I’ve come across Red Hat allot lately and am wondering if I need to get studying. I’m an avid Ubuntu server user but don’t want to get stuck only knowing one distro. What is the way to go if i want to know as much as I can for use in real world situations.

  • @fuboEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    The default Linux image on AWS (Amazon Linux) is RPM-based; but the default image on Google Cloud currently appears to be Debian “bullseye” (the April 2023 release) with an option for “bookworm” (brand new this month). I’m not sure about Microsoft Azure but their docs suggest a Debian default as well.

    So that’s one impression. Knowing both dpkg/apt and rpm will serve you well.

    Major tech companies have their own internal distributions in their production datacenters, which focus much more on their specific needs. Any major tech company using Linux in datacenters will have an engineering team specifically building what they need.

    • NowheremanOPEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      That’s interesting to know thanks! I do know some dpkg and apt but nothing about rpm so will learn more about that.

    • jsveigaEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Agreed; I was going to comment something similar: I work with SAP (SAP’s HANA database runs on SUSE). When I need a free swrver OS for anything else, I go debian (I used RH from 4.2 to 8.0 when they fooled us once, then went debian).

      So being comfortable with a rpm based and a deb based system is good advice.

      On the server side, when most administration is through ssh, distro differences are not as relevant as for GUI environments. Package handling is the most impacting difference (and I prefer deb), not that it’s a showstopper, when you have yast and aptitude though.