Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Mauritius

Choosing a free Linux distribution for a server

By 64 Comments

I have been using Linux at home for years now. I started with Redhat in 1999, moved to Fedora (Core) in 2003, had a great time with Gentoo in 2004, discovered Kubuntu in 2005 and this year I’ve moved to Ubuntu. At work, I used Redhat initially (1999) until I discovered that Centos was a free clone of Redhat Enterprise Linux and this is what I’ve been using for the past few years.

I have ordered a brand new Dell PowerEdge 840 server for Knowledge Seven Ltd and I’ll normally get it in one or two weeks. And this has started to give me massive headaches as I can’t choose what Linux distribution to run on it.

I do not want to run a Linux distribution which is not free and therefore this rules out both Redhat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. I’ve spent some reading reading about Ubuntu Server Edition and openSUSE:

 

  • Ubuntu Server Edition — I’ve been a very satisfied Ubuntu (home) user for years now but I have some doubts about running it on a (non-mission critical but still…) server. It seems to me that Ubuntu is not proven on servers even though it is derived from Debian (which is not an option as I am not willing to learn yet another distribution…) Does anyone has some experience on running Ubuntu on a real server with three Gigabit interfaces, LVM and Software RAID 1?
  • openSUSE — I’ve never used SUSE in my life. But I’ve noticed that a lot of people have been raving about the latest openSUSE 11.0 because of its installer and its configuration tool (Yast) Who has some experience on using openSUSE on a server? What are the strong points of openSUSE?

Even though both are nice, I am somewhat reluctant to use any one of them. Ubuntu Server Edition is not yet proven and I have no experience of openSUSE. Can someone convince me to change my mind?

In the meantime, this leaves me with Fedora and Centos and I really really really can’t decide…

  • Fedora — I used Redhat and Fedora Core on real servers before and I was mostly satisfied. One problem I had with a Redhat 7.3 server five years ago was that there was no real upgrade path to Redhat 8.0 and that left me with a server where I had to compile everything from source (Apache, Samba, etc.) I’ve read that upgrades are painless now but is this true? Is running Fedora on a server something sensible to do given that there is a new version of the distribution every year? On the other hand, I know a lot of people (including my younger brother) who use Fedora for everything and who are very satisfied.
  • Last but not least, Centos — This is the distribution that I’ve previously deployed on a number of servers. Most of the time, I’ve had no problems at all. In fact, Centos is a freely available recompilation (I’m simplifying…) of Redhat Enterprise Linux which is the de-facto standard Linux enterprise distribution. But it is sometimes, ahem, boring (but is this a bad thing on a server?)

Fedora has a lot of features… decreasing its reliability? Centos, which is indirectly derived from a prior (and more stable) version of Fedora, is Redhat Enterprise Linux but will it satisfy a geek like me who loves to experiment?

Please help me choose. Or else I’ll have to toss a coin.

My music

By 15 Comments

As most of you already know, I have been composing music for some years now. I started around 1993 when I bought a Kawai K4 synthesizer and I got some sequencing software on my trusty Amiga 500. You won’t believe it but I composed Atomic Disintegration on that day I bought my K4!

That period coincided with a love story which finished very bitterly only for another one to start (and which is still going strong…) My first album, My Contribution to Art, contains 12 tracks composed between April 1993 to May 1995. For years, the album did not have a cover but I’ve finally settled for one:

I’ve settled for a very naïve art depiction of an airplane (courtesy of Donna Spurrell.) Of course, the tracks are not that great (or else I would have been Thom Yorke) but they mean a lot to me. In fact, I’m very proud of them. The whole album can be listened and downloaded freely at Last.fm.

My second album, So Logical, was released in 2004. It coincided with the births of my two kids, Anya and Kyan. That album too didn’t have a cover. I’ve settled for:

The image is courtesy Sharpbrains. The So Logical name of the album comes from the fact that it was entirely composed using Emagic (now Apple) Logic Audio. The album contains 8 tracks and most of them are linked to a special event concerning either Kyan, Anya, Christina or myself. For example, I always associate This is real and Beautiful sea with Anya’s birth. All in all, So Logical is a much nicer album that the first one and it has an excellent audio quality (judge for yourself by listening to it or downloading it freely – I believe it sounds better than most of the “professionally” mastered albums being released now.) Of course, the music is perfectible but, what the heck, I am just an amateur after all.

The third album

Since getting my MacBook, I’ve bought Logic Express and I’ve worked on some tracks (a few which are pretty much done but the vast majority is still in alpha state.) Maybe I’ll finish around January 2009. I’ll keep you informed.

Lexpress.mu is not working well…

By 81 Comments

Today, L’Express.mu has been launched and it is positioned as a new product by La Sentinelle where people have the possibility to interact and comment on news items.

Unfortunately L’Express.mu is not working well (and this is a major understatement.)

It seems to me that the web application has been written from scratch instead of being based on something proven (either Open Source or not.) The problem seems to be connection-related i.e. the database server cannot accept any new connection presumably because the application has a simple two-tier architecture and it has not been tested properly when under heavy load.

 

When I taught my Software Architecture MSc course last year, this is something I spent a lot of time on: scalability is not something that can be tackled as an afterthought. If the application is not built with scalability in mind (by using a proper N-tiered architecture with a well-designed business layer) then there is no way it can become scalable without a partial rewrite.

Incidentally, the website runs on Windows 2003 Server and uses SQL Server 2005.

By the way, what is:

catch (Exception ex)
{
    throw ex;
}

supposed to mean?

The “paper” newspaper

In parallel with this new product, the normal (paper) newspaper is available at a new URL: www.lexpress-newspaper.com. Unfortunately, the technical team has decided to use a Flash application to display the newspaper. I wonder why? This makes referencing and quoting very difficult. Furthermore, Flash and Google are not really good friends… I would say that putting a newspaper online and making its content non-discoverable through Google is bizarre.

By the way, what is “Le site est mieux vu avec Internet Explorer et une résolution 1024 x 768.” supposed to mean? Is this a copy-paste from a 1998 website? Things have changed since 1998. In 2008, website creators are supposed to write:

“We comply with W3C standards like HTML and CSS and, consequently, you can use pretty much anything to access our website (like your computer, your mobile phone, your PDA, your coffee machine, etc.)”