or low volume traffic servers you should be fine but for larger workloads donāt do Debian.
CarryAcrobatic8847@reddit
I've run into production-breaking bugs with RHEL in my career as well. My "favorite" was when they made an undocumented change to the way they calculated extents for VxFS and all of a sudden none of our disks would mount anymore. That one took me working about 20 hours straight to fix, and even then it was only because support tracked down the engineer who did it and got the information out of him. There was no mailing list to consult, it was completely opaque.
Not saying RHEL is bad or that I won't use it again, just that none of these distros are perfect and you're always going to run into issues sooner or later.
voidwaffle@reddit
Eh, running VxFS on Linux is just a bad idea in general for say the last 15 years. Last time I touched that FS was 20 years ago and I donāt miss it. Of course something esoteric is going to be more likely to break. I donāt expect a leap second to cause clock problems on my distro but that happened to Debian distros and not RHEL distros. That comparison is apples to oranges
quebexer@reddit
You should move to AlmaLinux. AWS is working with the Alma Team as well.
carlwgeorge@reddit
AWS engineers work with many distro projects, including Fedora, CentOS, and RHEL.
AviationAtom@reddit
I feel it's similar to Elasticstack though, where Amazon is riding the coattails of the upstream, but you don't really get nearly the features and support you would from the OG product
gordonmessmer@reddit
In the case of Amazon Linux 2023, "the upstream" is Fedora. Unlike ElasticStack, Fedora isn't selling support subscriptions that Amazon is competing for.
voidwaffle@reddit
Disagree but to each their own. Doesnāt change the fact that itās well supported and enterprise calibur. AWS employs loads of Linux engineers supporting AL contributing patches and features. Not sure how many IBM employs today on the RHEL team but I wouldnāt be surprised if the numbers are fairly close.
AviationAtom@reddit
Could definitely be. The evolution of ecosystems works in odd ways.
FortuneIIIPick@reddit
I've seen Red Hat based systems suffer from unrecoverable repository corruption in the past more than once which is why I settled on Ubuntu in 2006 and stayed with it. That and Red Hat abandoned its roots when they split into Fedora (hacker (not the bad kind) OS) and RHEL.
carlwgeorge@reddit
The idea that RHL split into Fedora and RHEL is a common misconception. The first two versions of RHEL were based on RHL. What actually happened was that RHL rebranded into Fedora Core, and then RHEL started basing off that.
I would also disagree that it was abandoning its roots with that change. RHL was "throw it over the firewall" open source, in that it was developed completely in private and then released with the source code. That's technically open source, not a healthy open source project. That didn't sit right with many Red Hat employees, thus the changes. Rebranding as Fedora allowed RHL to transform into a real open source project.
FortuneIIIPick@reddit
Google AI (the thing at the top when you search on Google) agrees with me, search for "Did Red Hat split into Fedora and RHEL?"
"Yes, Red Hat essentially "split" its Linux distribution into two separate products: Fedora as a community-driven, rapidly evolving distribution for individual users, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a stable, enterprise-focused distribution with commercial support, effectively creating a split between a community-oriented project (Fedora) and a business-oriented product (RHEL)."
Wikipedia agrees with my description and application of the term "split" as did every publication talking about the split back then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#:\~:text=Red%20Hat%20then%20moved%20towards,project%20sponsored%20by%20Red%20Hat.
"Red Hat then moved towards splitting its product line intoĀ Red Hat Enterprise LinuxĀ which was designed to be stable and with long-term support for enterprise users and Fedora as the community distribution and project sponsored by Red Hat."
Your information or the way you stated it is incorrect.
carlwgeorge@reddit
I did say it was a common misconception. That's why it's in the Wikipedia article. There is a reason that Wikipedia isn't allowed as a primary source in academia. There is no doubt the Wikipedia text heavily influenced the Google AI answer. I've seen lots of AI hype, but never "I was able to get an AI to construct a sentence that proves I'm right" before. Bravo, you're charting new territory in cognitive dissonance.
Meanwhile, verifiable facts agree with me.
None of those would be true if RHL split into Fedora and RHEL as you are claiming.
Source (real ones):
AviationAtom@reddit
I don't think they sold to IBM because they were on solid financial footing. Being an open source company is hard. If they don't evolve they die off.
sangfoudre@reddit
My experience in the field agrees with that statement
Electronic-Sea-602@reddit
For enterprise (talking large companies), RHEL is a default. Debian is popular in production but within smaller companies. Also Ubuntu is probably second to RHEL.
Traditional-Hall-591@reddit
Redhat - have mandatory support requirements.
barchan0@reddit
In my company, debian is the first choise distribution. We have some redhat, but only when when soft required it.
Tetmohawk@reddit
I've only seen RHEL and SUSE.
Uranium_Donut_@reddit
+
Captain_Sca@reddit
In more relaxed environments (public institutions, etc) i think Debian and Ubuntu are preferred. In more tight environments as companies maybe Redhat is the choice because ir has support.
I personally have switched to Devuan for stable services like web, proxy, nfs, databases, etc.
And for more "experimental" or bleeding edge things I use Ubuntu (for his extensive documentation and knowledge from user base). But I reeeeally dislike snap and systemd.
leaflock7@reddit
the default distro for enterprises are RHEL and Ubuntu.
Debian is also used by many, as well as suse in a lesser degree
idkau@reddit
100% agree
DevDork2319@reddit
The Enterprise default is likely gonna be RHEL with some other RHEL-adjacent distribution like Rocky or Alma for those cosplaying as sysadmins. Debian is likely going to be used places that are a little smaller or that don't need RHEL's support contracts and the like, but Debian just doesn't have the level of support you can buy from IBM if you need e.g. a two hour response time to bug reports and the like.
I'm not interested in playing stupid games with IBM on the GPL so ā¦ I'd personally stay clear of RHEL, but I'm also not an enterprise that requires a two hour response support contract and the budget to pay for it.
lzap@reddit
It looks fine on paper, until you need to hired experienced Debian staff, generally these are harder to get = more expensive. Don't get me started with less popular distributions that is even worse. With RHEL, you can get the talent more easily, there are tons of courses, consultants or companies with full solutions or certified products. It is not always about tech, all linux distros can generally do the work, it is more about people, cost and certifications for your hardware and software.
insanemal@reddit
We used Alma and Rocky for production.
Debian didn't come into the picture of It was too old.
raptr569@reddit
I've worked in IT for 15+ years in the UK for SMBs and with plenty of enterprises. RHEL is still the Linux of choice for government and large monolithic enterprises. Ubuntu seems to be the open source OS of choice for opensource devs in SMB while Debian seems to really only be the choice for old school Linux admins.
Personally, I've use to manage 100 Debian servers hosting Adobe Campaign 6/Neolane, they actually told us to use Debian but that's the only time I've ever come accross.
I've definitely seen a trend for SIEM/SOC vendors to move away from CentOS to Ubuntu for their monitoring solutions.
michaelpaoli@reddit
Debian would be one of the common "default" - typical choices for such. May often also commonly see it in rather to quite highly large scale operations and/or somewhat more limited/restricted budgets - no per-license costs - whereas commercial operations that are relatively flush with cash might not be all that concerned of forking over, e.g. $1,000.00 USD per license per host times many thousands to tens of thousands of hosts or more (and, alas, even for much lower quality distros - but will often do it because momentum and "well, everybody else is doing it" (no, they're not, though many are and continue to do so).
So, anyway, for enterprise/production, and not necessarily in any particular order, and probably not a complete list, I think these are rather common - though some may only be relegated to non-production, so, e.g., Debian, Ubuntu; Red Hat, Alma, Rocky (and earlier CentOS), SUSE, and variations of a theme, e.g. Amazon AWS AMI Linux (which I think is still based upon something in the Red Hat family). Also, what distro(s) lead(s) in enterprise/production/commercial spaces has, does, and will also vary by region/country - for historical and/or other reasons.
thelastwilson@reddit
In my experience the standard has been debian/Ubuntu in Web and RHEL based in enterprise
sryan2k1@reddit
In the tech enterprises I've worked in it was always a mix of RHEL for systems that needed it and Ubuntu for everything else.
knxdude1@reddit
We are nearly 100% RHEL with a couple of legacy Ubuntu machines that are almost all powered off
Intergalactic_Ass@reddit
These threads are almost always stupid. Don't listen to any of the responses here. Some companies use Red Hat. Some use Debian. Some use Ubuntu.
penthimus@reddit
Depends completely on the company. I worked for one of Germany's biggest ISPs, and everything was Debian based. My current employer uses AlmaLinux. Many, many others use RHEL.
Except for SAP stuff, most software is provided as Debian and/or Red Hat packages. So basically, most of the time you'll find Enterprises using one of them two or their derivatives, as i. e. Ubuntu, AlmaLinux, Fedora (for the crazy ones), ...
For SAP, it's mainly SUSE.
BarServer@reddit
Ahh, I think we both worked at the same ISP. ;-)
thewrinklyninja@reddit
Are there any know massive deployments of Debian? I know that Meta deploys thousands of CentOS Stream servers for FaceBook etc. I've never heard of any deployments of that size running on Debian though.
BarServer@reddit
Well, not Meta/Facebook scale, but 1&1 heavily uses Debian internally and for their shared hosting servers.
frygod@reddit
In my environment, we lean heavily toward RHEL for core workloads and stuff that needs to interface with active directory in a direct manner, and Ubuntu for stuff that doesn't call for AD access (with access restricted to ssh from specific jump boxes using SSH keys tied to specific AD accounts on those jump boxes.)
unsafetypin@reddit
rhel or suse in enterprise...
draeath@reddit
Everywhere I have worked, it's been RedHat (or CentOS back in the day). I have no complaints.
I haven't seen Debian or Ububtu in use, personally, but I would be happy with Debian.
reditanian@reddit
I have never worked anywhere where Red Hat wasnāt the default. The reasons come down to:
Commercial/legal. They want to know that if something breaks, they have someone to call, SLAs for fixing, and the option of legal action if necessary. When youāre spending millions on licensing, this is a big deal.
3rd party software & hardware support. This is less an issue these days, but not too long ago a lot of hardware and software had (official) support on RHEL but nothing else.
Now, I have worked in one place where we used Debian, but that was a rather unique setup. Very small company, a handful of developers (including a kernel dev) who can fix things, and a client SLA that gave us some room to deal with problems.
xsnyder@reddit
RHEL is the go to everywhere I've worked.
bobj33@reddit
I've worked at multiple companies where we have hundreds of thousands of machines running Red Hat or CentOS. I've worked at 1 company where it was SuSE. I've never actually seen Debian or Ubuntu at any of the companies I've worked at.
forwardslashroot@reddit
At work, either CentOS 7 or RHEL. Debian 11 was being used at the Express Oil Change & Tire Engineers for their workstations. I saw it when I was waiting for my car a couple of months ago.
Hotshot55@reddit
I hope you're not running something that EOL.
Barrerayy@reddit
Eh? In an enterprise setting the default used to be CentOS, and now Alma/Rocky. Some servers might run Ubuntu LTS or Debian but they aren't the "default".
TheTomCorp@reddit
I've noticed that sysadmins will use RHEL-based distros, whereas a random developer will setup a system with Ubuntu.
Barrerayy@reddit
I'd say this is accurate yep. Obviously in a business setting devs aren't allowed to setup systems
TheTomCorp@reddit
There are some corporate environments that give Developers a license to do whatever they want. They "aren't allowed to" but they do anyway, and now it's in production, so it needs to be supported.
Sorry, you stuck a nerve.
Barrerayy@reddit
Bad corp environments then
AviationAtom@reddit
Fedora, if you're a masochist š
Barrerayy@reddit
It's fine as a workstation OS tbh
AviationAtom@reddit
I just like that you get a package release cadence that is similar to Arch, without the full masochism of Arch
gordonmessmer@reddit
That really depends on how you define the terms "enterprise" and "production". A lot of people will use "enterprise" as a synonym for "business", which is a very broad term. Many businesses will use Debian and it will suit their needs very well. But for some people, "enterprise" has a more specific meaning than "business", and for those people, Debian might not be a good solution for enterprise needs.
For some people, an enterprise environment is one where contract or regulatory requirements require long-term support of feature-stable environments. Updates to these environments need to be minimized to meet externally imposed obligations, and changes might be classified as "recalls". These types of environments might also need certification or validation, and those are typically very long processes to test and approve specific builds and configurations of binaries or systems. Red Hat maintains minor-version releases for 4-5 years, allowing their enterprise customers to get maximum value from a certified system configuration, and minimize changes for long periods. Debian only maintains minor releases for around 2 months, and doesn't offer any certified builds. So, for example, if you have an obligation to use FIPS certified components, then Debian is not an option.
For some people, an enterprise environment is one that requires support. And again, we have a term that has a variety of definitions. For a lot of people, especially those who've never been the technical contact for an enterprise support relationship, "support" is a synonym for "helpdesk." In an enterprise, "support" is much more extensive. An enterprise support contract does include helpdesk, for sure. But it also includes an escalation path to the engineers that will fix the software if your environment is affected by a bug. It includes periodic meetings with your account rep to discuss how the product is working for you, where your pain points are, what your future development plans are, etc. It is a relationship that allows the vendor to direct and prioritize their development resources to make sure that their product is meeting their customers needs.
And when you define "enterprise" in that narrow and specific way, you start to whittle out a lot of distributions that are generally very good, usable systems for most environments. Debian is a very good system. It's reliable, and it has excellent governance. It exemplifies Free Software values. But it's not really an option for "enterprise" environments. Canonical fills some of those needs with Ubuntu LTS, but not long-term support for minor releases. But the default is probably RHEL or SLES, depending on where in the world you are.
oddroot@reddit
I think you'll find RHEL and their derivatives being used in places where you need commercial support, or have an application that has support licensing.
On the desktop, Ubuntu is a far stronger distro, and got a lot of use as well as a server product over the years, for being free, free of licensing issues, with a large amount of community support
After IBM bought up Centos and changed their licensing and CentOS release cadence, Linux folk started looking around harder for alternatives. While Rocky popped up, and Alma and Scientific had been around for a while, I think there is a bit of dread as to how IBM will twist RHEL to wreck that whole ecosystem.
The longer you play with Ubuntu, and the more you see Ubuntu Pro, and some inkling of them looking to monetize it more, though I feel that's more a perception thing, the more I start looking over my shoulder for an alternative. Add snaps to the con list for Ubuntu, and the idea of Debian being the long term, secure, stable platform makes more and more sense.
Personal opinion, but one from some that had been using Linux for 25 years, Debian is my new home server, and is probably the better long term distro choice. (Assuming you aren't looking for commercial support, and even then I'm sure you could find someone to take your money)
h3ckl3@reddit
From my experience, it's Rocky (it was centos before) and or Ubuntu. If a strong support is needed it's Redhat (close to Rocky).
0x412e4e@reddit
We have about 2,000 RHEL servers. Debian is definitely not the default.
Rudi9719@reddit
I'd say most places I've worked use Debian, however my current position only uses RHEL (for Linux, other families get used as well including Windows, z/OS, AIX)
Sintek@reddit
Rhel and centos ( Centos no longer ) would be the default for enterprise. Because theyvoffer enterprise licensing and support.
Oracle Linux if you don't need licensing and support
serverhorror@reddit
Most definitely not.
It's RHEL (Americas) and in Europe SuSE ... this might have changed (not sure about the current market).
Ubuntu is niche and irrelevant ...
Debian is for the orgs that can support their stuff without much fuzz or outside support. It's nit bad, but you find a production site running a distribution without commercial support.
levidurham@reddit
I'm a contractor and most of what I've run into has been SuSE here in southeast Texas. There was a server in the back of an Office Depot, the fleet fueling system at a 7/11, from the KDE desktop icons I assume Lowe's and (I think it was) Kroger (could have been Albertsons, it was a while back) are running SuSE.
I have a friend who used to work for SAP in Germany as a KDE developer, so I assume these companies are probably SAP customers and that's why they choose SuSE
CanaryWundaboy@reddit
Ubuntu everywhere in our environments.
delightfulsorrow@reddit
In my experience, it never was. You found it in some appliances, and there it lost marked share to the smaller distributions which arrived with the container stuff.
Most big enterprises wouldn't consider anything they can't get official support for and which isn't officially supported by the software they want to run on it.
I guess, RHEL will have the biggest share for bare metal installations, and something like Alpine Linux for appliances.
SuperQue@reddit
Depends on what you mean by "Big Enterprises".
We have a few hundred thousand CPUs worth of server capacity. Is that "Big Enterprise"?
We don't have any official support and we're not running RedHat or derived systems.
delightfulsorrow@reddit
That's why I wrote "most". In your scale. which is beyond most big enterprises, it doesn't matter, you can build your own distribution and staff your own support team without adding too much cost per instance. But that's the exception, even for big enterprises.
SuperQue@reddit
Sounds like you're talking "Small Enterprise".
AviationAtom@reddit
I don't think most people understand how much everything has pushed to containerization. OpenShift, or Kubernetes in general, is what much of the enterprise uses now. I don't think folks understand that even companies that embrace open source prefer to have someone to call if they have issues. Red Hat offers that.
Environmental-Ad8402@reddit
While Debian based distros are still quite popular, it is not the king in large enterprises. It's a few reasons, but the main one imo is the RHCSA.
When I worked in large enterprises settings, most admins had their RHCSA. Which meant, the company often made the decision to run RHEL or it's derivatives in production. Debian was rarely used, and if so, never in production, only for small internal things.
RH did a smart move marketing their certification and importantly, making it a practical exam; rather than multiple choice like the LPI-C or compTIA+ exams are. And that means, more of the workforce is capable of managing enterprise grade Linux distributions.
Mr_Enemabag-Jones@reddit
RedHat is the go to for a lot of large enterprises. Ubuntu is used as wellnin some orgs, but redhat it the most common that I have seen
Nicolay77@reddit
Red Hat is the default distro for enterprise.
This is because of historical reasons. Back then people still used Oracle, and Red Hat was the certified distribution to use Oracle, so companies adopted it.
Nowadays it's just legacy, as Oracle is no longer popular for many reasons.
Amazon Linux 2023 is a fork of Red Hat, so the trend continues.
_mnz@reddit
Was outvoted for Ubuntu Would have preferred Alma or Rocky
faxattack@reddit
Never ever debian in enteprise. Not supported by enterprise software and it does not align with entprise needs.
aenae@reddit
It really depends on your company.
If it is run by the beancounters, and it is an "enterprise" (with 'enterprise' in this sentence meaning a slow big company with lots and lots of processes, trying to shift blame to anyone else but yourself and taking the least amount of responsibility); than you're probably running SLES/RHEL/Oracle.
If it is a company with a bit more leeway and it has actual technical people running the show, it is either Ubuntu (if they really want to pay for support they'll never use, and if you need the support, you're most likely doing something wrong) or Debian.
But a lot of companies nowadays are shifting more and more to the cloud and containers and lambda, and use the first result from 'docker search $application' for their needs, which can be anything from debian to alpine, from distroless to windows server. It also doesn't matter if the base image hasn't been updated for 10 years.
But in my opinion: Debian if you know what you're doing, Ubuntu if for some reason you want to pay for support, RHEL/SLES/Oracle if you're forced to use it, Alma/Rocky if you want to use RHEL but can't afford it. The choice is yours.
AviationAtom@reddit
I definitely feel Debian tries to keep things stupid simple and just make it work.
catwiesel@reddit
redhat is more the enterprise linux
in central europe debian is more common. suse was big here, and that may have prevented redhat to gain too much traction, but when suse became more obscure, debian was here to take its place
not a historican, but my observation
Vynlovanth@reddit
Iāve worked at places using Debian but it usually wasnāt the default. Ubuntu LTS is usually more likely to be default. And then some combination of CentOS/RHEL and now Rocky/Alma. Iāve never worked anywhere using SUSE but Iāve run across job ads mentioning it, usually companies based in Europe.
genmud@reddit
My personal experience does not support thisā¦ I have either worked for or done consulting for at least 30-40 fortune 500s over the last 25 years, including banks, defense, tech and manufacturing companies. Almost every single one of them was either using RHEL or centos.
I only recall one company using Debian and 1 or 2 using ubuntu. There were occasional uses of non rhel/centos stuff, but Iām talking about production and IT supported hosts.
ruyrybeyro@reddit
Having worked for ISPs and now at the top dog ISP/MSP, I can say Red Hat absolutely smashes it for enterprise setupsārock solid and backed by elite support.
For SMBs, CentOS (back in the day), Alma, and Rocky are the go-to choices, with Ubuntu trailing behind.
SUSE, meanwhile, is deeply entrenched in SAP environments.
Debian and Ubuntu pop up in smaller ISPs and, to a lesser extent, in education. FreeBSD? Thatās a niche player, mostly for DNS servers and firewalls, thanks to its superior networking stack.
As for devs, they tend to lean towards Ubuntu for its balance of stability and modern packages, or Arch if they fancy a bleeding-edge, DIY approach.
Stats-wise, Red Hat dominates enterprise Linux with a market share north of 35%, while Ubuntu claims over 50% of public cloud workloads. FreeBSD, despite its loyal following, struggles to hit 1% in server deployments.
Abracadaver14@reddit
I can't speak for the industry as a whole, but we as a cloud service provider in Europe use debian unless a piece of software requires an rpm-based distro.