[CentOS] Issues with CentOS in enterprise

Mathieu Baudier mbaudier at argeo.org
Sun Dec 12 17:58:57 UTC 2010


> I have the following situation. I tried to promote CentOS to local bank. They have now a couple of Gentoo-based systems and I tried to explain them that CentOS is much better option for enterprises.

We deployed a CentOS based virtualized appliance for a (non-critical)
application developed by us in a bank which had similar policies.
Actually they even had an explicit official policy against any
open-source software.

We finally convinced them with the following arguments:
- we could support RHEL if they would prefer to have a big company
behind the OS and they could always decide to switch to it
- we said that we were ready to deploy it on Solaris, but they should
pay us more for that and take responsibility for any issue

> I guess, I'm not the first who encounter this issue. Could you share your experience how to deal with it? Are there any public resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability?

Out of common sense, and as others have suggested, I would tell them:
- if you are willing to pay and want to be safe, take RHEL (Red Hat is
about to reach $1 billion revenues http://bit.ly/eb4igX)
- if not, what makes you think that Gentoo is more viable?

CentOS definitely addresses a need in the market, and even if the
project should collapse (God forbids...), so many people needs it that
an equivalent would probably pops up quickly, based on the amazing
work which as already been done and is available.

The following chart shows for example that CentOS is very popular for
web servers:
http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux



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