Use Debian Instead of Ubuntu on Your Server

One of my favorite sites, Stikked, had a little server outage. (If you’re not familiar with what Stikked is, I’ll explain at the bottom). The developer, and personal friend, posted what happened. While not definitive, it certainly illustrates why you shouldn’t use Ubuntu instead of Debian on a server.

Here’s what Ben, the creator and lead developer of the Stikked project said:

…Last saturday Stikked was down. What happened? Well something started paging out loads probably mysql. Then mysql crashed and finally the whole server crashed. I still have no idea why this happened. Stikked has been very slow since the latest update, there are some code fixes I’ve made which will be pushed shortly I also made some server side improvements which caused Stikked to be down yesterday: I replaced Ubuntu Server with Debian on the Stikked VPS. (This shaved off quite a lot of RAM) I installed and configured mod_deflate to gzip all html, css and javascript. This halved the size of the page download. I also setup monitoring tools so next time Stikked goes down, I will know straight away and have more information to determine what happened. Have a nice day, Ben All C

link: Why Stikked has been down recently. « Ben McRedmond

For those who aren’t aware, Ubuntu is closely related to Debian, and is a very fine choice for a desktop OS. Meaning, put it on your home computer. But for a server, there just aren’t any advantages to having the additional overhead.

A web server should do one thing, and do it well: Serve content.

Additionally, I applaud the way he communicated to his users regarding the down time.

If you aren’t familiar with what Stikked is, here’s a brief overview. Stikked is a code sharing service. Frequently, developers help each other out via IRC, chat, or email. Each of these communication mediums have a common pitfall: Formatting.

Stikked allows you to paste your code into the web application, store it on the service, and send a single link to someone. When they visit the link, they see your code, perfectly formatted, and the syntax gracefully highlighted according to the particular language, thanks to a library called GeSHi.

If you haven’t used Stikked yet, I highly recommend it, and I don’t think you’ll find a better code sharing service anywhere.

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