[CentOS] Re: is CentOS stable enough ?

[Tom Diehl]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Feizhou wrote:

> Tom Diehl wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Feizhou wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>>> FWIW, I use FC6 as my primary desktop.  It's quite stable.  I wouldn't
>>>> use it for a server however -- too fast of a moving target.
>>> 
>>> Why not? Fedora as a server is not a problem...
>> 
>> Except that it is supported for a max of approx 13 months. That means that 
>> if
>> you care at all about security updates, you are going to have to upgrade 
>> the
>> machine every year. That is not something I want to do with my servers.
>
> Automated deployment.

That still means you have to take it out of production to upgrade it.

>> 
>> IMO, servers should be good for at least 4-5 years, maybe longer. Depends 
>> on
>> how long the hardware is useful and what kind of new features you 
>> want/need.
>
> Depends on the requirements.
>
> The OS is basically a commodity item nowadays. Whatever that is stable and 
> performs can be dropped in especially if the software stack is small.

The OS is the easy part to get setup. Kickstart is a wonderful thing. It is
the software stack that invariably takes the most time. Especially when you 
consider that upgrading from one os version to the next will mean upgrading
things like apache/PHP. Try going from PHP 4 to PHP 5 without changing any
of your php code. It can be simple or hard depending on how complex your web
sites are. Even more inportant try getting your customers to update their
websites every 9-13 months. I would loose more customers than that could
possibly be worth. I could go on and on with this type of thing. It just
depends on our situation. If Fedora works for your servers have a good time
but I am not in a situation where Fedora makes sense.

>>> Fedora as a desktop however...I don't know...the few times I have seen 
>>> Fedora Core 5/6 desktops in action, Firefox froze, keyboard input would 
>>> not work all of a sudden...
>> 
>> Fedora for the desktop has been vaer stable for me and it gives me the 
>> latest
>> and greatest bells and whistles I want. The same frequent upgrade cycle 
>> exists
>> on the desktop but I am more tolerent of upgrading my desktop machine once 
>> a
>> year than upgrading servers. It is much easier to rebuild a desktop than a 
>> production server.
>
> Whether a production server is easier to rebuild than a desktop really 
> depends on how you go about doing it.

The real difference for me is my desktop serves 1 user, me. I can easially
deal with things changing and maybe not working the exact way I want them to,
until I get things sorted out. That is not reasonable for my customers. If
things change I loose sleep and money.

Regards,

-- 
Tom Diehl		tdiehl at rogueind.com		Spamtrap address mtd123 at rogueind.com