[CentOS] Choosing to put CentOS in terms of itself ...

[Johnny Hughes]

On Wed, 2005-08-17 at 19:33 -0500, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
<snip>

> I think CentOS stands great on itself, and you don't need to define many
> things is dislike of other distro.  I know many of us (at least us
> Americans) like to put things in terms of "versus" as much as we can.
> And I am too verbose, too "I see good in everything" and support so many
> different flavors that there's always something to dislike about what I
> say.

<snip>
> 
> It might be "animal farmish" but we're all standing on the shoulders of
> others, and I don't dare say who's better than another.  In fact,
> because of my neutrality and wiliness to see things from different
> perspectives.

One distro is not BETTER than another ... they are just for different
situations.

RHEL (as a distro) is more stable and longer lived than Fedora ... and
it is based off of Fedora (or they are both based from Rawhide if you
prefer).  This is due mostly to the release cycle and the testing that
happens on Fedora.  Some people see Fedora as a test platform for
RHEL ... and it is that.  Red Hat would not assign resources to Fedora
IF they we not going to roll that stuff into RHEL and make money.  That
doesn't make Fedora any less valuable as a distro, or make Red Hat bad.

Fedora is a very good distro when compared to other non-enterprise
distros like SuSE Pro, Mandriva, Ubuntu, etc.  The only issue with these
distros (Fedora included) is the support cycle / release schedule.

RedHat is (in my opinion) the best of the Enterprise Release Linux
companies (Novell, RedHat, Mandriva) at making their enterprise Source
available.  Without RedHat's dedication to open source software, CentOS
would not exist.

Where are the SuSE SLES or Mandriva Enterprise rebuilds?  They don't
exist .. because the SRPMS are not readily available for updates, etc.

BUT ... RHEL costs money (at least the SLA does).

So, CentOS has some advantages of Fedora (Community developed, Free) and
RHEL (Long lifetime, stable code base, most 3rd party apps work).
CentOS also has one major disadvantage ... no support.

Red Hat bashing is not good though. As I said before, without their
outstanding commitment to open source the community would be in the same
boat as we are with Mandriva and Novell.

(Not that either of those companies are BAD either ... they also provide
code back into the chain and they do support open source as well.  They
just don't make it easy to clone their Enterprise Software)
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