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Debian vs Ubuntu

Switching to Debian (thank you for these amazing years, Ubuntu).

I’ve been using Ubuntu for years, both as a Linux enthusiast first and then as a professional Systems Administrator.

Ubuntu is still, in my opinion, the sweeter, newbie friendly, Linux distro available, if you are new to Linux or thinking on moving to Linux, start with Ubuntu, it works with the latest hardware, it does not break easily, and the UI is simple, likeable, easy to get used to and, if you use your computer for simple things, it might even boost your productivity, as compared with other OSs.
Last but definitely not least, if you need help with your Linux OS, the Ubuntu community is probably where you will get the most free and friendly help, the Ubuntu user community is helpful, friendly and newbie accommodating, a value rarely taken into account when choosing an OS that I think is of uttermost importance.

However, those are not my needs, not anymore…
I barely require help with my OS, and when I do, the solutions I need are rarely found in generic help forums around the Internet.
I rarely use this year’s hardware, in fact, I like using older, more reliable hardware, especially for my servers. Hence, the advantage of having up to this week “drivers” like you would expect from an Arch distribution or even up to this month, like you would expect from Ubuntu, is of no use to me anymore.

Read More »Switching to Debian (thank you for these amazing years, Ubuntu).

Goodbye LXC-LXD, hello Docker & Kubernetes.

I’m finally ditching LXC / LXD in favor of Docker and K8s, but maybe not for the reasons you might be thinking…

LXC is still, in my opinion, the best container technology for Mautic, and also for most of the monolithic projects out there, which in the case of open source marketing and open-martech, it’s over 85% of the existing projects.

However, recent changes have occurred in the LXD world, Canonical decided to pull the project from the guys at Linux Containers, that have been developing and maintaining both LXC and LXD projects for many years and bring it fully in-house.

I do not have first-hand information about how this was done, but given the recent fork and how things have been going lately, I do not have the same level of trust I used to have in Canonical. At the same time, I am uncertain of what the new path for the fork, Incus will look like in a couple of years from now. I’m pretty sure I’ll be revisiting LXC, LXD and Incus over time, but for right now, it is time for a change!

Read More »Goodbye LXC-LXD, hello Docker & Kubernetes.

Upgrade from Mautic 3.x to Mautic 4.4.11

It is not yet time to migrate to Mautic 5 for your production environment, it is still too soon!
Mautic 4 on the other hand is currently very mature. This is the most stable, efficient and secure Mautic version we had in a very long time, especially after the recent release of Mautic 4.4.11, which is the last release in the Mautic 4.x series.
If you haven’t yet updated your Mautic 3 to Mautic 4, now is the time, here’s a guide to do so, how to upgrade to Mautic 4 in 3 simple steps.

Read More »Upgrade from Mautic 3.x to Mautic 4.4.11
Securing your Mautic Installation

Secure, production-ready Mautic installation in 2024

UPDATED on FEB 9 2024, for Mautic 4.4.11

This is a basic but production-ready Mautic installation tutorial, that you can run in a SMALL production environment with real data from your customers. This tutorial keeps everything as simple as possible but will require some basic understanding of the Linux command line.

This is a slightly more advanced installation process than the rest of tutorials I usually provide.
It is meant for a basic, but secure and production-ready Mautic sewtup, allowing for a more secure install of Mautic 4.4.12 on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with PHP 8.1 on top of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

This tutorial should take you between 10 and 20 minutes depending on your level of expertise with Mautic and Linux.

If you are new to Mautic or the Linux command line, first try this much simpler Mautic tutorial: Mautic 4.4.12 installation on Ubuntu 22.04 with PHP8.0 and MariaDB 10.6, it’s the simplest way to get started and the probability of anything going sideways is minimal.

Read More »Secure, production-ready Mautic installation in 2024