[CentOS] CentOS-6 Status updates

Tue Jun 14 16:50:44 UTC 2011
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On 6/14/2011 10:41 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>
>>> Ok... do you have in-house developed software? I've got one team that's
> <snip>
>>> 10? 11? to 13 was a nightmare, and X wouldn't work until I got rid of
>>> gnome, and put KDE on....
>>>
>>> I want solid and stable.
>>
>> I don't get the comparisons. Do you have some specific bad experience
>
> I guess you don't.

I didn't mean I don't understand the problem you describe.  I just don't 
understand why you blame anyone but the developers in your scenario.

> Let's start out this way, by defining my use of the
> word "fragile": this is where software is utterly dependent upon the
> runtime environment, and on the versions of the executables and libraries
> they use, and where a sub-release may carry a change in it that breaks the
> damn thing, because they're using some experimental function (sorry,
> "method"), or their stuff worked only because some error checking wasn't
> enabled, and the data and code fell through and worked, and the new
> version caught it and died.

Yes, developers can and do write bad code. Providing them an environment 
where it mostly just happens to work most of the the time is one 
approach to dealing with it - but it probably won't play out well in the 
long run when the the environment has to change for security or hardware 
support reasons.

> Nope - the O/S and all the packages with it *are* the environment that I
> refer to.

How many of them actually affect a java app (which if done right will be 
equally at home across linux/mac/windows)?  And you couldn't seriously 
have considered using a CentOS packaged java at all until very recently, 
so I don't understand thinking that CentOS would have been a solution 
for this.

>> alpha/beta versions intending to lead up to RHEL after a lot of
>
> Yeah, but some people appear to think (or at least that was what I got
> from the post of the guy I was replying to) that fedora is good enough for
> production.

Nobody thinks that for long - or with large numbers of machines.

> Ok, I *only* heard of the desktop emphasis, and that's what I see on my
> netbook remix. I have not heard of LTS before, or that it was intended for
> servers. Still, if it has updates as frequently as my netbook does, that
> would make me nervous about a production environment.
>
> I'll stick with CentOS...oh, that's right, I should only make comments
> like that on a CentOS list....

OK, but what was that about things like ruby and java? (Java being more 
or less OK now...).  If you don't use/need software from this decade, 
then maybe it isn't a big issue for you either way.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com