[Novalug] Ubuntu LTS for web/email server

Aaron Porter atporter@gmail.com
Mon Apr 19 18:59:31 EDT 2010


On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 3:25 PM, Peter Larsen
<plarsen@famlarsen.homelinux.com> wrote:
> While I wouldn't phrase it like Brian, he's basically saying that if
> you're putting together a server that you plan to support for more than
> 2 years, using non LTS distributions is suicide.

I'd take it more along the lines of: If you're planning on supporting
active development for any period of time, an LTS distribution is
suicide.

LTS distributions are great for STABLE deployments. That commercial
database project, that god-aweful java middleware, etc. For projects
with an active development cycle (web is notorious, but e-mail can be
problematic too) LTS will cripple you.

LTS means that the distribution is supported in it's CURRENT STATE for
a long period of time. That means if your mail server, your php
library, your spam filter or whatever has a security problem you'll
see a fix. It almost NEVER means that you'll see an update if your
spam filter updates versions, there's a new killer feature in your
scripting language of choice, etc.

Some of us put a lot of effort into software configuration management
& package tools so that it's easy (hopefully even trivial) to support
a whole host of applications on top of a constantly evolving software
distribution. 2 years is a long time.



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