Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

MySQL Quietly Drops Support For Debian Linux [UPDATED]

Posted by kdawson on Wed Dec 13, 2006 10:35 AM
from the any-color-as-long-as-it's-black dept.
Databases Debian Linux
volts writes "MySQL quietly deprecated support for most Linux distributions on October 16, when its 'MySQL Network' support plan was replaced by 'MySQL Enterprise.' MySQL now supports only two Linux distributions — Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. We learned of this when MySQL declined to sell us support for some new Debian-based servers. Our sales rep 'found out from engineering that the current Enterprise offering is no longer supported on Debian OS.' We were told that 'Generic Linux' in MySQL's list of supported platforms means 'generic versions of the implementations listed above'; not support for Linux in general." Update: 12/13 20:52 GMT by J : MySQL AB's Director of Architecture (and former Slash programmer) Brian Aker corrects an apparent miscommunication in a blog post: "we are just starting to roll out [Enterprise] binaries... We don't build binaries for Debian in part because the Debian community does a good job themselves... If you call MySQL and you have support we support you if you are running Debian (the same with Suse, RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu and others)... someone in Sales was left with the wrong information"

Related Stories

[+] PostgreSQL vs. MySQL comparison 390 comments
prostoalex writes "Ever find yourself wondering which open source database is the best tool for the job? Well, wonder no more, and let your tax dollars do the work in the form of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory publishing this unbiased review of MySQL vs. PostgreSQL. After reading it, however, it seems that MySQL ranks the same or better on most of the accounts." My poor sleepy eyes misread the date of posting on here; caveat that this is more then 15 months old.
[+] Ian Murdock: Debian "Missing a Big Opportunity" 330 comments
Natester writes "While Debian struggles to get its next release (Etch) out the door, the project's founder, Ian Murdock, has spoken out about politics, the lack of firm leadership, and Ubuntu's meteoric rise in prominence. Murdock believes that Debian is "process run amok" — nobody feels empowered to make decisions, leading to the sluggish rate of progress."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
MySQL Quietly Drops Support For Debian Linux [UPDATED] | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 339 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold:
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0racle (667029) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:37AM (#17223332)
    Is it really a problem? If you worried about support wouldn't you be using a distro that also offers support contracts?
    • Re:Oh well by morgan_greywolf (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:07AM

      • Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mr_mischief (456295) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:14AM (#17223912)
        (Last Journal: Thursday April 19 2007, @10:15PM)
        Maybe Canonical should step up and offer MySQL support on Ubuntu.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Oh well by Doctor Memory (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:27PM

        • Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ultranova (717540) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:54PM (#17227466)

          Maybe I'm off track here, but I could certainly understand MySQL not wanting to offer an enterprise-level product for a platform that wasn't also enterprise-level.

          Is MySQL "enterprise-level" nowadays ? Every time there's been a story about databases, people have told horror stories about MySQL quietly corrupting data in database.

          And just what does "enterprise-level" mean, anyway ? Scales to infinity ? Reliable ? Costly ? Doesn't get the IT manager fired when the CEO find out he bought it ?-)

          [ Parent ]
    • QUIETLY? by Viraptor (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:07AM

      • Re:QUIETLY? (Score:5, Informative)

        by uglyduckling (103926) <uglyduckling@@@flashmail...com> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:16AM (#17223944)
        (http://www.lpcollier.net/vitalsigns)
        The real problem? "MySQL Quietly Drops Support..." ? Ok - so what should they do? Place posters all around your city saying "WE DROP SUPPORT FOR DEBIAN USERS!!!"?

        I think the point is that they haven't made it clear, even on their website [mysql.com] that they have made a business decision to ignore everything but Red Hat and Suse. From the story: "We learned of this when MySQL declined to sell us support for some new Debian-based servers. Our sales rep 'found out from engineering that the current Enterprise offering is no longer supported on Debian OS.'". So a company got bitten by using a generic (Debian) Linux then asking for support and finding out that "generic" means anything but.

        They really should make some sort of statement, even if it's market spun, e.g. "...for the benefit of our enterprise customers we are concentrating on supporting the two most popular commercial distributions... we expect third-party support companies and the active MySQL community to continue supporting less popular and non-commercial distributions". (P.S. for the benefit of anyone flicking through, I made that up!)

        [ Parent ]
        • Re:QUIETLY? by Viraptor (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:39AM
      • Re:QUIETLY? by Sexy Commando (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:51PM
      • Re:QUIETLY? Why not a message on their site by walterbyrd (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:36PM
      • Re:QUIETLY? by NitsujTPU (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:36PM
    • Re:Oh well by John Hasler (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:12PM
    • Re:Oh well by Da_Weasel (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:10PM
      • Re:Oh well by Nutria (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:29PM
        • Re:Oh well by turbidostato (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:08PM
        • Re:Oh well by rainman_bc (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:48PM
          • Re:Oh well by Nutria (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @09:43PM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.

  • Those mother... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Unoti (731964) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:38AM (#17223336)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday March 23 2004, @07:55PM)
    Clearly we need to get some tough mother forkin programmers on this...

  • Bit misleading (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:38AM (#17223344)
    MySQL (the database) still works with Debian, but MySQL (the support company) no longer sells support for Debian.
  • I've used MySql in a number of different companies. In many cases knowing that they could buy a support contract let me bring in MySql. I also really like Kubuntu these days.

    I guess it time to dig in and learn another tool to replace it.

  • Solution (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shawn is an Asshole (845769) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:41AM (#17223378)
    Loudly drop support for MySQL. Here are two excellent alternatives:

    PostgreSQL [postgresql.org]
    Firebird [firebirdsql.org]

    Still, Debian provides good MySQL packages. Use them instead. If you need support, I'm sure you could find someone to provide it for you.
    • Re:Solution by PatrickThomson (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:56AM

      • Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:03AM (#17223750)
        Ahh, the good old "who do you sue" chestnut. How's suing Oracle working out for you whenever you find bugs in their database, or if you got bad advice from their support techs?
        [ Parent ]

        • Indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Svartalf (2997) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:18AM (#17223972)
          (http://www.earlconsult.com/)
          The "who do you sue" line's as old as the hills and, largely speaking, irrelevant because you're never
          going to get to first base unless it's a screw-up of epic proportions. Even then, it's more likely to
          be a colossal waste of your time and merely an exercise of fattening your lawyer's wallet.
          [ Parent ]
          • Re:Indeed... by lyz (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:51PM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:Solution by styrotech (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:27PM

      • Re:Solution (Score:5, Interesting)

        by virtual_mps (62997) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:06AM (#17223814)
        you think that mysql support will buy unlimited legal/financial liability for costs incurred by downtime of your mysql installation?

        really?

        seriously?

        hahahahahahaha

        What your support contract buys you is the ability to call someone on the phone. If it makes your boss happy to have someone to call and yell at when shit breaks, well, ok.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Solution by SamTheButcher (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:26PM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

      • Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Thomas Charron (1485) <twaffle@gGIRAFFEmail.com minus herbivore> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:22AM (#17224056)
        (http://www.dyndns.org/)
        I have never in my entire life seen a softare company held financially liable for lost sales as a result of a database failure. Please, feel free to cite one single lawsuit if you can find one.
        [ Parent ]

      • Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by peragrin (659227) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:28AM (#17224150)
        You know in the software industry that is a bunch of bullshite.

        If that were true then MSFT wouldn't have any money at all as they would be responsible for billions in lost sales annually. Just one Virus through one product line(not even windows but MS SQL) a year would be expensive. Yet MSFT doesn't have to pay so why would Mysql, or IBM, or any other software company for lost sales or data?
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Solution by giorgiofr (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:01PM
          • Re:Solution by j79zlr (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @04:57PM
      • Re:Solution by Shawn is an Asshole (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:35AM
      • Re:Solution by spiritraveller (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:36AM
      • Re:Solution by kilgortrout (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:53PM
    • Re:Solution by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:22AM
    • Re:Solution by saleenS281 (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:31AM
      • Re:Solution by Sxooter (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:01PM
        • Re:Solution by saleenS281 (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:35PM
          • Re:Solution by Sxooter (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:15PM
            • Re:Solution by saleenS281 (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @06:34PM
    • sqlite by fyoder (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:19PM
    • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.

  • Generic, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Just Some Guy (3352) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:41AM (#17223390)
    (http://honeypot.net/ | Last Journal: Friday April 07 2006, @09:33AM)

    I guess that's fair - my company migrated to supporting only "generic Red Hat Database", aka PostgreSQL.

    Seriously, except in cases where you have no choice about database availability, I can't see a single reason to use MySQL these days. All of their cool features are owned by their competitors, and they're starting to pull desperate financing tricks like whittling away tech support and partnering with SCO. Are people still using it for new deployments, and if so, why?

    • Re:Generic, huh? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LWATCDR (28044) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:47AM (#17223494)
      (http://www.gemstate.net/friends | Last Journal: Tuesday September 11, @10:32AM)
      Simple. Every nickel and dime hosting company uses MySQL so every CMS blog, and forum supports MySQL.
      Up to and including Slashcode.
      It is now catch 22. Everybody uses MySQL because everyone uses MySQL.
      Heck I use MySQL for our CMS because not every module supports PostgreSQL.
      I would much rather use PostgreSQL for everything but I don't have time to re-invent the wheel.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Generic, huh? by syphax (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:53AM
    • Re:Generic, huh? by Jay Pipes (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:59AM
    • SCO by Amazing Quantum Man (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:31PM
    • Re:Generic, huh? by Slashdot Parent (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:09PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Oh well (Score:3, Informative)

    by xenocide2 (231786) <jld5445@@@ksu...edu> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:41AM (#17223394)
    (http://dugger.notsoevil.net/)
    I can't say for sure whether it's the same level of support, but there's always Canonical [canonical.com] for Ubuntu and Progeny [progeny.com] for Debian support.
    • Re:Oh well by MECC (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:56AM
      • Re:Oh well by xenocide2 (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @05:54PM

  • And yet... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by merc (115854) <slashdot@upt.org> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:42AM (#17223402)
    (http://upt.org/lane)
    They're more than happy to be a SCO/Canopy partner.

    I know where I'll not be spending my IT budget next year.

  • Fork or Spoon (Score:5, Funny)

    by Paulitics (1036046) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:42AM (#17223418)

    MySQL only lets me spoon it.

    But Postgre lets me fork it all night long.

  • Get Ready... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eno2001 (527078) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:43AM (#17223426)
    (http://www.kickthebobo.com/erotech/index.html | Last Journal: Friday October 26, @11:51AM)
    I see that a definite split of "Premium Linux" vs. "Unsupported Linux" is coming soon to a vendor near you. That doesn't mean that Linux will die, it's just going to smell funny (possibly like pee).

  • Forking won't necessarily do anything (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iamjoltman (883526) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:44AM (#17223438)
    I see there's already a few comments that the code should be forked. The thing is, what is forking going to do for it? They are dropping support for Linux distros, but that's not saying it won't run on other distros, just that it's not supported. The only way a fork would do anything is if the forked version had it's own support as well.

  • All of my servers run Debian (Score:3, Interesting)

    by maynard (3337) <maynard@jCHICAGOmg.com minus city> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:44AM (#17223446)
    (http://www.daduh.org/ | Last Journal: Friday July 20, @11:20AM)
    While I don't currently have or need a support contract from MySQL, I wouldn't transition away from Debian within our machine room just for their sake. I can't say this is a mistake for them, as I don't know what sales numbers they see, but here's one potential customer that's gone as a result.
    • Re:All of my servers run Debian by PHPfanboy (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:00AM

    • Re:All of my servers run Debian (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chundo (587998) <jeremy@@@jongsma...org> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:01AM (#17223714)
      I doubt that's the point. I'm sure they just decided that rom a cost/benefit perspective, money spent training their support staff on Debian wasn't worth the amount of business they were getting from Debian customers. Which makes a lot of sense to me - in my experience, people that run Debian servers have a more thorough knowledge of the system and administering it, and consequently have less need/desire for software support (yourself included, it sounds like). And assuming that's true, it's also not much of a stretch to assume that someone that interested in the guts of a system would choose something like Postgres over MySQL anyways if they had a choice, since it's had more advanced features for much longer than MySQL has.
      [ Parent ]

  • Why fork it? (Score:2)

    by syphax (189065) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:46AM (#17223470)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday August 18 2004, @05:22PM)

    I don't see this as a technical deficiency of the software. This is a business issue.

    Do you have Debian and MySQL expertise? Find yourself someone business-savvy (hint: it's probably not you) and sell support for MySQL on Debian. Be your own boss (hint: make sure your business-savvy person isn't a PHB). I think MySQL AB has been pretty clear in the past that they are but a small (if central) part of the MySQL ecosystem, and they clearly want to focus on their high-margin customers. Might be a smart move, might not, but it sure opens the door to players who want to seize the other niches.

  • Sounds like a business plan waiting to happen (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xantho (14741) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:49AM (#17223524)
    MySQL just said, 'We don't think that your business is profitable to us,' for whatever reason they might have. Well, I'm willing to bet that MySQL support for Debian in the enterprise setting is plenty profitable for some other people.

    The only thing that really happened is that MySQL cleaved off a part of their business and gave it away for free to anyone who wants it. And I'll bet plenty of people do.

  • Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Archangel Michael (180766) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:50AM (#17223532)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday September 22 2004, @11:13AM)
    "Generic Linux"???

    Isn't "Linux" "generic" almost by definition. The only differences between packages are choices and package manager and usually only a few homegrown eye candy pieces.

    No really, I'm not trolling. I'm serious. I've used all sorts of different "distros", Redhat, SuSE, Debian, Slackware etc and I am able to quickly move between them because at the core of it, its all but the same. And I'm not a Linux expert by any stretch of the imagination, so if I can manage, why can't the big boys who do nothing but Linux?
    • Re:Linux by Just Some Guy (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:06AM
    • Yes, and No by camperdave (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:51AM
      • Re:Yes, and No by grahamm (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:08PM
        • Re:Yes, and No by camperdave (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:32PM
          • Re:Yes, and No by Archangel Michael (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @04:34PM
            • Re:Yes, and No by camperdave (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @06:32PM
              • Re:Yes, and No by Archangel Michael (Score:2) Thursday December 14 2006, @11:40AM
              • Re:Yes, and No by camperdave (Score:2) Thursday December 14 2006, @02:25PM
      • sudo bash by tinkerghost (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:42PM
      • Re:Yes, and No by Constantine Evans (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:51PM
      • Re:Yes, and No by JayAEU (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:03PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Why all the drama? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by derrickh (157646) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:51AM (#17223560)
    (http://www.deadpixelnews.com/)
    Why is this such a sore spot for so many people? Just because MySql no longer supports the flavor of the month distro of Linux, you all throw up your hands crying 'I never liked you anyway'.

    The vast majority of mysql users will never buy a support contract, and those few who do, will probably be RedHat or Suse. (When was the last time a Debian user admitted he needed help for anything?)

    Instead of having to support dozens of distros, Mysql is supporting the main two. It may be Open Source, but it's still a business.

    D

  • Almost there (Score:2)

    by glwtta (532858) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:53AM (#17223594)
    (http://slashdot.org/)
    So now they just have to drop RedHat and SUSE and we are finally done? Great!

    I've been getting kinda tired of the whole cult surrounding MySQL's substandard "RDBMS".

  • Of all the posts here (Score:2)

    by SocietyoftheFist (316444) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:55AM (#17223640)
    Who is actually running MySQL Enterprise?

  • If you need support... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sabalon (1684) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:56AM (#17223650)
    Chances are that if you need the support they offer, then you are not just running some little fan site using MySQL to store what avatar's people choose. Most likely if you have support for the db, chances are you probably have some sort of support contract in place for the OS as well and the rest of your critical infrastructure. You are probably already playing by their rules using certain OS releases, etc...

    That would be my guess at least.

  • This looks liike an opportunity for Postgres to come out with some better documentation on installation and configuration of Postgres and attract some new users.

  • Did anyone catch the relationship? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bright Apollo (988736) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:57AM (#17223674)
    (Last Journal: Friday February 02 2007, @11:08AM)
    SUSE and RedHat are also the only IBM supported distros. Is IBM going for MySQL, ala Oracle grabbing Innobase and Sleepycat?

    -BA

  • Varying Levels of Support (Score:2)

    by Dareth (47614) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:04AM (#17223778)
    MySQL has varying levels of support for different versions and architectures.

    The linked support list was to the Enterprise version, but check out Cluster and MaxDB versions.
    Oddly enough, they claim FS - full support for Debian 3.0 on the PowerPC architecture.

  • No need to fork! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Builder (103701) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:10AM (#17223868)
    There are a lot of calls here to fork the code. I'm a bit wary of calls to fork a project by people who lack the reading comprehension to understand the project. These may not be the best people to direct a project :)

    Just to clarify the crappy summary, MySQL are not saying that their software won't run on Debian or Ubuntu or whatever... It will still run on most OSs and distros, but if you are using Linux, MySQL AB will only sell you a support contract for MySQL if you are running on Dead Rat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Novhell (SLES?).

    Get it? Got it? Good!
  • Do many mid-size to large (read shopping for juicy support contracts) enterprises use Debian?

  • No Free alternatives.... (Score:2)

    by Chanc_Gorkon (94133) <gorkon@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:12AM (#17223898)
    SO, essentially they are giving you no Linux distros that are totally known for their freedom. Only Red Hat and SuSE for Linux flavors and Solaris, AIX and Windows for the others. Really dumb guys, but not really that much of a concern. Someone else can step up and support MySQL. No big deal in the long run I guess except it gives people less choice initially if their job requires them to have a support contract and believe me alot of companies require this as silly as it sounds. What I see happening is some other Linux company will step up and support MySQL as well as their OS.

    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Moo (Score:1)

    by Chacham (981) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:19AM (#17223990)
    (http://tkatch.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 29, @02:09PM)
    Wow, i am very happy about this!

    As a Database Programmer (and erstwhile DBA) i am saddened by the haphazard mySQL being called a database. For a while it didn't even support transactions. It's actually more of a storage system with a quai-SQL front end.

    By dropping that facade from Debian people might be more inclined to use a real database such as PostgreSQL, which has been in the background for much too long.

    For the quality that Debian stands for, from my PoV, this is a very good thing.

    I would talk of progress here, but Progress is by far the absolute worst database system i have worked with. :)

  • Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)

    by houseofmore (313324) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:37AM (#17224280)
    (http://www.vendorama.com/)
    I've been using Mysql for many years, through several companies, small and large. Never once has mysql support ever been requested / needed -- it's rock solid. What does support conist of anyway, help with sql syntax?

    I doubt most Debian users will care.
    • Re:Who cares by GigsVT (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:26PM
      • Re:Who cares by houseofmore (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @05:23PM

  • This just in... (Score:2)

    by SQLz (564901) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:53AM (#17224518)
    (http://www.linuxplatform.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 16 2003, @04:31PM)
    Debian has quietly lost all its users to Gentoo and Ubuntu.

  • Screw this (Score:2)

    by Yvan256 (722131) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:56AM (#17224570)
    (http://www.yvan256.net/)
    I'm going back to flat text files.

    j/k
    • XML FTW by furbearntrout (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:23PM
    • Re:Screw this by jusdisgi (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:45PM

  • Too many linuxes (Score:2)

    by pr0nbot (313417) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:58AM (#17224596)
    Not sure what the big deal is. The Linuxscape has always been a fragmented land-of-a-thousand-distros, and contrary to received wisdom, they're not all compatible.

    Having just wasted a few days trying to get one bit of "Linux-compatible" software to work on another subtly different flavour Linux (thankyou RedHat for your borked gcc 2.96), I have some sympathy for saying "we only support flavour X".

    Is there such a thing as one Linux distro to suit all users? Probably not. Could there maybe be 2 or 3 that would suit virtually all users? I think so. This move from MySQL seems like a step towards that.

  • well - interesting news. i have an existing support contract and they answered my support request today. having said that, i've never had a support issue with (the excellent) mysql support guys that was at all related to the OS.

    fyi: if you run anything like a large site (we sustain 4000qps most of the day), i would highly recommend a support contract with them. it's very cheap for 24/7/365 access to the devs.

  • X not R! (Score:1)

    by chaeron (128155) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:20PM (#17224912)
    (http://www.chaeron.com/)
    Why bother with RDBMSes at all?

    Skip a generation and go with a good XML DBMS. Something like eXist perhaps? ;-)
    • Re:X not R! by Bacon Bits (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:04PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Wait for Ubuntu... (Score:1)

    by mikelang (674146) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:26PM (#17225016)
    ...to join the list of supported distros. I hope it happens soon...

  • Support Through OS Vendor? (Score:1)

    by Voline (207517) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:04PM (#17225564)
    Well the OS vendor could offer support for MySQL, if they don't already. Debian isn't a company so you couldn't get it there, but Canonical could offer support for MySQL on Ubuntu. They could charge more for the extra service.

  • Actually, that's Debian GNU/Linux (Score:2)

    by massysett (910130) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:17PM (#17225790)
    (http://www.smileystation.com/)
    That's the name of the distro, not Debian Linux.