[lambda]

Those aren't all of the instructions for apt-get. The full instructions are on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/quickstart-instal... and appear to consist of:

  curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add -
  sudo add-apt-repository "$(curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/16.04/prod.list)"
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install -y mssql-server
  sudo /opt/mssql/bin/mssql-conf setup
  sudo apt-get install -y mssql-tools unixodbc-dev
  echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools/bin"' >> ~/.bash_profile
  echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc
  source ~/.bashrc

And at that point, you have a limited period trial license of a release candidate version installed, and so once you want to use it for production, you have to start dealing with license management issues, which could limit your ability to easily set up dev envs, test envs, hot spares, etc.

All of that is on top of the issues of how heavyweight it is due to containing a platform abstraction layer that consists of a very large amount of Windows running in user mode, as discussed by others in this thread.

[manigandham]

Yes, you have to add the repo, the same as if you wanted the latest postgres bits on any distro. You also have to edit configs for both and you can also choose to install extra tools for both.

I'm surprised at how many people seem to have taken issue with a simple comment. Postgres is easy to install... and now so is MSSQL compared to the complex slow GUI installer they had before. Maybe it'll help the original commenter, maybe not. Let's just leave it at that.

[striking]

Debian and derivatives have it in repos by default. Please don't make claims like those.

[manigandham]

That's more to do with the OS than the DB, and many repo entries are outdated. MSSQL hasnt existed on Linux before, but either way:

> I'm surprised at how many people seem to have taken issue with a simple comment.

[beefhash]

Due to Microsoft SQL Server licensing, I would be highly surprised if any Linux distribution were to make it available by default in their repositories.

[vetinari]

It's not that the OS supplied versions are outdated. They are updated whenever a minor release comes out.

The thing is, that you must migrate your database between major pgsql releases and you don't want your distro to force it on you. The community pgsql repo has the same rules - you have separate repo for each major release, so no surprises either.