to stupid down-voters: try to count what amount of testing a standalone package gets compared to the package which is a part of Fedora Project? In term of number of installations? community involved? Fedora's team and infrastructure?
Are web-hosting or shared-hosting providers using Ubuntu?
What do you thing Amazon or RackSpace are using?
RPM based distros generally have a tough standing since Ubuntu began to eclipse everything else in terms of popularity.
This search results showing that there are a lot of Linux home users who're using Ubuntu because it is most popular Desktop distro. Its popularity in a large extend due to money Canonical spent on promotion. (Remember free shipping of CD's and other actions)
But if you're considering a server segment, there are traditionally CentOS, RHEL or Fedora. Or even that stupid Unbreakable Linux. Why it is so? (Because it got that way!)
First, because most of really important key developers, like mr. Ulrich Drepper, works for RedHat or with Redhat. Redhat also actively supported by IBM, that's why RHEL is a such huge success.
Second, since RHEL4, when they made that stupid decision to maintain all the patches by themselves (RHEL4's kernel source rpm had up to 300 patches in it, but I'm not quite sure you know what it is all about.)
Now, they work with a mainstream kernel developers, so all their code got a most extensive testing possible. This is what Google's Linux engineers still cannot understand - the best testing and bug hunting is in primary linux source tree.
So, what about Ubuntu? Compared to Fedora it is outdated, very conservative, desktop-oriented distro for an average mediocre user. I don't want to go deeper and try to compare source packages of key components, such as kernel, glibc and related, but I'm pretty sure there are different set of patches. One can compare common packages like perl, python, erlang, gcc, php by themselves.
Conclusion? OK, 3-5 years ago using Ubuntu or Debian as a server instead of Fedora-derived distros was a sign of non-professionalism, if not a fanboyism or even ignorance. What changed today? Almost nothing. Ubuntu is following the same conservative policies. There are some so-called server editions of Ubuntu, but it is rather a marketing movement.
And, you might be surprised, but key kernel developers are using Fedora. =)
Funny. In my circles it's considered a sign of masochism to run a RPM based distro in this day & age. To each their own, let's keep the evangelism off HN.
I'm trolling because I was around when FreeBSD 2.0 was considered as too modern, when there were no RedHat, let alone Ubuntu. I survived migrations from libc5 to glibc, from LinuxThreads to NTPL, from 2.4 to 2.6 kernels. I made a specialized distros for corporate usage from RH's and then RHEL4's srpms long before CentOS was here. I did a migration of Informix-based products from SCO Open Server to Linux in 1999 as a solution for so-called problem 2000.
Now, when any newfag without any understanding of what depends of what and why it is so, can do yum install or apr-get install php* what should I do?
I'm still unable to comprehend what mc is or what nautilus is for. I'm still using only 5 programs - vi, emacs, mit-scheme, chromium and mplayer, and have an addiction for rebuilding anything with clang.
So, seems like I'm a troll. In this case yes, I'm trolling.