Apologies if this ends up a dup, but there seems to have been a problem with my original subscription.
------------------------------
Hello,
I am currently using Fedora on most of my servers. It does pretty well. I do have occasional problems which seem to me to stem from poor QA.
For example, /usr/bin/enable <queue> coming back with "Enable: I don't know what to do!" after a cups errata upgrade when I would try to re-enable a printer. The "-c#" (multiple copies) option to lpr not working for serial printers due to a bug in the "serial" backend. (But to which a patch is applied to fix the same problem in the parallel backend). Finding my first flaw in the OS when I try to check the CD media during the install. The media check always fails. (Yes, there are going to be bugs, but finding the first one before you even get the installation media checked looks really bad. And, yes, the ide=nodma workaround fixes it.)
I was very hopeful about CentOS shielding me and my clients from silly stuff like this. However, looking at the RHEL source for the serial backend to cups, it looks as though the patch to make "-c#" work on it has not been applied to serial.c. And the media check still fails with CentOS unless I use "ide=nodma", just like with Fedora.
This is disappointing.
Now, I wish to make it perfectly clear that I *DO NOT* consider this to be the fault of CentOS, as I understand that the policy is to remain faithfully compatible to RHEL.
But if I ask RH about this, I know that I will get an "oh so politically correct" answer.
On the positive side, looking at the errata, it looks as though CentOS has drastically fewer notices than Fedora, and I assume that is because there really are more problems (security of otherwise) shaken out during testing.
Obviously, not being forced to upgrade due to withdrawal of support with regards to security patches every 1.5 years is a plus.
So I welcome comments. If I switch my clients from Fedora to CentOS, they don't have the latest and greatest (and, for example, I need OpenOffice 2.0 ASAP for one of my clients due to it's Access-like interface to PostgreSQL), but how much advantage am I really looking at with regards to stability?
i.e. I know all the reasons that CentOS *should* be more rock solid stable. But is there a noticeable difference in reality?
Thanks For Any Input.
Sincerely, Steve Bergman
On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 15:42 -0500, Steve Bergman wrote:
Apologies if this ends up a dup, but there seems to have been a problem with my original subscription.
Hello,
I am currently using Fedora on most of my servers. It does pretty well. I do have occasional problems which seem to me to stem from poor QA.
For example, /usr/bin/enable <queue> coming back with "Enable: I don't know what to do!" after a cups errata upgrade when I would try to re-enable a printer. The "-c#" (multiple copies) option to lpr not working for serial printers due to a bug in the "serial" backend. (But to which a patch is applied to fix the same problem in the parallel backend). Finding my first flaw in the OS when I try to check the CD media during the install. The media check always fails. (Yes, there are going to be bugs, but finding the first one before you even get the installation media checked looks really bad. And, yes, the ide=nodma workaround fixes it.)
I was very hopeful about CentOS shielding me and my clients from silly stuff like this. However, looking at the RHEL source for the serial backend to cups, it looks as though the patch to make "-c#" work on it has not been applied to serial.c. And the media check still fails with CentOS unless I use "ide=nodma", just like with Fedora.
This is disappointing.
Now, I wish to make it perfectly clear that I *DO NOT* consider this to be the fault of CentOS, as I understand that the policy is to remain faithfully compatible to RHEL.
But if I ask RH about this, I know that I will get an "oh so politically correct" answer.
On the positive side, looking at the errata, it looks as though CentOS has drastically fewer notices than Fedora, and I assume that is because there really are more problems (security of otherwise) shaken out during testing.
Obviously, not being forced to upgrade due to withdrawal of support with regards to security patches every 1.5 years is a plus.
So I welcome comments. If I switch my clients from Fedora to CentOS, they don't have the latest and greatest (and, for example, I need OpenOffice 2.0 ASAP for one of my clients due to it's Access-like interface to PostgreSQL), but how much advantage am I really looking at with regards to stability?
i.e. I know all the reasons that CentOS *should* be more rock solid stable. But is there a noticeable difference in reality?
Thanks For Any Input.
---- unfortunately, this isn't the case of all things to all people.
Fedora favors the leading edge, short release/update periods whereas the RHEL product (from which CentOS is derived) favors stable and long release/update periods.
Where this is obvious are things like OpenOffice.org where Fedora Core 4 (at least test 2) has openoffice.org 1.89 and will obviously carry the 2.0 version in whatever form - even unstable if necessary and CentOS 4 will not have it unless RHEL updates which would be unusual for them to do so.
Also, the RHEL packages tend to be much sparser and they don't include all the potential kernel modules (though of course you can compile) and they offer some things which aren't supported but clearly the package list is much shorter than Fedora and when you consider things like Fedora Extras and other repositories, Fedora has a much greater depth of available packages. With RHEL or CentOS, you have Dag packages (which isn't working to well these days - apparently because of reliance upon a host that's been flaky the past few days).
As for your complaints...
I hope that you put in entries in bugzilla.redhat.com about the problems such as cups-enable and the serial issues. That is how these things get fixed. The issue with the CD-ROM and noidma probably stems from the fact that RHEL 4 was released not too long after Fedora Core 3 and they would likely had similar kernels and hal files. The benefit of CentOS/RHEL is that CentOS/RHEL will provide a 'respin' or updated release of the boot/install CD's which will have newer kernels and detect the issues with hardware that may not have worked properly in the first release whereas the only 'respin' that Fedora ever sees is the next version release of Fedora Core.
Myself, I use RHEL or CentOS for servers but Fedora for my desktop systems - I like having updated versions of things like gimp-2.2.4 (FC-3) vs. the earlier versions in RHEL.
Craig
El jue, 28-04-2005 a las 15:42 -0500, Steve Bergman escribió:
Apologies if this ends up a dup, but there seems to have been a problem with my original subscription.
[ snip ]
On the positive side, looking at the errata, it looks as though CentOS has drastically fewer notices than Fedora, and I assume that is because there really are more problems (security of otherwise) shaken out during testing.
Obviously, not being forced to upgrade due to withdrawal of support with regards to security patches every 1.5 years is a plus.
So I welcome comments. If I switch my clients from Fedora to CentOS, they don't have the latest and greatest (and, for example, I need OpenOffice 2.0 ASAP for one of my clients due to it's Access-like interface to PostgreSQL), but how much advantage am I really looking at with regards to stability?
i.e. I know all the reasons that CentOS *should* be more rock solid stable. But is there a noticeable difference in reality?
It depedens what do you want to do, what do you need. There is no distro for all tasks.
In my particular case I prefer to use CentOS in the side server for their stability and more importan for me, the long support that this Enterprise class distro offer (by RH promess).
For my clients wich uses Linux in the side server my recomendations are the same. And by example I have a customer wich develops applications with PHP/Postgress/MySQL they can't afford the costly effort to upgrade his development/production/test servers and the worst case test his application with the new version of PHP and MySQL which we see in Fedora in almost each release. For them the "version stability" is a very critical issue.
But I tink that CentOS is not very useful in the desktop side, where we need each time use recent version of the applications. I think in the desktop side is not much important "version estability/freeze".
My self I use Debian for my desktop and CentOS for my servers. With Debian always can I get the newer "killer app" for Gnome.
Thanks For Any Input.
Sincerely, Steve Bergman
On 4/28/05, Hardy Beltran Monasterios hardy@hardy.com.bo wrote:
El jue, 28-04-2005 a las 15:42 -0500, Steve Bergman escribió:
Apologies if this ends up a dup, but there seems to have been a problem with my original subscription.
[ snip ]
On the positive side, looking at the errata, it looks as though CentOS has drastically fewer notices than Fedora, and I assume that is because there really are more problems (security of otherwise) shaken out during testing.
Obviously, not being forced to upgrade due to withdrawal of support with regards to security patches every 1.5 years is a plus.
So I welcome comments. If I switch my clients from Fedora to CentOS, they don't have the latest and greatest (and, for example, I need OpenOffice 2.0 ASAP for one of my clients due to it's Access-like interface to PostgreSQL), but how much advantage am I really looking at with regards to stability?
In the case of OO, you can just download directly from the OO sites. I've been running the 2.0 Beta since released, and it certainly hasn't added any instability to my system.
It depedens what do you want to do, what do you need. There is no distro for all tasks.
In my particular case I prefer to use CentOS in the side server for their stability and more importan for me, the long support that this Enterprise class distro offer (by RH promess).
For my clients wich uses Linux in the side server my recomendations are the same. And by example I have a customer wich develops applications with PHP/Postgress/MySQL they can't afford the costly effort to upgrade his development/production/test servers and the worst case test his application with the new version of PHP and MySQL which we see in Fedora in almost each release. For them the "version stability" is a very critical issue.
But I tink that CentOS is not very useful in the desktop side, where we need each time use recent version of the applications. I think in the desktop side is not much important "version estability/freeze".
My self I use Debian for my desktop and CentOS for my servers. With Debian always can I get the newer "killer app" for Gnome.
What would be really great would be an intermediate level solution - the stability of the RHEL/CentOS base with available updates for KDE / GNOME / GIMP / PHP / MYSQL / POSTGRES etc. compiled on that base for those who want more current apps on the desktop or for development. And that with something considerably less experimental than the all-or-nothing FCn releases.
Yes, I'm dreaming.
On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 20:49, Collins Richey wrote:
My self I use Debian for my desktop and CentOS for my servers. With Debian always can I get the newer "killer app" for Gnome.
What would be really great would be an intermediate level solution - the stability of the RHEL/CentOS base with available updates for KDE / GNOME / GIMP / PHP / MYSQL / POSTGRES etc. compiled on that base for those who want more current apps on the desktop or for development. And that with something considerably less experimental than the all-or-nothing FCn releases.
Yes, I'm dreaming.
You might like ubuntu which doesn't force you to make a choice between stability and having up to date applications, although they haven't been around long enough to see if they can really manage a fast release schedule without introducing a lot of new bugs.
On Fri, 2005-04-29 at 11:34 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 20:49, Collins Richey wrote:
My self I use Debian for my desktop and CentOS for my servers. With Debian always can I get the newer "killer app" for Gnome.
What would be really great would be an intermediate level solution - the stability of the RHEL/CentOS base with available updates for KDE / GNOME / GIMP / PHP / MYSQL / POSTGRES etc. compiled on that base for those who want more current apps on the desktop or for development. And that with something considerably less experimental than the all-or-nothing FCn releases.
Yes, I'm dreaming.
You might like ubuntu which doesn't force you to make a choice between stability and having up to date applications, although they haven't been around long enough to see if they can really manage a fast release schedule without introducing a lot of new bugs.
---- the notion of being 'forced' to choose between stability and up-to-date is absurd - the reality is as it is.
Stability is tested, confirmed, supported.
Up-to-date is new, less tested, less confirmed, not supported.
One cannot be both. Ubuntu similarly makes choices - the choices aren't apparent to user until user chooses repositories for apt - after all it is a Debian distribution.
Sometimes I wish you understood your own references.
Craig
On Fri, 2005-04-29 at 11:49, Craig White wrote:
You might like ubuntu which doesn't force you to make a choice between stability and having up to date applications, although they haven't been around long enough to see if they can really manage a fast release schedule without introducing a lot of new bugs.
the notion of being 'forced' to choose between stability and up-to-date is absurd - the reality is as it is.
Stability is tested, confirmed, supported.
Up-to-date is new, less tested, less confirmed, not supported.
That may be what you want it to mean but to me stability means that it doesn't crash and works with current hardware. Often, even a less tested new version of something is better than the old one when the recent changes add needed support for new hardware or were made as a result of known problems in the well-tested (but buggy) old version. And as far as support goes, the closer you are to the upstream programmer's current version the better the support is going to be for anything but backed-in patches for some simple problem.
One cannot be both.
Newer isn't always better, but it often is. The programmers had their reasons to make the changes. Besides, you may want the latest application features but not untested device drivers.
Ubuntu similarly makes choices - the choices aren't apparent to user until user chooses repositories for apt - after all it is a Debian distribution.
Sometimes I wish you understood your own references.
Yes, someone has made the choices, but they make them separately for the base os/libs and the applications, and we can hope they are people who know what they are doing. With the fedora/RHEL split the user gets an all-or-nothing choice so when you want the next version of evolution, for example, you'll have to install a package containing whatever device drivers the fedora people would like to put into widespread testing at the same time - or wait years for it in RHEL. Ubuntu is gaining popularity precisely because they *don't* bundle everything into the same distributions (or lack thereof...) as Debian and they are starting out in a way that makes sense. It remains to be seen whether they can keep up with their goals of a fast release schedule and upgrade (vs. reinstall) capability and maintain stability.
It is normally quite easy to mix packages from similar distros. I would recommend using a CentOS install but adding packages from Fedora as required. There will come a time when the Fedora packages have too many core dependencies but if you want to run latest and greatest you always have that problem.
Tracking updates can become a problem but again, if you were worried about staying stable and secure then you would not be using Fedora anyway. (Indeed I think CentOS-4 is still too new).
I guess it also depends how many machines you are looking after. I detest having to make changes on one specific machine because we have lots of CentOS boxes and doing things individually is not feasible.
John.
Hardy Beltran Monasterios wrote:
El jue, 28-04-2005 a las 15:42 -0500, Steve Bergman escribió:
Apologies if this ends up a dup, but there seems to have been a problem with my original subscription.
[ snip ]
On the positive side, looking at the errata, it looks as though CentOS has drastically fewer notices than Fedora, and I assume that is because there really are more problems (security of otherwise) shaken out during testing.
Obviously, not being forced to upgrade due to withdrawal of support with regards to security patches every 1.5 years is a plus.
So I welcome comments. If I switch my clients from Fedora to CentOS, they don't have the latest and greatest (and, for example, I need OpenOffice 2.0 ASAP for one of my clients due to it's Access-like interface to PostgreSQL), but how much advantage am I really looking at with regards to stability?
i.e. I know all the reasons that CentOS *should* be more rock solid stable. But is there a noticeable difference in reality?
It depedens what do you want to do, what do you need. There is no distro for all tasks.
In my particular case I prefer to use CentOS in the side server for their stability and more importan for me, the long support that this Enterprise class distro offer (by RH promess).
For my clients wich uses Linux in the side server my recomendations are the same. And by example I have a customer wich develops applications with PHP/Postgress/MySQL they can't afford the costly effort to upgrade his development/production/test servers and the worst case test his application with the new version of PHP and MySQL which we see in Fedora in almost each release. For them the "version stability" is a very critical issue.
But I tink that CentOS is not very useful in the desktop side, where we need each time use recent version of the applications. I think in the desktop side is not much important "version estability/freeze".
My self I use Debian for my desktop and CentOS for my servers. With Debian always can I get the newer "killer app" for Gnome.
Thanks For Any Input.
Sincerely, Steve Bergman
My $.02 is that CentOS is a great desktop OS, and I find myself happy not to have to constantly reformat and repair my desktop because I installed unstable software.
Hardy Beltran Monasterios wrote:
El jue, 28-04-2005 a las 15:42 -0500, Steve Bergman escribió:
Apologies if this ends up a dup, but there seems to have been a problem with my original subscription.
[ snip ]
On the positive side, looking at the errata, it looks as though CentOS has drastically fewer notices than Fedora, and I assume that is because there really are more problems (security of otherwise) shaken out during testing.
Obviously, not being forced to upgrade due to withdrawal of support with regards to security patches every 1.5 years is a plus.
So I welcome comments. If I switch my clients from Fedora to CentOS, they don't have the latest and greatest (and, for example, I need OpenOffice 2.0 ASAP for one of my clients due to it's Access-like interface to PostgreSQL), but how much advantage am I really looking at with regards to stability?
i.e. I know all the reasons that CentOS *should* be more rock solid stable. But is there a noticeable difference in reality?
It depedens what do you want to do, what do you need. There is no distro for all tasks.
In my particular case I prefer to use CentOS in the side server for their stability and more importan for me, the long support that this Enterprise class distro offer (by RH promess).
For my clients wich uses Linux in the side server my recomendations are the same. And by example I have a customer wich develops applications with PHP/Postgress/MySQL they can't afford the costly effort to upgrade his development/production/test servers and the worst case test his application with the new version of PHP and MySQL which we see in Fedora in almost each release. For them the "version stability" is a very critical issue.
But I tink that CentOS is not very useful in the desktop side, where we need each time use recent version of the applications. I think in the desktop side is not much important "version estability/freeze".
My self I use Debian for my desktop and CentOS for my servers. With Debian always can I get the newer "killer app" for Gnome.
Thanks For Any Input.
Sincerely, Steve Bergman
-
Collins Richey -
Craig White -
Hardy Beltran Monasterios -
John Newbigin -
Les Mikesell -
Ryan -
Steve Bergman