Why I moved
The blog was previously hosted with CoffeeHost. Quite a few friends reported that it was inaccessible or extremely slow, so I decided to move it. After a difficult choice, I settled on HostShare’s Hong Kong 103 SSD VPS.
I had spent more than twenty days on CoffeeHost’s Hong Kong CN2 VPS, and the experience was disappointing. Apart from support tickets, I found the owner’s attitude unfriendly. I requested TUN/TAP access so I could configure BBR; the purchase page explicitly said it could be enabled. In the end, the response was along the lines of: “What do you need that for? Getting around restrictions? BBR? CN2 is fast enough. Don’t enable it…”
The routing used Alibaba Cloud in the way many readers will recognize. A server in Hong Kong felt little different from one in the United States. It used OpenVZ, and the hard drive managed roughly 30 MB/s. Even with 3C, the dated specifications elsewhere kept it from delivering its full potential. I would not buy it again, nor recommend it to beginners.
Choosing an operating system
The migration finished today without any major problems. This is my first production deployment on Ubuntu; previously I always used CentOS. I had an unexplained bias against Ubuntu, but after trying it, I fell in love with it. It is excellent, especially its software repositories.
I do not have a dedicated operations team, and CentOS’s community never felt particularly welcoming to me. Ubuntu’s community was the biggest reason I chose it.
From my experience running servers on both CentOS and Ubuntu, I slightly prefer Ubuntu, mainly because of that community.
Leaving kernel versions aside, Linux distributions use the same underlying kernel. The main differences lie in the software they install and how that software is configured.
CentOS comes from the Red Hat community and is compatible with Red Hat RPM packages. It is commonly used on servers, with server-oriented software installed by default. Apart from the paid Red Hat support, it is broadly similar to Red Hat itself. Packages are generally managed with rpm or yum.
Ubuntu is based on Debian and commonly uses GNOME, with KDE versions available as well. It is a popular distribution with a strong graphical desktop. There are desktop editions aimed at everyday users and server editions. Its attractive desktop, multimedia support and software center make it a popular choice for daily use. On the server side, the differences are less dramatic. Package management generally uses apt-get.
A final note
I hope to settle down and keep the site running steadily. After two years of intermittent work, things finally feel stable.
Many posts were lost during the migration from WordPress to Typecho, and I do not have the energy to recover them. I will treat this as a fresh start.
Welcome to the new HydraBlog!