[CentOS] Getting ready for CentOS 5.4

Fri Mar 27 18:27:03 UTC 2009
Ray Van Dolson <rayvd at bludgeon.org>

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 12:34:04PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> Rainer Duffner wrote:
> > Spiro Harvey schrieb:
> >> I've got a couple of cents change here...
> >>
> >>   
> > While I do think some of the wording of the post that the above post was
> > replying to was a bit mis-chosen, I like to believe it had a positive spin.
> > (In that it didn't want to put blame on anybody)
> > 
> > I *do* agree with the sentiment that people should buy RHEL for stuff
> > they consider critical.
> > Or just change distro if they think they get a better deal elsewhere.
> > 
> > Which is what I normaly do, unless management decides they can get away
> > cheaper and in essence get RHEL + updates for free with CentOS.
> > 
> > The CentOS team certainly doesn't owe me CentOS 5.3 by now - in the same
> > way I can't really complain about a late (again) FreeBSD release.
> 
> While I love CentOS, think the team does the best possible job, and 
> appreciate the work they put into undoing the restrictions on 
> redistribution by the upstream distro, I have to wonder if it isn't time 
> to just switch to a base distribution that doesn't impose those 
> restrictions that force the extra work and delays in the first place.
> 
> Is there still any reason other than having to learn to type 'apt-get' 
> instead of 'yum' to prefer Centos over Ubuntu?  I think for me it is 
> just that I started with RH before they imposed the redistribution 
> restriction nonsense and have been too lazy to change administration 
> styles (and debian's "release-when-it's-ready" schedule wasn't 
> attractive at the time).  On a test machine I've noted that Ubuntu 
> worked with the wireless adapter where Centos didn't, Sun Java is 
> included, and the update mechanism seems faster and better suited to 
> caching proxies.  But it still feels slightly weird and unfamiliar.  Are 
> there reasons to not trust it?
> 

Oh boy.  Now we're going in a completely new direction on this thread.
:-D

Nothing wrong with changing distros of course, but, at least for me my
reasons for staying with RH/Fedora/Cent are mainly that RHEL is still
the "corporate" standard and more likely to keep me employed.  I'd
prefer to stay familiar with the "RH" environment for this reason
alone.

As long as RH continues to employ a large chunk of the Linux
development community, it will continue to be a major player in the
enterprise space.  And if not for CentOS someone else would step up and
fill the void of a "free" version.

Ray