> > First, CentOS does exactly what RHEL does, so this is not really a > CentOS question. > > The tradeoff is that Ubuntu doesn't go to the effort to ensure that > for 7+ years you can do updates and not have anything that was > previously working break because a change from the update. > RHEL/CentOS may not be perfect at this, but breakage is very, very > rare because the updates are mostly backported security/bug fixes that > don't change behavior. Ubuntu does more frequent updates of the > included package versions (even with their LTS version) and if a > package changes behavior that is left as your problem. By the time > RHEL does it's next major release, you have a many-year jump in the > underlying package versions with enough changes that even if you could > do an automated update it would probably be a bad idea (there may be > things as drastic as new filesytem choices, etc.). A fresh install > of CentOS isn't difficult and you should have a plan to backup/restore > your own data anyway, so once you get used to the timing it works out > pretty well to match up major releases with replacing hardware and/or > general cleaning up of your own applications and data. > First, thank you to Les and the others for the information. You answered my questions clearly and concisely. My replacement of the machine at home went from Fedora Core 6 to CentOS 6. Both 6's right :-). The old box had the power supply smoke (literally) and took out something on the main board so it would no longer see disks. The boot disk failed as well. I kept Firefox and Thunderbird up to date manually with packages downloaded from the Mozilla site. Right at the end, I got to where they would not load because of shared object incompatibilities. Why would someone wait that long to upgrade? The machine at home is very different than the machines at work. At work, new project, new machine, new OS install. Get the latest version of RHEL and that is where that project stays. At home there is a lot more customization. I transferred my CD's to MP3 format and now buy MP3's from Amazon. As you know, I need a third party repo to get MP3 decoders. My machine now ties into my stereo and that is how I listen to music. Same sort of stuff goes for playing movies. Lots of other customizations as well. Projects come and projects go. I could not get xmms (with mp3) running on my CentOS machine. Eventually found "Audacious" which fills in nicely. And on and on. The priorities yum plug-in does a real nice job of protecting my machine from being mutilated by third party repositories. Cudo's to those guys. Bottom line, rebuilding a home machine is a lot more trouble than setting up a new machine at work. Thanks again for the insights into the upgrade process. Bob S.