Google sysadmin preaches Debian for software management

June 18, 2004 —

Caught up in the tangle of manually installing and updating software, enterprises can find a tip or two in the open source community's book on how to streamline the process, according to Google Inc. senior system administrator Marc Merlin.

Merlin's platform of choice is Debian GNU/Linux, which he said has the most comprehensive software library available for Linux.

Merlin developed 'getupdates', a program to keep client software synchronized with a central server.

"I wrote getupdates to keep Linux machines (servers or workstations) in sync with a repository," Merlin said. "I've deployed it on Red Hat at the two companies I've installed it at, even if Debian is my personal platform of choice. Getupdates is, however, distribution- and even Unix-agnostic."

Merlin's implementation of getupdates uses Debian

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