On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 5:02 AM, <lhecking at users.sourceforge.net> wrote: > >> They are OK with the roll-your-own style of Gentoo? >> >> Especially with it's cutting edge versions, bugs, security holes and the only way to overcome them is to upgrade to an even newer version that may break compatibility, introduce new bugs, zero-day vulnerabilities, the list goes on and on. > > So, you are saying that other OSes, even other Linux distributions, have no > bugs, security holes, compatibility issues and zero-days? Looks like we don't > need M$ to spread FUD about Linux, we're well capable of doing it ourselves ;) Now, now, sports fans, let's be nice. Gentoo *is* a problem in production use, due to factors such as feature creep and component discrepancies. Its constant influx of "secret sauce" to correct layout skew and component inconsistency between differentn upstream projects, and that constant update and possible overlap and overwriting by the installation tools, is begging for pain in stable environments. RHEL is much better about that, although by now the "production" RHEL 5 is 4 years out of date, the "leading edge" RHEL 6 is now one year out of date after the lengthy release testing, and CentOS will always lag that. >> You can mix up RHEL and CentOS in the same environment. Use RHEL on key mission critical systems and CentOS on one-off systems to reduce license costs, but maintain 100% compatibility between the two. > > Agreed. Also, don't forgot to contribute or actually *purchase* the licenses for the one you use. Explaining to freeloaders that companies, and projects, will die and leave them alone and unsupported without some return of value from them is a big issue. Sadly or not, a lot of my recent clients have considered my sending patches upstream to open source projects to be as much as they're willing to provide. This can actually work out in hourly rates.....