Ubuntu Server Edition 8.10: Nice, But Who Uses It?
Ubuntu 8.10, released at the end of October, includes several notable enhancements to the Server Edition. These new features augment the usability and versatility of Ubuntu on servers, but given the short lifespan of Ubuntu 8.10, I’m left wondering how many system administrators are going to use it.
The ability to create virtual environments is perhaps the most useful feature offered by 8.10 Server in an age when virtualization has become the key to everything.
The ‘encrypted private directory’ option also sounds very cool, although I haven’t gotten a chance to play with it yet. Privacy is a big issue on many of the multi-user servers that I deal with, and an out-of-the-box solution for making sure that certain users’ files are unreadable and untouchable in the event that a machine becomes physically compromised would help to alleviate security concerns.
It’s clear that these features are not just cursory additions to an Ubuntu release whose meaningful enhancements I’d expected to find limited to the desktop edition. Rather, they send a clear message that the Ubuntu developers put a substantial amount of effort into making sure that Ubuntu Server 8.10 would be significantly better than 8.04.
A Better Ubuntu, But for Whom?
I can’t help but wonder, however, how many people are really going to benefit from these improvements. Few serious system administrators are likely to use Ubuntu 8.10 on their servers, since it only comes with eighteen months of support, compared to 8.04’s five years. Having to revamp a server every year-and-a-half in order to ensure that it continues to receive security updates is neither fun nor productive, and for most people, running a production-environment operating system that has seen its end-of-life is not acceptable.
Sure, you can in principle upgrade a server to the latest Ubuntu release easily and painlessly over the network, just as you would a desktop machine. But unless you can afford the several hours of downtime that might result from something weird happening during the upgrade, you’re not likely to do it—at least, I certainly wouldn’t, given my numerous bad experiences with distribution upgrades on my Ubuntu desktops.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are lots of people out there who are going to use Ubuntu 8.10 Server for serious deployments, despite the hassle of having to upgrade before April 2010. If so, I hope these people will speak up to correct me.
But if Ubuntu 8.10, and other in-between-LTS releases, really do see very little action on production servers, then it calls into question the wisdom of releasing a new Ubuntu Server Edition every six months in the first place. Perhaps it would make more sense to upgrade only the desktop version biannually, and coordinate the Server Edition with the LTS release cycle.
It’s difficult to draw conclusions without seeing hard numbers regarding Ubuntu Server Edition use, and I don’t know of any surveys that record the number of non-LTS Ubuntu servers vs. those running 6.06 or 8.04, the two releases that are supported longterm. And I suppose that the cool new features that made it into 8.10 Server Edition are not hurting anything. But I wonder nonetheless whom they’re really for.
I would think people (such as myself) would use it on development machines. It gives us a chance to play with new features. It also gives a chance for those features to be “tested” in these releases, before an LTS. Hopefully the LTS releases will be more stable, because of this use. For production machines though – yes, LTS only, for me.
If you use a DNS , mail antispam antivirus , simple web
there’s no “hassle” to upgrade when the time comes
for this is better to keep the lattest versions than older ones.
For big deployments or big databases we must go with LTS
for the rest I’ll go even with a 6 month do-release-upgrade
I will use it on my home server, but not at work, we are using 8.04
I’m sticking with 8.04 on my home server and not because of the support. I am doing so because I am not a professional system admin so by the time I get around to installing, setting up and tweaking any system, the next one is out!
My first inclination is they should have Ubuntu Server released with every LTS version only. Yet I also see the wisdom (as mentioned by Mark Unwin and Leonel) for testing purposes and it gives Ubuntu a chance to test out new technology before rolling it into the LTS version.
Kinda along the line of Fedora vetting out new and cool features that will end up in RHEL.
So I think having Ubuntu Server released with each Ubuntu version works yet I would like to see;
1. the Ubuntu Server LTS being updated with new tools and application versions as time goes on even if the LTS version is no longer the “current”. (This would be fore server-related technologies.. the latest xgl is not required)
2. that the Ubuntu Server LTS is marketed as the “stable” and “current” version while the in-between versions are marketed as “developer version” or more “bleeding edge” so no schmuck tries an in-between and then screams and yells if something breaks!
We are using Ubuntu 8.04 in production virtualized on Citrix XenServer Enterprise. I’ve done some initial testing with 8.10 and I do like what I’ve seen so far. The new server Kernel with Xen support integrated has made the setup process of getting the guest paravirtualized on XenServer much easier. Not to mention there was a bug in 8.04 when installing the Xen Kernel (GRUB doesn’t get updated properly).
I think of the “point releases” as a way to test upcoming technology, and I will/would use them for non mission-critical applications, and/or for a dev. environment, but for production, it’s LTS all the way for me.
The Desktop is a different story 🙂
All the point of this article is around the support and security patches …… 8.10 cannot be elected by “serious” system administrators.
there are flaws in that logic :
1 – If we talk about long term system plans, in first instance, they will not upgrade to 8.10 so soon, even if it had a long life.
2 – If your system work in 2008 it will still work in 2010 or 2012 etc etc ….. Why it would stop to work ? because someone has to touch his core system ….. and that’s not profesional at all. The only allowed modification that can be made are security patches only when required.
3 – If you upgrade to 8.10 now, you will upgrade to 9.04 later …. so the support time and patches is not a trouble.
4 – In many case, you just build your system and never touch it, even for security matter because the security is not even a factor to consider. the standard security of linux is enougth (local labs without external connexions, some dev server, home servers, specialized apliances, mecatronic, etc etc etc)
Antoine: your arguments are all valid, but just to be clear: my point is that Ubuntu 8.10 will not receive security patches via Ubuntu updates beyond the spring of 2009. As a result, system administrators would have to update to a newer release of Ubuntu if they want their systems to stay secure (unless they want to apply patches manually, which isn’t fun), and upgrading can be difficult on mission-critical servers where downtime is not acceptable. Ubuntu 8.10 machines will continue to work well beyond 2009, as you say, but they won’t be so secure with security patches.
Moreover, even though Linux is designed with security in mind, there are major bugs that pop up from time to time–e.g. the ssh-key fiasco last spring–that need to be patched in order to protect a machine from attack. The easiest way to do this is just to apply the patches that get passed down through Ubuntu updates.
You can certainly be a “serious” system administrator and still use 8.10–I didn’t mean to imply that there was a contradiction between the two–but it seems to me that most people managing large deployments of Ubuntu servers will be inclined to stick to the LTS releases.
To others: I guess I underestimated the number of people willing to use 8.10 on home servers or other smaller systems, as many of you say you intend to do. Thanks for pointing that out.
@ Jayson Rowe – I am very interested in a howto of getting server 8.10 paravirtualized on Citrix XenServer.
I have found a working guide for server 8.04, but not for 8.10. Any help would be appreciated.
I see quite a lot of small websites using Ubuntu. They probably wouldn’t mind upgrading.
“A Better Ubuntu, But for Whom?”
– For me.
I use the latest Ubuntu and I love it. No need to say more.
@Christopher Tozzi :
The NON LTS versions, have support for 18 months, so 8.10 will have support until Spring 2010
Leonel: you’re completely correct; thanks for pointing out my arithmetical error.
8.10 will give developers a chance to play with the new features before 9.04 arrives. Which will probably be an LTS version.
And support until 2010 is plenty long enough for anybody. Remember if Microsoft gets it’s way we’ll all be upgrading every 2 to 3 years. Ubuntu looks like the better option to me.
@aikiwolfie
The next LTS will be 10.04
Ubuntu LTS is released every 2 years with 5 years server support and 3 years desktop support.
and in the middle the non lts releases are released every 6 months with a 18 month support
They should run point releases for LTS versions so that it doesn’t get too far behind while not breaking the LTS service time and maintain the codebase.
Red Hat does this, and they drop the support for older point releases after a while but since it is a point release it is not nearly as major an upgrade as a full-blown version upgrade.
Be really cool if they could run a point upgrade every 6 or 9 months and make sure it is an easy upgrade.
@Willi Eigenmann
I have 8.10 working on Citrix XenServer now (with one issue). If you’d like a walk through, you can e-mail me directly at jayson (dot) rowe (at) gmail and I’d be happy to go through the process with you. It’s actually simpler than the 8.04 instructions.
Sometimes, bleeding edge code is required to support new servers. We ran Gutsy on a few servers, which would not work properly with Dapper. Now that Hardy is out, they have been upgraded to the LTS version.
I’ve had 6.06LTS, 7.04, and 7.10 on servers before but now I stick with 8.04LTS and don’t want to upgrade until 10.04 unless something unbelievably compelling like hardware incompatibility happens. I find it’s too much time to spend running around updating everything to the biggest best new server, and many software packages seem to be either for an LTS or at least all the instructions are for LTS. Upper management seems to like it more when servers sit stable and don’t need a lot of tweaking too. I’m also a little nervous about not being able to install things I want to on a non-LTS release. All that so say, I don’t have anything against the non LTS releases and am a little envious of them, but it’s not worth the trouble… but that 8.10 muekow addition of local apps is oh so tempting!
[…] dando implementándolo. Nota: En un principio lo intentamos con la versión 8.10, pero debido a los cambios escasamente documentados en la configuración LDAP decidimos pasarnos a la versión 8.04 LTS, mucho más parecida a la 7.10 en lo que a configurar la […]