Fedora vs. RHE

[Fraser Campbell]

On Wednesday 24 September 2003 17:36, waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org wrote:

>   Redhat has started copying that trend, along with the trend to bloat
> that MS started.  I wouldn't mind $5.00/month for the convenience of
> up2date, but continuous upgrades-du-jour and short lifespan for each
> version is getting annoying.  I want to *USE* my computer, not spend all
> my time installing new versions.  I am this => <= close to switching to
> Debian already.  They have a reputation for versions being few and far
> between, but that sounds tempting about now.

Debian can accomodate you.  I've been using Debian on servers (and desktops) 
since 1997, for the past few years I've been exposed to Redhat.  I've also 
used Slackware on servers.  I've found many things about other distributions 
that I dislike and haven't found any features compelling enough to make me 
switch.

As an example of stability, read last weeks DWN 
(http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/37/), Debian has tcl 8.0, 8.2, 8.3 
and 8.4 all available for use.  Install one, or more, as you require.  The 
reason for all the versions "Tcl isn't particularly backwards compatible".  
Many other key apps follow this example gcc (2.7.2, 2.95 or 3.0), perl 
(5.004, 5.005 or 5.6), kernel (2.2.x or 2.4.x) ... this is with Debian 
stable, same is true of unstable but versions may differ.  If there's any 
good reason for maintaining multiple versions of a packages, there's a very 
good chance of it happening.

Contrast this with Redhat who with Redhat 9 (or was it even Redhat 8?) began 
shipping apache2 by default, AFAIK some key modules (like php and mod_perl) 
are not very stable with apache2.

Another redhatism that I have wondered about is gcc.  In Redhat 9 they are 
compiling the kernel with a very new version of gcc (version 3.2.2), despite 
this note in the kernel's README:

   - Make sure you have gcc 2.95.3 available.  gcc 2.91.66 (egcs-1.1.2) may
     also work but is not as safe, and *gcc 2.7.2.3 is no longer supported*.

Stable Debian doesn't satisfy me entirely, I want the latest KDE and mozilla 
for example, no problem there are excellent Debian packages for those that 
can be installed from other sources.

I like the idea of Redhat Enterprise, for people running servers it makes a 
lot of sense if you're willing to pay.  For those who know what they're doing 
the Enterprise version is a pretty steep price to pay for stability and the 
redhat alternative of keeping pace with fedora or redhat X is not very 
appealing.

-- 
Fraser Campbell <fraser-Txk5XLRqZ6CsTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org>                 http://www.wehave.net/
Halton Hills, Ontario, Canada                             Debian GNU/Linux

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