[dba-Tech] The latest Debian

The latest Debian is here...Debian 7.

With this release, Google has removing its old OS and now is actively
porting all it Cloud to Debian. Debian is now using the latest Linux core(?)
which allows it to run on most of the major hardware architectures, all 32
and 64 bit Intel chips as well as on ARM, PowerPC, Itanium, IBM S/390 and so
on. 

Debian is not really a PC OS but a true server but it does come with a nice
little GUI (distro) called Xfce though most "real men and women" in the
computer industry still prefer the command line interface. 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/08/debian_seven_review/

Of course you can still get all the reliability and functionality through
the Ubuntu and Mint distros which do tend to use more of the leading edge
(bleeding edge?) versions of Debian. Ubuntu, for example is really a full
blown server with a pretty interface and if ever needed, this PC desktop
could step up run the entire network, limited of course only by the
hardware. (The latest Ubuntu version 13.04, has been described as very fast
but boring...if you are a support tech you need more boring.)

According to some developers Exchange mail server, at least version 2010 and
less, can runs fine on Debian but the 2012 version still requires some
tweaks. The new Samba server completely replaces Active-directory. Finally,
MS SQL 2012 runs and is fully compatible on Linux. 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh568451.aspx

It looks like there is now less and less reasons to not migrate your servers
to Linux and Debian in particular. So why would you change if you have
already have a Windows Server system?

Answer: First, Linux runs up to three times as fast, can support almost a
dozen times more clients than a similar configured MS server version (using
the same hardware) and takes only a fifth of the space. Second, the
innovation on the Linux platforms are years ahead compared to MS (Example:
Debian uses, by default, a disk OS, that is faster (reading and writing),
with built in duplication and is self-healing but of course you can always
install the ZFS disk OS if you are planning a thousand server network).
Third, Linux (Debian) is rock solid reliable; no blue screens or software
crashes. Fourth, security on Linux servers have been the absolute best.
Fifth, and perhaps the least important, the initial product costs are zero,
but of course, tech support fees (your fees) are just the same.    

So why are you still installing Windows servers? ;-)

Jim