The OpenStreetMap project has announced the migration of its server infrastructure to Debian GNU/Linux. Previously, for 18 years, Ubuntu was the distribution used on the project's servers. The migration was conducted gradually starting in August, replacing existing installations of Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 with Debian 12. This transition also allowed for an upgrade of the Ruby language from version 3.0 to version 3.1 and the use of a more recent release of the Ruby on Rails framework, resulting in improved performance of the www.openstreetmap.org service.
Reasons for the migration include:
- Issues with maintaining certain packages in Ubuntu that are imported from Debian, such as Apache2, which required backporting a new version to resolve problems with the MPM (Multi-Processing Modules) event module.
- The emergence of problems due to some packages in Ubuntu being provided only in snap format.
- Better maintenance in Debian for 5 years, with higher quality support for the entire ecosystem of packages (in Ubuntu, updates for some packages from the universe repository are available only with an Ubuntu Pro subscription).
- The ability to utilize backport packages in Debian with new versions of the Linux kernel that address existing input/output performance issues on systems with NVMe storage.
- The desire to be closer to the maintainers of Debian community packages used in the OpenStreetMap project, such as osm2pgsql and osmium-tool.
Source: opennet.ru
