On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 5:05 PM, Alexander Arlt centos@track5.de wrote:
Much of the point of free software is the fact that once something has been done once, any number of copies of it 'just work' for no extra cost. So, the missing piece here is just a reasonable way for someone else to duplicate the setup.
Again, there is the assumption that there is a reasonable way for duplicating this setup.
There is a way. If you were to hand yum the right package revisions in the right order with the right repos enabled for each, it would build a matching system for you. The low level bits are there.
RHEL and CentOS have a very clear focus on what they want to achieve.
Which currently doesn't involve helping users avoid shooting themselves in the foot.
No, that's really only relevant after something goes wrong. The point of it is the effort that goes into avoiding/fixing the things that go wrong. And the more people that run exactly the same code and report their bugs, sometimes with fixes, the better that turns out.
Not in my world. CentOS is accepted as a full blown RHEL-alternative by nearly everyone doing audits. You will be able to achieve SOX-compliance with almost any auditor I have met so far by using CentOS. Enterprise nowadays is far more than just having a hotline to call when things go wrong. And - at least in my opinion - CentOS is the only community driven Linux today fulfilling enterprise requirements without big time hassle.
Are there restrictions on content from EPEL? Oracle Java? Your own applications? Where do 3rd party additions become a problem in this context?
Adding additional applications doesn't hurt the base. It is just better testing for it.
It depends on the application. You will have the effort of backporting patches if you are not able to bring current versions of several libraries to the game. Or you will have to update core libraries.
Or use static linkage - or alternate locations like software collections. There are ways that don't break the base...
I assume the 4 is a typo there. RHEL 4's EOL was 2-29-2012, But that's all kind of irrelevant to what we should be preparing for after a new install of CentOS 7 and what to expect from it.
No, RHEL 4 has Extended Life Phase till 2015. And will probably be even longer supported - at least that's what we're all hoping for. And that is not irrelevant, because - basically - that's what enterprise is about. Getting long term support and that's maybe 10+ years.
Interesting - I just got the 2012 EOL date from a Red Hat google hit. But I had some early problems with Centos4 and moved to 5 as soon as it came out. I think they mostly involved perl module packaging, though, and might not have affected other uses.