New Linux Server Competition for Novell, Red Hat?
There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that Novell and Red Hat could soon face new competition in the Linux server market. Something new from Microsoft? Nope. Another attack from Oracle? Not quite. This time, the competition could come from tiny Canonical and the company’s latest Ubuntu Linux release.
Canonical is set to release Ubuntu 7.10 — code-named Gutsy Gibbon — on October 18. Although Ubuntu’s momentum is strongest on PC desktops and notebooks, Canonical has publicly stated that Ubuntu 7.10 will include several server-focused enhancements. The company has also hinted that it was preparing a small business server suite. Also, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth has called for Canonical, Red Hat and Novell to synchronize the timing of their major Linux releases by 2010– a proposal that would allow software developers to more easily support all three platforms.
But that’s not all. Canonical is now negotiating to have Ubuntu preinstalled on servers, according to IDC — though no major deals are in place yet.
The VAR Guy sees a clear opportunity for Canonical on small business and some departmental servers. If Canonical wins server business, The VAR Guy thinks it will come at Novell’s expense. After all, Red Hat is widely considered the safe Linux choice by CIOs and Novell’s SuSE Linux hasn’t exactly set the world on fire (though sales have picked up since Novell signed the controversial partnership with Microsoft).
Of course, The VAR Guy is getting a little ahead of himself. Red Hat is humming along, Novell remains at $1 billion company and Canonical is a small, privately held business with 120 or so employees. But in this case, The VAR Guy thinks the underdog — Canonical — is holding a strong hand. As a daily Ubuntu user, The VAR Guy is impressed with Canonical’s software so far.
I don’t see this making many inroads beyond hobbyists and the smallest of the SMB market.
There have been many server products made by different distro houses over the years (remember the e-server ?)but the more the merrier.
I currently use Ubuntu 7.04 Server on my file/web/database server at home, along with Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop on my desktop and notebook systems. I really like both the Desktop and Server releases of Ubuntu.
I upgrade my desktop and notebook to the latest Ubuntu Desktop release when they come out, but I’m going to hold off on upgrading my server until the next LTS release of Ubuntu comes out.
Hey Canonical, keep up the excellent work!
[…] VAR guy over at TechIQ says Red Hat and Novell could be rubbing elbows with Ubuntu soon if Gutsy#8217;s new server features are any indication. He also cites IDC, via a ComputerWorld […]
No one will take Canonical seriously until 8.04’s LTS release. 6 months is just not long enough on a server. Besides, their insistence on sticking with sudo over a true root is not comforting for a true server deployment. I think they will gain ground from where they are, but have a long way to go before they pass Mandriva, Debian, Xandros and others to claim that they are truly a threat to RHEL and SLED.
Oh, and lets not forget that almost any flavour of BSD is more desirable for servers, as well as OpenSolaris.
Ubuntu is an after-thought when it comes to server OSes. They try to get fancy with their dumb code-names, when instead they should try and get fancy with actual functionality of their products, which in my estimation, suck!!
After using Red-Hat for several years, I’m upgraded to SLED 10/openSuse 10.3 and couldn’t be happier. I’ll try Ubuntu’s 15.0 release in 2020.
The business I run, in Christchurch, NZ, has been providing Ubuntu powered servers for small to medium businesses as well as an Ubuntu hosting infrastructure for the past 3 years. Since starting in 1998, we’ve gone from Red Hat to Mandrake to Ubuntu, and I must say, from a stability point of view, Ubuntu is on par with the others, the whole sudo vs. root argument mentioned by the poster above is a non-issue (you can log on as root if you want to, we use key-based SSH authentication). From a maintainability point of view, the Deb-based Ubuntu system is head and shoulders above anything RPM-based I’ve ever tried. Plus the ability to have a conservative system if we want (pinning debs, for instance) while at the same time having the ability to use up-to-date server software (PHP 5.2 anyone), along with the quality of packages contributed by the community make it unbeatable. The best thing, however, is the business model – Mark S. and Co. get open source. The rest are trying to do an old-school corporate dance around it with business model-kludges like commercial and community versions, dual licensing, and other unnecessary complexities. Canonical/Ubuntu foundation are showing that you don’t need to compromise freedom and ethics to run a successful business. I, for one, am working hard to help the Ubuntu community (Canonical included) show the Novells of the world how it should be done.
All the best,
Dave
Any qualified sys-admin will not have an issue with “sudo over a true root.” It can be changed in under 5 minutes. I am not a qualified sys-admin and I had no trouble with doing so.
Wow. That’s great. Let us know when Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, Veritas, the Tivoli line, “name your Enterprise storage utility”, etc, etc, etc support it.
“Distro Religion” is great – too bad it doesn’t answer the phone when the server is down.
I seriously doubt RH and Novell have much to be concerned over, but nice try. I agree, VAR Guy, that there’s some impressive stuff there, but as a rather well-known nerd from Redmond is purported to have said: “The best doesn’t always win”…..
JMO
Don
Don,
You are welcome to post comments on this site anytime. Nothing like a little bit of attitude to wake up the crowd.
The VAR Guy thinks Ubuntu has a shot on servers with the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, P…) crowd. But you’re right: This ain’t a solution for everyone — especially all of those storage utilities you mentioned. Far too many people think Linux is ready for prime time across the board. The VAR Guy is a Linux fan, but a realist as well.
[…] Complete Story: http://techiqmag.com/2007/10/10/new-linux-competition-for-novell-red-hat/ […]
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[…] and again in October that Canonical #8212; Ubuntu#8217;s promoter #8212; planned to make a small business server push sometime in late 2007 or 2008. Now, reports are circulating that Dell will jump on that […]
[…] Hat may regret such statements if upstarts like Canonical (promoter of Ubuntu Linux) gain momentum or if another disruptive technology comes along. But the market share prediction […]
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