Centos or ubuntu for linux servers

Linux server systems use CentOS, uBuntu, Gentoo, FreeBSD, and Debian.

For the server operating system, Debian/Ubuntu or CentOS should be selected. CENTOS has the highest market share.

[Small discussion] the difference between centos and ubuntu

CentOS (Community ENTerprise Operating System) is one of the Linux releases. It is compiled from the source code that Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases according to open source code regulations. Because of the same source code, some servers that require high stability use CentOS instead of the commercial version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Ubuntu is a Linux operating system based on desktop applications. Its name is "ubuntu" (translated as "My Help" or "wubantu") in Zulu or haosa in southern Africa ), it means "Human Nature" and "my existence is because of the existence of everyone". It is a traditional African value, similar to the "benevolence" Thought of Chinese society. Ubuntu is based on the Debian release and GNOME desktop environment. Unlike Debian, Ubuntu releases a new version every six months. The goal of Ubuntu is to provide a general user with the latest and stable operating system built mainly from free software. Ubuntu has a huge community power, allowing users to easily get help from the community.

The two are common service-level operating systems for individuals and small teams in the current version. The software libraries provided online can be easily installed into many open-source software and libraries. Both use bash as the basic shell, so in many basic commands, the difference between ubuntu and centos is not very obvious, while ubuntu does better on the desktop interface, many users prefer ubuntu if they are interested in learning linux. After all, many users are still very accustomed to operating in desktop graphics. The usage habits and commands of Centos and Ubuntu are quite different. The following is a simple example:

1. the non-root user created in centos does not have the sudo permission. To use the sudo permission, you must add the account and permission to/etc/sudoers, when switching to the root account, you only need to enter su and add the password of the root account.

In Ubuntu, The sudo + command is generally used. If this is the first time you use it, you will be prompted to enter the current user's password (instead of the root password)

2. In online Installation Software, centos uses the yum command, while ubuntu uses the apt-get command. In addition, yum also provides a method to search for software from the software source: yum search + software name

3. centos is from redhat, so centos supports rpm installation, while ubuntu obviously does not.

4. After all, it is different releases made by different companies. The location of many configuration files is very different from that of the default file path. This requires some experience in the use process.

The following is a supplement:

As a huge system operator, for a long time, we need to find a reliable and predictable system among multiple large systems, we need strong support from the world's most powerful software vendors and open-source projects. For the most commonly used systems, we need documents, tools, and global resources.

For this reason, the RedHat/CentOS series release is our choice. They are able to meet all of the above requirements, with relatively few problems and long-term stability, which enables us to provide world-class maintenance for thousands of systems running different configurations, services and applications.

RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a gold standard Enterprise release. It is updated every five years or so and has great advantages in system stability, foresight, and security. Every time a new primary version is released, such. x or the latest 6.x, all versions and codes will remain unchanged. Only security issues or major bugs, such as backdoors and ports, will be fixed by releasing a new sub-version.

CentOS is an open-source version corresponding to the RHEL release. It is usually released soon after the release of RedHat. The reason we use CentOS is that the cost of standard support services for the RHEL release is very high, about $800 per server. For many users who have dozens or even hundreds of servers, this is the cost that must be controlled.

There are two potential problems with the RHEL/CentOS system.

First, once the main version is determined, the content will not be changed except for the security issues and serious faults that will be repaired. Although this is good for stability, it is not good for many services. For example, for MySQL and PHP services, they will carry out heavy development and a lot of modifications during the CentOS/RHEL main version release cycle over the past five years. For example, MySQL5.0 is the default version of RHEL/CentOS, but MySQL has been updated to versions 5.1 and 5.5.

Fortunately, this problem was easily solved by the Yum Software Package Manager. Since then, the main software, such as the actual components in RHEL/CentOS, including the kernel and all tools, still comes from the release version, but the additional software, such as Nginx, Apache, PHP, Java, MySQL, and so on from updated software sources such as Fedora; or directly obtain the updated version from the developer such as MySQL. here, we have our own dedicated installation image to fully handle all these tasks.

Second, CentOS release lags behind RedHat release, including key patches and fixes. This is particularly significant in the release cycle of RHEL 6.x. However, based on our experience, this is nothing to worry about, and it will never become a problem for us.

Many people ask why we don't need Debian-based systems, such as Debian or Ubuntu servers. If there is no choice, we will indeed support this suggestion, but based on our experience, these systems are not as stable and reliable as RHEL/CentOS.

We believe that, to some extent, this is caused by their rapid development and less mature tests between versions and combinations. Despite their popularity, the main service providers and projects still prefer RHEL/CentOS systems, because they can provide services to enterprise customers (especially for Oracle and MySQL ). In addition, Debian-based systems have many kernel and stability problems, especially in our cloud computing services.
For us, the only reason for using Debian/Ubuntu is:

"They can provide the necessary special services for a system, especially when some drivers or IO subsystems need a new kernel ". for example, ext4 file system or Log Changes in the recent kernel; now, all of this is included in RHEL/CentOS6.x.

Of course, most Linux developers use the Ubuntu Desktop version. It is understandable that they prefer to use the same system during development and production, you can also use many interesting tools. But in general, we still think that RHEL/CentOS is a better deployment platform, and more than a dozen customers have successfully switched to use CentOS as the production environment without any problems, however, this is still an arduous task.

In general, you will be more happy to see a well-managed CentOS system. We have thousands of servers using the CentOS platform, and only one server crashes on average every year. It is also hard to imagine that it is so rare, so pick an excellent, fast, and reliable platform!