Re: [PLUG] Lab recommendations

[JP Vossen via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

First, Ron, you didn't mention specs on your "lab PC" but I'm surprised no one has mentioned running just a hypervisor, if you've got the resources.  Then it doesn't MATTER what else you use, just create a new VM for it.

I use the free license for VMware ESXi, because that's what we use a LOT of at work and it's just easier, but ProxMox (covered in a recent-ish talk) would work just fine and there are other solutions.  Anything except Hyper-V! :-)


On 5/10/21 2:21 PM, brent timothy saner via plug wrote:
> https://www.oracle.com/linux/
> (lol. If you hate yourself, I guess.)

Yes!  +1m.  Except...  OK, I hate both Oracle the company and Oracle the DB (but that's OT here), but we are forced to use Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL or EL) almost exclusively for Linux nodes at work.  As Brent said they do weird and unnatural things to it--but--most of that cruft is in the UEK, which is supposedly the "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" but which is actually the "Unusable Enterprise Kernel."  UEK breaks lots of things, but in really subtle ways.  I can't count the number of mysterious bugs and problems we've solved by dumping UEK and booting the RHCK (Red Hat Compatible Kernel).  (Then we spend some time cursing the guy (who is gone) who originally said to deploy using UEK.)  Oracle is free to use (so far, but for a long time now, since they get most of the work done for free by Red Hat), mature, and as long as you avoid UEK like COVID, and use the RHCK it (sigh) more-or-less works.  I really hate to say all that because I personally can't stand them, but...it's true.

Oracle is actually pushing hard as a CentOS replacement, which certainly *could* be the "embrace, extend, extinguish (or charge for)" page out of the M$ playbook, but:
* https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/update-centos-linux-for-free
* https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/surprising-reasons-why-centos-users-feeling-stranded-by-ibm-turn-to-oracle-linux

Good luck,
JP
--  -------------------------------------------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP | http://www.jpsdomain.org/ | http://bashcookbook.com/
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug