Re: Linux Distribution Preferences?

On Jan 13, 2013, at 10:27 AM, Shaun Thomas <sthomas(at)optionshouse(dot)com> wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought.

Either would be fine. RHEL is a bit more Enterprisey - which is either good or bad, depending on your use case. They're more conservative with updates than Ubuntu - which is good for service stability, but can be painful when you're stuck between using ancient versions of some app or stepping into the minefield of third party repos. (CentOS is pretty much just RHEL without support and without some of the management tools).

Ubuntu LTS is solid, and has good support for running multiple Postgresql clusters simultaneously, which is very handy if you're supporting multiple apps against the same database server, and they require different releases. I've been told that they occasionally make incompatible changes across minor releases, which is Bad, but it's never happened anywhere I've noticed - I've no idea if it's an actual issue or "Well, back in the 2004 release, they…" folklore.

I run both in production, both on VMs and real metal. I tend to use Ubuntu LTS for new installations just because I'm marginally more comfortable in the Ubuntu CLI environment, but there's really not much to choose between them.

Cheers,
Steve