Summary

We covered a lot in this chapter and a lot of seemingly unimportant factors that, I believe, tend to actually be pretty important in our roles in system administration. We learned how Linux fits into modern organizations and where it comes from historically which might give us some view into where it is going, as well. We dove into open-source licensing and how software licensing plays a role in how we work with our operating systems.

We took a look at who the big vendors are today and what key products they have on the market. Then we investigated release and support patterns both in general and specifically from the major vendors on the market today. And then we looked at putting all of those factors together to try to make a decision process for picking the best distribution for our workload.

In our next chapter we are going to be leaving behind the ten-thousand-foot views and we will be digging into the very technical world of System Storage Best Practices. This...