HP to certify Ubuntu 12.04 LTS for Proliant servers
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
Sysadmins without 'buying power' who are already running Linux on corporate infrastructure and who are taking flak from PHB management.
(Coming from someone who stood aghast at the purchase of $5k per unit of vulnerable-by-default Windows Server based SSH servers when two Pentium IIIs from 1998 running Ubuntu LTS would have worked better - to handle 100MB of data three times/day on a 10Mbit synchronous cxn.)
Would it have before? Warranty claims being denied because a server runs Ubuntu would cause quite a shit storm. Unlike consumers, people purchasing servers are generally sophisticated (whitepapers nonwithstanding), and Ubuntu is a huge slice of the server market. About 45% of all EC2 images are Ubuntu based.
This smells like a non story to me.
Edit: Updated the market share; It's actually 45% now: http://thecloudmarket.com/stats#/totals
Then again, ExtremeTech isn't known for well-though-out journalism. The "turmoil" in HP has never been around their server division, in fact HP's previous claim was that they could drop the PC division to focus on servers. Proliant buyers would not be concerned about the future of HP's infrastructure department.
As did other companies : http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/09/12/0011209/retailer-re...
I sometimes wonder why isn't there a huge fine specifically for corporations trying to avoid their responsibilities by bullshiting customers. It should be in hundreds of thousands per incident. Because they do that and they feel free to do that and you can't punish them much for doing that. The worst case for them, they actually do their job.
In my case, Alltel kept sending me broken phones for my warranty claims, then the third time I sent the phone back they said the warranty was void because I had installed a registry browser on Windows Mobile (and that was apparently the cause of them sending me a phone that was missing a loudspeaker).
At any rate, I don't remember the name of the law or the exact words anymore, but look into it so you know what you can expect when this happens to you. The FTC doesn't take kindly to it, and in some cases will actually pay a lawyer to fight it for you.
HP have also had supported hardware emulators that have been running yet other operating systems atop one of these operating systems on ProLiant, as well.
Until this happens, RHEL will remain a better option for most people running their own hardware.