Linux server with CentOS or Ubuntu system _linux

Linux Server systems use more CentOS, UBuntu, Gentoo, FreeBSD, and Debian.

Server operating system should choose Debian/ubuntu or CentOS, CentOS now market share is the first

The difference between "Xiao-CentOS" and "Ubuntu"

CentOS (Community ENTerprise operating System) is one of the Linux distributions that is compiled from the source code released by Red Hat ENTerprise Linux in accordance with open source rules. Because of the same source code, some servers that require a high degree of stability are used by CentOS instead of the commercial version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Ubuntu is a desktop application based Linux operating system, the name "Ubuntu" from the southern African Zulu or Hausa language (translated into my Help or the Bantu), meaning "human nature", "I exist because everyone exists", is a traditional African values, similar to the Chinese society " Benevolence "thought. Based on the Debian distribution and GNOME desktop environment, Ubuntu differs from Debian in that it publishes a new version every 6 months. The goal of Ubuntu is to provide an up-to-date and fairly stable operating system built primarily of free software for the average user. Ubuntu has a huge community strength, and users can easily get help from the community.

Both of the current version of the individual and small teams commonly used service-level operating systems, online provided by the software library can be easily installed in many open source software and libraries. Both use bash as the base shell, so the difference between Ubuntu and CentOS is not obvious on many basic commands, and Ubuntu is doing better on the desktop interface, and many people who are interested in learning Linux are usually the first choice for Ubuntu, After all, many people are still very accustomed to working under the desktop graphics. There are still a lot of differences between CentOS and Ubuntu's usage and commands, and here's a quick list:

1.centos new non-root users do not have sudo permissions, if you need to use sudo permissions must be in the/etc/sudoers to add accounts and permissions, so switch to the root account only need to input: Su, add the root account password.

In Ubuntu, the sudo+ command is generally used, which prompts for the current user's password (instead of the root password) if it is used for the first time.

2. In the online installation software, CentOS is using the Yum command, while Ubuntu uses the Apt-get command. In addition, there is a yum from the software source to search for a software method: Yum search + software name

3.centos is from Redhat, so CentOS supports the RPM format installation, and Ubuntu is clearly not supported.

4. After all, different companies do different distributions, a lot of configuration file location and the default file path are very different, this need to use the process slowly realized.

The following are supplementary:

As a huge system operator, for a long time, we need to find a reliable and predictable system in a variety of large systems, and we need strong support from the world's most powerful software vendors and open source projects. For the most common systems, we need documentation, tools, and global resources.

For this reason, the Redhat/centos series distribution is our choice. They are able to meet all of these requirements and have relatively few, long-term stability, which allows us to provide world-class maintenance for thousands of systems that run different configurations, services, and applications.

RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the gold standard enterprise release. It is updated every five years or so, and has great advantages in the stability, foresight and security of the system. Whenever a new major version is released, such as 5.x or most recently 6.x, all versions and code will remain unchanged, and only security issues or major bugs, such as backdoor, port, and so on, will be repaired by releasing a new version of the child.

CentOS is an open source version of the Rhel release, which is usually released shortly after Redhat's release. The reason we use CentOS is that the standard support services for the Rhel release are very expensive, about $800 per server, and this is a cost that must be controlled for many of our dozens of or even hundreds of servers.

There are two potential problems with the Rhel/centos system.

First, once the master version is identified, no changes will be made except for security issues and serious failures that will be repaired. While this is good for stability, it is bad for many services. For example, MySQL and PHP services, they will be in the five-year Centos/rhel major release cycle of the heavy development and a large number of changes. For example, MySQL5.0 is the version that is used by default for the current Rhel/centos major version, but the current MySQL has been updated to version 5.1 and 5.5.

Fortunately, this problem was easily solved by the Yum Package Manager. Since then, the major software, such as the actual components in the current Rhel/centos, including the kernel and all the tools, still come from the release, but those additional software, such as Nginx,apache,php,java and MySQL, are from newer sources such as Fedora ; Or get the newer version directly from the developer such as MySQL. Here we have our own dedicated installation image to fully handle all of these things.

Second, the release of CentOS will lag behind the release of Redhat, including critical patches and fixes. This is particularly noticeable in the release cycle of the Rhel 6.x. But based on our experience, there's nothing to worry about, and it's never going to be a problem for us.

Many people ask why we don't use Debian based systems, such as Debian or Ubuntu servers. If there is no alternative, we will certainly support this proposal, but in our experience, these systems are not as stable and reliable as rhel/centos.

We believe that this is due in part to their rapid development and the lack of testing and immaturity among the various versions and combinations. However, although they are very popular, major service providers and projects are still preferred rhel/centos systems, as they can provide services to corporate customers (especially for Oracle and MySQL). In addition, Debian based systems have a number of kernel and stability issues, especially in our cloud computing services.
For us, the only reason to use 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, the Ext4 file system or log changes in the nearest kernel; now, all of this is contained in the rhel/centos6.x.

Of course, most Linux developers use the Ubuntu desktop version, and understandably, they are more likely to use the same system when developing production, and to use a lot of interesting tools. But overall, we still think Rhel/centos is a better deployment platform, and more than 10 customers have successfully turned to using CentOS as a production environment without any problems, but this is still a daunting task.

In general, you will be more than happy to see a well-managed CentOS system. We have tens of thousands of servers using the CentOS platform, and an average of only one server crashes per year. It's hard to imagine how rare it is, so pick a good, fast, reliable platform!