Tom Diehl wrote: > On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Feizhou wrote: > >> Tom Diehl wrote: >>> On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Feizhou wrote: >>> >>>> >>>>> FWIW, I use FC6 as my primary desktop. It's quite stable. I wouldn't >>>>> use it for a server however -- too fast of a moving target. >>>> >>>> Why not? Fedora as a server is not a problem... >>> >>> Except that it is supported for a max of approx 13 months. That means >>> that if >>> you care at all about security updates, you are going to have to >>> upgrade the >>> machine every year. That is not something I want to do with my servers. >> >> Automated deployment. > > That still means you have to take it out of production to upgrade it. SPOF server need not apply. Wait...you said servers. I say SO? Done properly, the downtime for the upgrade would be minimal. Just a reboot. Just the same amount of downtime you get when the thing crashes not if not less considering that you first have to discover that it is down. > >>> >>> IMO, servers should be good for at least 4-5 years, maybe longer. >>> Depends on >>> how long the hardware is useful and what kind of new features you >>> want/need. >> >> Depends on the requirements. >> >> The OS is basically a commodity item nowadays. Whatever that is stable >> and performs can be dropped in especially if the software stack is small. > > The OS is the easy part to get setup. Kickstart is a wonderful thing. It is > the software stack that invariably takes the most time. Especially when > you consider that upgrading from one os version to the next will mean > upgrading > things like apache/PHP. Try going from PHP 4 to PHP 5 without changing any > of your php code. It can be simple or hard depending on how complex your > web > sites are. Even more inportant try getting your customers to update their > websites every 9-13 months. I would loose more customers than that could > possibly be worth. I could go on and on with this type of thing. It just > depends on our situation. If Fedora works for your servers have a good time > but I am not in a situation where Fedora makes sense. Ah, the wonderful perl/php dependency problem. Like I said, depends on the requirements. There was a time when my mail servers which had no perl/php dependency would be running the latest Fedora Core while systems belonging to others would be running RH7.3...long after security updates for RH7.3 were stopped. > >>>> Fedora as a desktop however...I don't know...the few times I have >>>> seen Fedora Core 5/6 desktops in action, Firefox froze, keyboard >>>> input would not work all of a sudden... >>> >>> Fedora for the desktop has been vaer stable for me and it gives me >>> the latest >>> and greatest bells and whistles I want. The same frequent upgrade >>> cycle exists >>> on the desktop but I am more tolerent of upgrading my desktop machine >>> once a >>> year than upgrading servers. It is much easier to rebuild a desktop >>> than a production server. >> >> Whether a production server is easier to rebuild than a desktop really >> depends on how you go about doing it. > > The real difference for me is my desktop serves 1 user, me. I can easially > deal with things changing and maybe not working the exact way I want > them to, > until I get things sorted out. That is not reasonable for my customers. If > things change I loose sleep and money. Like I said, it depends on how you go about doing it.