The release of Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake), back in June, brought not only a new desktop system to the Linux world, but also a server system with long-term commercial support. It has one key advantage over similar offerings from Redhat and Novell; the flexibility of the Debian dpkg packaging system.
This was of particular interest to me, as a system administrator who generally installs Debian, if given a choice. One of the annoying problems with Debian has been its potentially short support lifespan; essentially as long as it takes to get two more releases out. Admittedly this hasn't been a real problem, to date, but not having firm dates has been an issue in some environments in which I've worked.
Another was its perceived lack of commercial support, which often made it very difficult to bring into a corporate environment. While I've worked in situations where I had complete authority to use whatever OS I chose, I've also been in workplaces where it has been made clear that Debian simply would not be used, due to the lack of a commercial organisation providing security support.
Ubuntu's server release solves both of these problems, so I installed a copy to see how it held up.
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