Fedora vs RHEL

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 04/16/2013 06:33 AM, Craig White wrote:

> 1. The access to get day of release packages. This means that security
> updates don't wait for someone down the line to rebuild packages.
Yes, if this is additional lag to the lag already contained in RHEL is 
of concern to you, CentOS would not be a "best choice" for you.

However, when considering "immediate updates" will not always be 
possible on the user-side (a 24/7 server often can't shut down a lib), I 
consider this lag to be neglible in many situations.

> This
> means that a new release doesn't take weeks or months before it becomes
> available (remembering that CentOS 6.0 release was about 8 months behind
> the RHEL 6.0 release
IMO; that's are red herring. As CentOS6 wasn't released then, CentOS 
users had to stay with CentOS5. I.e. the delay did not affect then at 
all. Afterwards, the CentOS project has been doing a pretty good job to 
keeping the lags to RHEL small.

> 2. Real binary compatibility - it is after all, the genuine product. I
> applaud CentOS and others for all their efforts to generate packages as
> close as possible to binary compatibility but the first time you find
> out that some 3rd party software package says installation on CentOS is
> not supported, you then realize that there is a difference, even if it
> is seemingly arbitrary.
As this thread is about Fedora vs. RHEL, my primary reason for not using 
RHEL and CentOS as my Desktop OS, is them both being comparatively 
slimmed down and comparatively incomplete server-oriented distros.

I.e. if your works rely upon packages or versions of packages, which are 
not part of CentOS/RHEL, CentOS/RHEL are not a good choice.

I for one, chose CentOS as my (In-house, non-public) server's OS, but am 
using Fedora on clients, exactly for this reason.

> 3. $799 a year for support is more than a small business can justify?
It often is. It definitely is additional cost-factor, which is only 
justified if the "pros" RHEL has over CentOS are of real importance.
In many sitations these are not of importance.

Ralf