[califield]

> We're getting more monolithic and coarse-grained.

At the same time we are pushing more heterogenous software stacks to production and configuring more specific dependencies for our applications.

It almost seems like you're using cross-platform as a pejorative. ;)

[baldfat]

Yeah we need to go back to when distro A and B had totally different versions of everything since it was so much work to get things working.

Now we are close to having a OS where you can seriously just expect anything "Linux" to just run. Bad I guess to some :P

[zanny]

Seriously, once the systemd convergence is over, I can finally start advocating Ubuntu on workstations everywhere because it will finally have commonality with server infrastructure. The last frontier after that is package format convergence, and Lennart has said repeatedly he intends to use the systemd monoculture to push a common package format, which is a really good thing for me.

Right now I have most clients running OpenSUSE, just because I cannot be bothered to fuck with Upstart anymore. Once systemd is in place, the fact zypper is much nicer than apt doesn't make up for the incredible market size difference between Suse and Debian and its children.

[ginko]

>The last frontier after that is package format convergence, and Lennart has said repeatedly he intends to use the systemd monoculture to push a common package format, which is a really good thing for me.

Great, so now instead of adopting a package system system with a solid theoretical foundation like Nix or guix, we're going to dump all dependencies into fat binaries and more or less end up with the solution the NeXT people came up with in the 90s. Such progress.

EDIT:

Not to mention that Lennart's proposed package system[1] would depend on btrfs-specific features, adding even more code coupling.

[1]http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linu...

[viraptor]

I was so sure it would happen... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8203859 - called it just before the blog post. I wish I was wrong.

[baldfat]

I also run OpenSUSE and I think that zypper is best in class and the OpenSUSE Build Service is the killer app for SUSE and I don't know why these are not such a HUGE seller of SUSE servers????

With OpenSUSE Build Service what does Debian server get you? Just wondering.

[kbenson]

And why not RHEL/CentOS and/or Fedora? I'm sure you have your reasons, but I find it odd you didn't even bother to mention it, when it's a rather large part of the market.

[zanny]

Software availability and versioning in the Red Hat ecosystem sucks. Either you are using Fedora, where software is usually just frozen bleeding edge circa Manjaro, where breakage does happen and that cannot be accepted in production, or you are running upwards of 5 year old versions of software.

The Ubuntu LTS cycle is just an optimal compromise in my book. You even get Debian Testing as a good rolling release, Debian Stable as a great server release, Ubuntu Server as an enterprise option, and they all (soon) will be using a common core.

For now I advocate the SUSE's, but while it has been stable the general obscurity of it and the dwindling userbase and the fact Novel (I know they have also since sold SUSE) backed out of maintaining OpenSUSE directly, I can't be confident in its future. You cannot underestimate the Ubuntu mindshare, because it means "Linux" software is often Ubuntu first, repackaged by hobbyists for other distros second.