“As anyone who has used Linux systems for production systems
knows all too well, there’s an art to arriving at a stable
configuration with all dependencies met. Linux distributors do an
excellent job of delivering systems that meet this criteria, and
keeping them there through their update processes as functionality
updates, bug fixes, and security updates get laid on top of the
out-of-the-box system. The amount of work and the success that they
have in delivering both the base distribution and the stream of
updates that follow is widely unappreciated.“When it is appreciated it’s usually because the standard
distribution and kernel configuration isn’t suitable for many
commercial applications, and one or more custom configurations has
to be developed and maintained by the organization’s own Linux
support group…”