[CentOS] is CentOS stable enough ?

Mon Jun 11 23:48:34 UTC 2007
Warren Young <warren at etr-usa.com>

arnuld wrote:
> 
> Fedora is the one of the most buggy *NIX distro i have ever seen.

I doubt that Fedora is any more "buggy" than any other Linux distro, 
since they all share so much code.  That makes me wonder what your real 
complaint is.  Some guesses:

1. You just don't like the Red Hat way of system administration.  (yum, 
chkconfig, etc.)   In that case, you won't like CentOS.

2. Your "bugs" are due to how often things on Fedora change, breaking 
other things.  In that case, you'll probably love CentOS.

Each major release of CentOS lives for many years, overlapped with the 
previous release.  So right now, with CentOS 5.0 just out, we're halfway 
through CentOS 4.x's lifetime.  Each point release of CentOS 4.x only 
gathers patches to packages that shipped with CentOS 4.0.  No new 
packages will make it into 4.x, and patches to existing versions are 
always preferred to wholly new versions.  The only reason there are even 
formal releases is so people can deploy new machines without having to 
download everything that's changed since 4.0.  When you have a system 
that's happily running CentOS 4.x, it's likely to keep running happily 
forever as long as you stay within the 4.x line.

The only time you have a problem will be when 4.9 is eventually 
released, which will be about the same time as CentOS 6.0.  At that 
point, the Upstream Vendor will stop providing patches to 4.x, so you 
have to decide whether to stick with 4.9, move to 5.x, or move to 6.0. 
If it needs to keep running as-is, with minimal meddling, stick with 4.9 
and manage any needed patches yourself.  If you need some new technology 
but can't afford much risk, go with 5.x.  And if you're prepared to 
completely rebuild the system if necessary in order to have maximum 
upside, go with 6.0.  When risk can be high, it is very satisfying to 
have a set of choices like this.