DreamHost Gives Debian Wheezy Linux the Boot in Favor of Ubuntu

From the ‘Hosting Linux’ files:

Dreamhost is one of the most popular web hosting companies and it has long been a strong support of Debian Linux.

Dreamhost isn’t making the move to Wheezy which was recently released. Instead Dreamhost is moving to Ubuntu – apparently because they see it as being more stable.

“About ten months ago, we realized that the next installation of Debian was upcoming, and after upgrading about 20,000 machines since Debian 6 (aka Squeeze) was released, we got pretty tired,” Dreamhost developer Brett Gailey wrote in a blog post. “The release cycle for Debian is stable, but it’s not long enough for us to focus on stability.”

Umm really? Debian isn’t stable enough? True it doesn’t have a five year support plan but still, I’m a bit skeptical.

Putting on my conspiracy hat, I can tell you that I also know full well that Mark Shuttleworth has been a strong back of Ceph and Inktank, which not so coincidentally are backed by …you guess it Dreamhost.

So maybe there was some….discussion…between Canonical Ubuntu and Dreamhost? (then again maybe not, I’m just speculating and have evidence either way).

Bottom line though, this is win for Ubuntu, make no mistake about that. While much of the hosting world for Linux has long relied on Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS, Dreamhost’s support for Debian has set it apart. Not that Ubuntu needed the boost, but Dreamhost’s endorsement as a platform for hosting is a good thing for Shuttleworth and crew.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.