debian business wiki

[Alan DuBoff]

Jim Franklin wrote:
> Hi Alan
>   Excellent critique.
>   By 1-100 people I meant total people (owner(s)&employee(s)).  The
> business environment need not implement 1-100 computers just 1-100
> people.  As in a manufacturing environment, say.

I still see this as a fairly large site, many startups are not nearly this
big, although some are.

>   The wiki itself is meant to be an exploration of the strengths and
> weakness of debian in relation to different types of businesses and what
> those business require ( more than one thread is acceptable, there being
> more than one type of business ).

Business solutions are no secret, and for Debian to succeed with that sector
of the industry it will need to solve some of those problems to be useful.

In retro to databases, I don't think it's fit to say we will setup PostgreSQL,
MySQL, mSQL, ACEDB, or any other specific DBMS, rather, to be successful
Debian should strive to support all of them. IOW, one guy wants to use
PostgreSQL, another guy wants to use MySQL, etc...so don't force anything on
them, let them choice their own.

If Debian strived to support the vast amount of business solutions better than
other distros, they could easily get a reputation for having that type of
support. Mail servers (pop, IMAP, etc...), DBMSs, web servers, etc...offer the
best selection of them and wrap decent install and configuration front ends
and more businesses will be able to install and use it.

As an example, for Apache on Debian, it should have easy selection of modules
to install, and configure those selected ones so that it is a business
solution. Again, one guy wants PHP2, antoher wants PHP3, another guys wants
mod_perl, and yet another wants JServ. Of course another guys wants all of
them and another wants 2 of them, etc...

Red Hat is succeeding not because it's the best server environment, but
because it installs on the vast majority of Intel based hardware and is "good
enough". Lizard is much better at performing a decent install.

IMHO, Debian falls into a strange spot. It's a swell server, and very
configurable, but is very hard not only to install, but maintain for the
average person. Once a person starts to learn how to maintain it, Debian can
become just as easy if not easier than other distros, but there is a learning
curve.

> Once the information is gathered, if
> it seems of value perhaps a paper can be written and distributed in the
> debian community.

You can be assured that these very same "white papers" have been written by
many communities and/or companies. The simple fact is that the problems
haven't changed that much over the past decade, although the internet has put
a twist into the equation. Just about everyone wants internet solutions these
days, and this gives Linux a leg up to solve these issues. 

--

Alan DuBoff
Software Orchestration, Inc.