My Weekend Linux Misadventure
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@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
If using Ubuntu, you should use 18.04 LTS. Nearly everything in Ubuntu is tested LTS.
I was surprised how much shit isnt supported / test on 19.04 vs 18.0I feel the opposite (and was told the opposite by Canonical.) All their testing and support goes to the current, not the LTS, releases. Yes, third parties oddly tend to test with outdated stuff more, but it's not the approach that Ubuntu themselves recommend. And while it may get more testing, the current gets more updates, which especially in stuff like this I think outweighs testing.
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@scottalanmiller said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
If using Ubuntu, you should use 18.04 LTS. Nearly everything in Ubuntu is tested LTS.
I was surprised how much shit isnt supported / test on 19.04 vs 18.0I feel the opposite (and was told the opposite by Canonical.) All their testing and support goes to the current, not the LTS, releases. Yes, third parties oddly tend to test with outdated stuff more, but it's not the approach that Ubuntu themselves recommend. And while it may get more testing, the current gets more updates, which especially in stuff like this I think outweighs testing.
I hear where you're coming from and see the logic for systems that are only using stuff from canonical's own repos, but my experience has been that all of the 3rd party stuff seems (seemed? it's been a while since I've done much with 3rd party apps) to be tested and optimized for the LTS stream.
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No matter how much the community wants to deny it, LTS is better supported. Whether you are talking CentOS vs Fedora or Ubuntu 18.04 vs 19.04, LTS is preferred and better supported by 3rd parties.
You almost never see instances where Fedora server is supported and CentOS isn't. Same thing with Ubuntu.
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@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
No matter how much the community wants to deny it, LTS is better supported. Whether you are talking CentOS vs Fedora or Ubuntu 18.04 vs 19.04, LTS is preferred and better supported by 3rd parties.
You almost never see instances where Fedora server is supported and CentOS isn't. Same thing with Ubuntu.
Yeah, "should be" and "is" are totally different things.
One could also argue you shouldn't choose third party software that doesn't support the more up to date OS versions as well, but it is what it is.
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@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
No matter how much the community wants to deny it, LTS is better supported. Whether you are talking CentOS vs Fedora or Ubuntu 18.04 vs 19.04, LTS is preferred and better supported by 3rd parties.
You almost never see instances where Fedora server is supported and CentOS isn't. Same thing with Ubuntu.
If you think about - it makes sense. The 3rd parties want to spend time on their products - not testing and re-testing every 3-6 months for some new release.
We're now running into that issue on Windows. MS's update cycle has thrown software vendors into a fit! Two massive updates a year? Shit, software vendors could barely keep up with once every 3 years, and now it's every 6 months?
There are rumors now that MS might be moving to a Tick/Tock setup with Windows, Major update in Fall, minor update in Spring - or vice versa.
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@Obsolesce said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
No matter how much the community wants to deny it, LTS is better supported. Whether you are talking CentOS vs Fedora or Ubuntu 18.04 vs 19.04, LTS is preferred and better supported by 3rd parties.
You almost never see instances where Fedora server is supported and CentOS isn't. Same thing with Ubuntu.
Yeah, "should be" and "is" are totally different things.
One could also argue you shouldn't choose third party software that doesn't support the more up to date OS versions as well, but it is what it is.
But in reality it ends up being alot more then you think. It's not just software you purchase, but plenty of tools you use on a daily basis. It just snowballs when you realize how many things are impacting.
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@Dashrender said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
If you think about - it makes sense. The 3rd parties want to spend time on their products - not testing and re-testing every 3-6 months for some new release.
Good products are tested every few hours. The OS updating doesn't impact modern software development processes in reality. And the LTS system makes for big, jarring changes that can be avoided and technical debt that you can circumvent. If you are about reducing the effort and cost of making software and instead want better profits, you actually want more frequent releases, too.
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@Dashrender said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
We're now running into that issue on Windows. MS's update cycle has thrown software vendors into a fit! Two massive updates a year? Shit, software vendors could barely keep up with once every 3 years, and now it's every 6 months?
Don't compare the crap of the Windows ecosystem to real software companies. Bad software is bad software wherever it is.
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@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
No matter how much the community wants to deny it, LTS is better supported.
That's not something I've seen in the real world. Better vendor support on current, better hardware support. More cruft and crap on LTS, but that's the opposite of good support.
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@Obsolesce said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
One could also argue you shouldn't choose third party software that doesn't support the more up to date OS versions as well, but it is what it is.
Exactly. Avoiding LTS helps you avoid bad software that simply isn't supported. All the "not supported" garbage focuses on LTS and LTS users. Same as from the Windows world.
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@IRJ here is the problem... since the underlying OS isn't supported in LTS, by any normal definition, nothing on top of it is truly supported. Not by any meaningful standard. "Supported" in legal and IT parlance, in any way meaningful to businesses or end users, is a reference to the complete system, not just an isolated component of it. We discuss this all the time... can a product be "supported" if it depends on unsupported parts? The IT answer has to always be a solid, clear "no". And since LTS "support" is a reference to leaving LTS for "current support", any product that requires LTS but does not support current is, clearly, not actually supported.
It's a pretty clear logical requirement in a situation where LTS (this doesn't apply to CentOS where the LTS gets full support) doesn't get support, that all supported software is on current. Anything requiring LTS is simply, not supported or production ready.
So saying LTS has more support doesn't give the full picture. More unsupported software that shouldn't be found in a business or can't be called supported is available for it. Absolutely. Tons of software only runs on XP, too. But all supported software is on current.
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@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
@Obsolesce said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
No matter how much the community wants to deny it, LTS is better supported. Whether you are talking CentOS vs Fedora or Ubuntu 18.04 vs 19.04, LTS is preferred and better supported by 3rd parties.
You almost never see instances where Fedora server is supported and CentOS isn't. Same thing with Ubuntu.
Yeah, "should be" and "is" are totally different things.
One could also argue you shouldn't choose third party software that doesn't support the more up to date OS versions as well, but it is what it is.
But in reality it ends up being alot more then you think. It's not just software you purchase, but plenty of tools you use on a daily basis. It just snowballs when you realize how many things are impacting.
OH yeah, I was not disagreeing with you.
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@scottalanmiller said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
No matter how much the community wants to deny it, LTS is better supported.
That's not something I've seen in the real world. Better vendor support on current, better hardware support. More cruft and crap on LTS, but that's the opposite of good support.
Can you show any examples where Ubuntu 19.04 is supported and 18.04 is not? Or Fedora server and CentOS isnt supported? Because there are many examples I can show where there are real world products that only support LTS.
I mean eventually the features in non LTS versions will make their way into the next LTS release, but I have seen so many examples where there is just support for LTS versions.
Example 1 - ElasticStack
https://www.elastic.co/support/matrix
Example 2 - Jump Cloud
Example 3 - Nessus
https://docs.tenable.com/generalrequirements/Content/NessusScannerSoftwareRequirements.htm
Example 4 - NGINX
https://docs.nginx.com/nginx/releases/
Example 5 - Sophos
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Example 6 - SQL Server 2017 on Linux
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-overview?view=sql-server-2017
This one is more detables as MS is not known for best practice, but in this scenario would you rather have SQL run on current Windows Server or LTS Linux?
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@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
Can you show any examples where Ubuntu 19.04 is supported and 18.04 is not?
Well... all of them by my definition. If it requires 18.04, it can't be supported, right? That's the point. Provided for and being supported aren't the same thing. Since 18.04 itself isn't "supported", nothing requiring it can be supported.
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@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
This one is more detables as MS is not known for best practice, but in this scenario would you rather have SQL run on current Windows Server or LTS Linux?
I'm not saying it is the end of the world, and by Linux (and general industry) standards, all of Windows is unsupported, lessso than Ubuntu LTS. But SQL Server does support CentOS.
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@scottalanmiller said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
This one is more detables as MS is not known for best practice, but in this scenario would you rather have SQL run on current Windows Server or LTS Linux?
I'm not saying it is the end of the world, and by Linux (and general industry) standards, all of Windows is unsupported, lessso than Ubuntu LTS. But SQL Server does support CentOS.
What's your definition of "supported"?
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Wouldn't the latest Ubuntu/whatever Linux be more actively worked on and the LTS version is just getting the old updates, like "last years updates".
I mean that's why the LTS, they get slower update cycles, just like windows.
So in terms of compatibility, maybe third party programs would run better on more recent versions then? -
@scottalanmiller said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
@IRJ said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
Can you show any examples where Ubuntu 19.04 is supported and 18.04 is not?
Well... all of them by my definition. If it requires 18.04, it can't be supported, right? That's the point. Provided for and being supported aren't the same thing. Since 18.04 itself isn't "supported", nothing requiring it can be supported.
I'm just making sure I understand - it's Ubuntu that says, if not on current version, we don't support you, right? I.e. 1804 LTS even though it's LTS, is not something Ubuntu itself supports - if that's the case what the hell is the point of LTS?
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@Obsolesce said in My Weekend Linux Misadventure:
What's your definition of "supported"?
Same as the industry. We go over this a lot. That the vendor will do everything within reason to fix and make work the product in question.
The entire industry has the same definition, even if no one talks about it. Everyone asks "is something supported" and we all know what it means. And we all know that some vendors use the term loosely to make a quick sale. Like Windows is called "supported" but you don't get any support, not what anyone accepts as being supported.
