Distribution preferences vary, but I don't see that it's that hard to consider Ubuntu.

I use Ubuntu for most of my production (and test) Linodes. I use the LTS server version. Very stable, slow update cycle and 5 year support cycle. Perfectly good choice to me.

I have used a test Linode to experiment with various other distributions, but always seem to find something I like about Ubuntu. In my comparison with Debian 5 when it first came out, for example, amongst a myriad of little things, in the end a key element that brought me back to Ubuntu was a preference for how the backports repositories are managed, for those selected items that I wish to track more closely (for example, PostgreSQL). And maybe a little tickle in the back of my mind wondering if Debian 5 would end up being as out of date as Debian 4 over time. But I certainly could be using Debian instead and likely doing fine.

I do expect to give the current 10.04 LTS some time to stabilize (as I would even with, say, a new Debian stable release) before thinking about upgrading to it, but there's plenty of time for that to happen. There's still about 3 years left before I have to start worrying about 8.04 not being actively updated with bug fixes and security updates.


An upgrade with any distribution technically carries that risk, so I'd expect folks to have tested any upgrades on a development box before upgrading a production system. I know I run parallel production/development boxes for testing both the system as well as my own application. Nothing hits the production box without first having run on the development box.

I don't believe that package updates to the LTS are inherently any riskier than with other distributions. Not to mention that a lot of the desktop-related complexities that introduce issues for Ubuntu desktop users tracking very recent releases have no relevance to a Linode server, so you don't even risk those problems in the first place.

Along the original question lines, I should point out that Linode makes distribution experimentation amazingly simple. For a while I had one of my Linodes bouncing back and forth all over the place with distributions. I had a common disk image for files I was testing, and just set up various distributions that all shared that image, so I could experiment with setting up my application stack under each distribution.

-- David

I'm trying desperately not to flame, so I'll just say that anyone taking this user seriously should read its posting history and the level of questions being asked before giving any credence to its distribution preferences.