[CentOS-docs] What's an Enterprise class OS

Sat Nov 15 22:11:13 UTC 2008
Akemi Yagi <amyagi at gmail.com>

On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Ned Slider <ned at unixmail.co.uk> wrote:
> Akemi Yagi wrote:
>>
>> While we are still discussing the subject (or are we?), *yet another*
>> new person posted a question in the forums [1]:

>> [1]
>> http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=17299&forum=38
>>
>> A link to the "planned" what-is-an-enterprise-class-OS article/FAQ
>> would have been handy.
>
> Well, I answered that one this time. Perhaps we could use my answer (below)
> as a starting point/draft for a FAQ entry. Feel free to comment or offer
> edits as appropriate:
>
> CentOS is an Enterprise-class operating system (built from the freely
> available source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and as such is more about
> stability and long-term support than cutting edge. Major package versions
> are retained throughout the life cycle of the product, so when RHEL 5 (and
> hence CentOS 5) originally shipped with php 5.1.6 you can reasonable expect
> that php will stay at that version for the 7 year life cycle of the product.
> This is generally what Enterprise wants and affords developers a stable base
> on which to develop without fear that bespoke applications will break every
> time something gets upgraded to the latest and greatest, but ultimately
> buggy version or the API changes breaking backwards compatibility.
>
> So no, you will generally NOT find the very latest versions of various
> packages included in an Enterprise-class operating system such as CentOS.
> It's a feature not a deficiency
>
> Security fixes are backported into the shipped version. See here for
> details: http://www.redhat.com/advice/speaks_backport.html

Thank, Ned.  I went ahead and added this to the wiki FAQ with minor
modifications:

http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/General
(currently the last item)

Akemi