[CentOS] Redhat vs centos vs ubuntu

Sat Nov 12 14:08:28 UTC 2011
Christopher Chan <christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk>

On Saturday, November 12, 2011 03:59 PM, Nataraj wrote:

> I believe the standard desktop uses Ubuntu's own installer.  The Ubuntu
> server and the 'alternative' distribution use the debian installer.  I
> fought with it at first, but it is much more flexible than the redhat
> installer.  You can build arbitrary LVM/raid configurations with it and
> you can also go into the shell from the installer and customize things
> that you can't with the redhat installer.

Last time I tried, you could not do lvm on raid and it was acknowledged 
as such on the ubuntu-installer/ubuntu-devel-discuss list. Arbitrary 
lvm/raid and lvm on raid has been possible on anaconda for quite a while.

>> 3- I don't know about having a server being forced to connect to the
>> internet before you can even begin to secure
>> it up. But the only way to really install it is to do that. Wait til you
>> see the insecure firewall setup if gave me too..
> I've not experienced any distribution to provide a great default
> firewall setup.  What I do notice about Ubuntu server is there are very
> few services running in the default install, so if you probe a newly
> installed machine, it's not very vulnerable.  I usually run new installs
> behind my Internet firewall anyway.  I like doing a basic install and
> then adding the services that I want to enable, rather then a server
> install that comes up with dozens of services that you may not need and
> you have to turn them all off to secure the machine.

Nobody said anything about any distribution providing a 'great' default 
setup. Someone said something about dozens of firewall management tools 
but in reality, they were all solutions that drive you insane.

Redhat/Centos = service iptables save. End of story.


>> 4- I picked the virtual host package, as the machine will hold guest
>> OS's (presumably ubuntu).
> I do like CentOS/Redhat 6 better as a virtualization server.  Thing to
> realize here is that Redhat is leading the development effort for KVM,
> libvirt etc, so Ubuntu's code lags behind redhat.  For the current
> stable Ubuntu 10.04 LTS release Ubuntu lags behind redhat 6 and since
> 10.04 LTS is a stable release it doesn't just get arbitrary updates
> unless they are security fixes.

Sometimes stuff don't get updates at all. Even when working patches have 
been provided. Maybe only some Canonical maintained packages get backports.

>
> One thing I like about Ubuntu/debian is the /etc/network/interfaces file
> over /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts /etc/sysconfig/network.

I must say that that is one thing among others nice in Debian. Just like 
runparts is from Debian.

> Just another flavor of linux.  There are various packages that can be
> installed to do this for you.  ufw is one of them.  I prefer to use my
> own scripts though.

Using your own scripts is the only sane way to do things...ufw, 
fwbuilder, even shorewall are just either inadequate, inflexible or way 
too complicated to trace/optimize things.