Im wondering why most of you guys using ubuntu instead of most widely used centos and why linode is recommending ubuntu for customers?

Is there any special benefits in ubuntu over centos?
Please reply dont just read and go!

It has a reputation as being good for newbies.

I don't use it, btw. I use Debian proper.

Ease of use -- allegedly.

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/ Peter

It's got a huge library (as does Debian), PPA is nice when you need a package that isn't in the repo, aptitude/apt-get is pretty nice, it's easy to upgrade between versions, it has a huge amount of community support, tutorials, it has a fixed and reliable release schedule, etc.

For me, though, probably the two biggest reasons are that it's very lightweight (ubuntu minimal is indeed quite minimal, I've got it running on a P3 too) and simple (installing just what you need is a snap).

Overall, I find that, when it comes to distros for servers, it just does what I need, so I see no real reason to switch to a different distro.

So do you guys think ubuntu saves more ram vs centos in your linode? like how much?

I use Ubuntu on my servers because I use Ubuntu on my desktop/netbook, and I use Ubuntu there because it generally works well as a desktop OS. I also agree with Guspaz's reasons.

Memory usage should be about the same for each distribution running the same stuff on the same architecture. More complex packages with a lot of compile-time decisions (e.g. Apache) will vary more, but probably not by much.

I suppose the more compelling question would be "why use CentOS?" It's always struck me as having all of the annoyances of RHEL (rpm, yum, lethargic release schedule) but without the benefits (support). It is, however, required by some commercial software (cPanel comes to mind).

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I always assumed people used it for more up to date packages, like php, mysql, etc.
CentOS tends to be rock solid, but a bit behind.
I use Debian simply because that's what I use at home, and it's easier for me to remember the foibles.

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Chris Bryant

You can be just as behind if you stick to LTS releases of Ubuntu

I don't use Ubuntu because cannonical doesn't support packages outside of 'main'. The Ubuntu security team only cares about 'main'.

If you need deb, use debian.

Officially true, and I believe USNs are only sent for main, but I've not yet heard of a case where a known vulnerability was not rectified in universe. An example from today would be:

http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-995-1

In 10.04, this moved from main to universe, but concurrently with the fixes to 8.04/9.04/9.10, it was also updated in 10.04:

rtucker@tremens:~$ apt-cache policy libmikmod2
libmikmod2:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 3.1.11-a-6.1ubuntu0.1
  Version table:
     3.1.11-a-6.1ubuntu0.1 0
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security/universe Packages
     3.1.11-a-6.1 0
        500 http://mirror.rit.edu/pub/ubuntu/ lucid/universe Packages

(Perhaps not the best example, but it's the one I have right here.)

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I use debian for similar reasons to most people above.

Full security support, a really good freeze process resulting in a good stable release, smoother upgrades between major versions, etc. I trust their approach to security.

In common with ubuntu is APT and aptitude, which is the package manager I love, and much configuration is the same between the two.

Ubuntu has a huge user community, which in my experience can be a little less knowledgeable than the Debian community (a fair bit of bad advice, and people stuck without answers, in Ubuntu forums) but on the other hand is much more welcoming towards and tolerant of newbies. One good thing is that a howto guide for Ubuntu will usually work with Debian and vice versa in case you can't find any info specific to one or the other.

for example
apt-get install nginx

installs the latest version available on nginx?

I love the apt packaging system, but Debian stable is a little slow for my taste, and I don't want to run unstable or testing just to have the latest version of packages.

The latest version of Python in Debian stable is 2.5.2, which is ridiculously old: http://packages.debian.org/lenny/python

In Ubuntu, the latest version of Python in the stable release is 2.6.5 (one behind the latest 2.6 release, but it has all the features that were added in 2.6): http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/python

Trying to upgrade Debian to Python 2.6 is a huge pain in the ass, because certain core tools of the distro rely on Python, so it's easy to accidentally break them.

I choose CentOS

Ubuntu was a personal choice. In school, we were actually taught Slackware.

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