[PLUG] dumping unix for linux

Paul Heinlein heinlein at madboa.com
Thu Oct 19 17:56:53 UTC 2006


On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

> Along these lines, one of the things that never ceases to amaze me 
> is that businesses run production servers and desktops on Fedora 
> rather than CentOS. In other words, they believe a community distro 
> "blessed by Red Hat" is better in some sense than something that's 
> binary compatible with RHEL.

It doesn't amaze me at all, really. It all depends on what you want, 
and the time you're willing to invest.

While I was at OGI, I relied on Fedora for login servers and desktop 
workstations. Fedora provided tools of recent vintage that tended to 
work better with newer hardware. Prior to each Fall term, I'd nuke and 
repave all the Fedora machines. It took some time to figure out what 
configuration files needed tweaking, but getting the newer tools was 
worth the investment in time.

The amazing thing is that people install Fedora while desiring 
long-term stability in the face of Internet-borne threats...

CentOS or Red Hat were better choices for machines that offer stable, 
always-on network services: DNS, DHCP, RADIUS, web, e-mail, database, 
calendaring, file services, and what-not. Living with increasingly 
fossilized (albeit maintained) versions of service software was worth 
the stability they offered.

The amazing thing is that people install RHEL/CentOS while desiring a 
bleeding-edge toolset...

Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses -- and I've always found 
myself in situations where I need both, because they solve different 
problems.

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> www.madboa.com



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