Linux Distro?

[Ethan Banks]

What Linux distro do most of you use? I have seen much love aimed at Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora in the past. Any of these (or something else) a best choice in the context of running network automation tools on Linux in VMware Fusion?

/Ethan

[Ivan Pepelnjak]

I'm usually using Fedora or CentOS, but it looks like more things might be available on Ubuntu.

iPad, iTypos, iApologize

On 21 Jul 2015, at 16:17, Ethan Banks <ethan...@packetpushers.net> wrote:

What Linux distro do most of you use? I have seen much love aimed at Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora in the past. Any of these (or something else) a best choice in the context of running network automation tools on Linux in VMware Fusion?

/Ethan

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[Scott Lowe]

I use Ubuntu for most everything, with a bit of Debian thrown in. I find that it's often easier to find and use what you need on Ubuntu versus CentOS. YMMV, naturally. :-)

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On Jul 21, 2015, at 8:17 AM, Ethan Banks <ethan...@packetpushers.net> wrote:

What Linux distro do most of you use? I have seen much love aimed at Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora in the past. Any of these (or something else) a best choice in the context of running network automation tools on Linux in VMware Fusion?

/Ethan

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[Nick Buraglio]

I've been fighting this question in vain for years. My personal preference is for FreeBSD - but that's an aside, it's significant advantages are eclipsed by the fact that everything is written for linux (says the guy that works for Berkeley lab; big surprise). I started out on BSD and slackware in the 90's and quickly moved my linux use to Debian due to it being a minimalist approach rather than the opposite. Since around 2008 I've been using CentOS mostly because that is what the jobs I've worked on have used and it's likeness to RHEL. I like the package management system and it is mostly stable. In the last year or so as I work a lot more with OpenFlow controllers and other SDN open source projects as well as docker and the other buzzword compliant things banging around I've found that CentOS takes a big 'ol back seat to Ubuntu. So it really depends on what you want to [easily] do, unfortunately. 

The upside is that patch and user management can be mostly automated using puppet or other tools so running a bunch of different distributions is pretty easy once that hurdle is jumped. My guess is that you'll have better luck with Ubuntu for FOSS and better support for commercial stuff under CentOS. 

My advice: Learn them all and pick and choose based on what you're doing. They're all linux so the fringe details are all that is really that different.

nb

 

On Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 9:17 AM, Ethan Banks <ethan...@packetpushers.net> wrote:

What Linux distro do most of you use? I have seen much love aimed at Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora in the past. Any of these (or something else) a best choice in the context of running network automation tools on Linux in VMware Fusion?

/Ethan

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[Ivan Pepelnjak]

They're all linux so the fringe details are all that is really that different.

Like "this thing won't even compile on Fedora" and similar fringe details ;))

[Dave Tucker]

In my experience that’s usually the case of “package requires
version X of libfoo. Your distro ships with version Y”
<insert story about sysadmins baking custom rpms here>
This is why I use Debian - rolling releases and grabbing a package from
the bleeding edge is usually painless.

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[Ajay Chenampara]

Cannot agree more. Linux really was targeted as a desktop system that took over the Datacenter: watch this fun presentation about its internals :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=95&v=oebqlzblfyo

Cheers,

-ajay

 

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[Nick Buraglio]

I've found that that kind of stuff is *usually* due to dumbness like stuff being different versions, in different locations, or terrible code practices like requiring versions for no good reason. Mostly it's been management stuff for me since I generally use whatever Linux distribution is recommended. 

nb

[Jay Swan]

I use Security Onion as my base distro for general purpose testing and experimentation: https://github.com/Security-Onion-Solutions/security-onion. It's based on Ubuntu 12.04 but comes prepackaged with most common networking and security tools. Salt is the prepackaged automation system but you could install Ansible or whatever else you like. I just leave the monitoring suite unconfigured.

If I have to build something dedicated it's easy to go from there to any Ubuntu LTS version.

Jay

[David Barroso]

I am assuming you are planning to do some testing or run lightweight automation tools as you mentioned VMWare Fusion. So my question is; why use even Linux at all? If your desktop is a Mac you can run any tool you want in OS X. All the scripting languages have some sort of virtual_environment tool that allows you to "sandbox" the environment without affecting other virtual_environments or the main system. You can even use SQLite3 if you need a database for testing purposes! I have been automating large-scale networks and building my own "SDN Solutions" for a few years now and I haven't used a single Linux machine for development or testing purposes, only for production.

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[Ethan Banks]

Your point is well taken. But for my purposes, running what I need to in Linux VMs is simply easier.

David Barroso wrote:

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[James Luther]

As you're a network engineer by trade then I'd recommend going for Ubuntu.  Particularly in your use case (to run network automation tools in Fusion).  If you're not a Linux expert then *I think* Ubuntu has the best community support and a lot of guides / blogs for network stuff are based around Ubuntu.

I've also used redhat based distros for over 10 years (and a bit of freebsd), but as Networking is my day job then for the last 3-4 years I settled on Ubuntu as it's just quicker to get basic stuff done.  I have to deal with the fact that at work i'll probably have redhat linux jump boxes (with really old 2.4 python), but that's another teams job to feed and water ;o)

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[Andrew Clue]

I believe Debian- and RedHat-based distros are most of use today and it would be handy to have VMs deployed with both.

Personally, I use Ubuntu for everything, Kali (Ubuntu based) for penetration testing and stuff. Most networking vendors use Centos for their soutions so I always have some Centos-based VMs in the lab too.

PS. VMware Workstation works not very stable on Linux. I've got constant freezings of my lab laptop with Workstation installed and eventually set up ESXi on it which works without reboot a few months now.

Cheers,

Andrew