What exactly would the advantage be of running ubuntu on a "server". I can see why maybe people would want CentOS vs RHEL (Redhat skills, but no cash for Redhat subscriptions). But really Ubuntu instead Debian? Why would anyone bother.

As someone who administers RHEL servers for a living I can tell you there's one major advantage of Ubuntu, Debian and even Mandriva and openSuse over RHEL/Centos: The availability of packages.

RHEL + the EPEL and Dag repos (which conflict and contain some duplicates when combined) contains only a fraction of the avilable packages that Ubuntu or even my home Mandriva system does (at best 7 or 8000 vs 20-25000 for Ubuntu, Debian and Mandriva)

...it's econmonics. Unless lots of people with a big wads of cash, say I want specific Ubuntu support, they won't offer it.

Cash going in from customers > cash going out to support = profit

Simples....

I wish they would support it. Ubuntu is so much easier to setup and manage than any other distro and it's the only one I can get to work properly with Active Directory. HP's official support is the only stopping us from making it our distro of choice right now. :(

As regards Ubuntu support, I can't say I'm surprised. RHEL, SLES and OEL seem pretty locked down and in-tune with the vendors, whereas Ubuntu seems a bit more bleeding-edge. I'm not bashing Ubuntu, it's not a distro I use professionally so my comments are very much as an observer rather than a convert, I just value RHEL's stability. And it is obvious why OEL gets better billing than Ubuntu - hp wants to be on best terms with Larry, so Oracle's Linux will always get preferential treatment. Besides, underneath OEL is largely RHEL with some minor tweaks, so it probably isn't that hard to validate if they have already covered RHEL.

Ubuntu is important because because it is a competitor to RH and Novell that can bring a debian based distribution to the enterprise. Complete with a centralized management platform (Landscape) that can rival the Red Hat Network for a fraction of the cost. Potentially Canonical can fill this gap without charging extortionate costs. Hopefully this won't change, but you can never tell in a world of corporate greed.

@Happy Skeptic

Yes, but there's no point using Ubuntu. If you want a Debian-like system just run Debian.

@Anomalous Cowherd

One machine? Wow, HP needs to get some Ubuntu support lined up quick!

Better documented? Really really laughable.

1.) Having a base Ubuntu Jeos boot in 3 seconds (approx) is brilliant.

2.) RH is a dependency nightmare. I would rather install 2 Ubuntu packages as opposed to 40 rpms.

Oh wow, the old dependency nightmare myth again. Have these clowns never heard of yum?