davidshere
May 3rd, 2008, 11:00 PM
Where I work, we have a large server running Ubuntu. I recently updated it from 7.10 to 8.04, to take advantage of the five years of server support. But then I got to thinking: This computer has the desktop GUI on it, and I can't remember if we initially installed Ubuntu Server and then put the desktop GUI on top of it, or if we installed Ubuntu Desktop and then installed the various packages we wanted for our server (apache, postgres, etc).
Then I did some more thinking. Is Ubuntu Server actually a different version of Ubuntu, or is it just a different set of initial packages, like Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio? If the latter is the case, how can desktop be supported for three years and server for five? Somewhere a "difference" has to exist between server and desktop for them to be supported for different time periods, right?
Sooooo.... If they really are different versions, and I want five years of support for my Ubuntu Desktop, all I have to do is install server, put the desktop GUI on top of it, remove the server packages I don't want, and presto! I have five years of support for my custom-made desktop/server hybrid that isn't really a server anymore
Since the above seems somewhat goofy, I did yet more thinking. Does the "three years of support" for desktop apply mostly to the desktop GUI-related packages, and the "five years of support" apply mostly to the server-related packages? This would seem to make more sense, be simpler to implement, and easier to "enforce".
Is any of this close to reality, or is there another scenario I haven't considered?
Then I did some more thinking. Is Ubuntu Server actually a different version of Ubuntu, or is it just a different set of initial packages, like Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio? If the latter is the case, how can desktop be supported for three years and server for five? Somewhere a "difference" has to exist between server and desktop for them to be supported for different time periods, right?
Sooooo.... If they really are different versions, and I want five years of support for my Ubuntu Desktop, all I have to do is install server, put the desktop GUI on top of it, remove the server packages I don't want, and presto! I have five years of support for my custom-made desktop/server hybrid that isn't really a server anymore
Since the above seems somewhat goofy, I did yet more thinking. Does the "three years of support" for desktop apply mostly to the desktop GUI-related packages, and the "five years of support" apply mostly to the server-related packages? This would seem to make more sense, be simpler to implement, and easier to "enforce".
Is any of this close to reality, or is there another scenario I haven't considered?