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From: Steve Atkins <steve@blighty.com>
Subject: Re: Hardware upgraded but performance still ain't good
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 09:50:58 -0700
To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org


On Aug 9, 2006, at 5:47 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> Alex Turner wrote:
>> First off - very few third party tools support debian.  Debian is  
>> a sure
>> fire way to have an unsupported system.  Use RedHat or SuSe (flame  
>> me all
>> you want, it doesn't make it less true).
>
> *cough* BS *cough*
>
> Linux is Linux. It doesn't matter what trademark you put on top of  
> it. As long as they are running a current version of Linux (e.g;  
> kernel 2.6) they should be fine.

That's really not the case, at least to the degree that makes a
difference between "supported" and "unsupported".
>
> With Debian that may or may not be the case and that could be an  
> issue.
> To get the best luck, I would suggest (if you want to stay with a  
> Debian base) Ubuntu Dapper LTS.

Different Linux distributions include different shared libraries, put
different things in different places and generally break applications
in a variety of different ways (SELinux would be one example of
that commonly seen here).

If I don't QA my application on it, it isn't supported. I can't  
necessarily
replicate problems on Linux distributions I don't have installed in
my QA lab, so I can't guarantee to fix problems that are specific
to that distribution. I can't even be sure that it will install and run
correctly without doing basic QA of the installation process on
that distribution.

And in my case that's just for user space applications. It's got to
be even worse for hardware drivers.

Our usual phrase is "We support RedHat versions *mumble*
only. We expect our application to run correctly on any Linux
distribution, though you may have to install additional shared
libraries."

I'm quite happy with customers running Debian, SuSe or what
have you, as long as they have access to a sysadmin who's
comfortable with that distribution. (I'd probably deny support to
anyone running Gentoo, though :) )

We've never had big problems with people running our apps on
"unsupported" problems, but those users have had to do some
more diagnosis of problems themselves, and we've been less
able to support them than we can users who use the same
distribution we QA on.

(It's not just Linux, either. We "support" Windows XP, but we run
just fine on 2000 and 95/98.)

Cheers,
   Steve