Fedora vs CentOS -- php/apache and Drupal 7

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 04/16/2013 09:41 AM, Roger wrote:
> So what does CentOS 6.n desktop, yum update actually update or does it
> leave all the apps like cinnamon desktop, skype, gimp, apache, php,
> libreoffice, python, pulseaudio, gnome, Firefox or chrome as they are
> first installed, circa Fedora 14ish?
Mostly the latter.

In particular, RHEL/CentOS don't receive any API/ABI incompatible 
updates and usually only receives very moderate updates of 
programs/applications.

This is very similar to what Fedora does during the life-time of a 
Fedora release. The major difference here is Fedora's life-time is ca. 1 
year, while RHEL's is much longer.

However, as RHEL/CentOS is much smaller/leaner than Fedora, you usually 
will find RHEL/CentOS use-cases are pretty limited and will find 
yourself adding packages, which RHEL/CentOS does not provide, from 
add-on repositories (e.g. EPEL). These usually apply different 
update/upgrade strategies of their own.

> One would think that this would leave significant vulnerability.
Nope. RH is backporting security fixes over the whole life-time of a 
RHEL release.

> If it runs the latest spate of updates then is it not little different
> from Fedora 18 but with an old kernel?
No. RHEL is very different from Fedora. RHEL continues to use the "old 
status" - Very oversimplied, RHEL/CentOS API/ABI is that of "Fedora 14".

That means, RHEL/CentOS based works usually are "long term stable" but 
usually also means these works can't apply the "bells and whistles" new 
works depend upon.

> Further reading implies that the better CentOS installation should be
> text based as a server only  and that I should run all my work on the
> server not Fedora 18.
I do not understand. Oversimplied, CentOS/RHEL technically are 3 years 
old, rock solid and small/limited. Fedora is on the bleeding edge, 
mediocre solid and "big".

Both situations have pros and cons of their own - Which to choose 
largely is a matter of your situation and of your case of deploying 
them. I for one use Fedora on desktops, but am using CentOS on servers.

Ralf