CentOS is a project that takes the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source RPMs and builds binary packages, as well as the installer, etc., from them. Thus, they create a "workalike" of RHEL3, and now RHEL4. When Red Hat distributes updates, either for bug fixes or security vulnerabilities, CentOS uses the source RPMs for those and rebuilds them also. In essence, you're getting an up-to-date, although unofficial and commercially unsupported, version of RHEL3/4.
Since RHEL3/4 officially supports S/390 and zSeries, you're more likely to get kernel updates and bugfixes that apply to the mainframe than you are from Fedora. Since CentOS then rebuilds the source RPMs that result from those updates, you'll get the same updates for the mainframe there. Fedora is meant as a fast development cycle platform, so package versions will change frequently. RHEL3/4, and hence CentOS is intended for the business/enterprise market, so while bug and security fixes will be back ported, version levels will not change much, if at all, over the life of the platform. Mark Post -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tim J Stalker Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 1:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Fedora Core Development I'm inclined to stick with Fedora mainly because my entire experience with Linux is confined to RedHat. I'll do as you suggest, jon for awhile those lists. My Linux install is pretty new. Essentially I need it to provide a Web server, database and other tools for serving web pages. So far it's working very well for that. Maybe someone could brief me here on some of the essential differences between CentOS and Fedora, those that are likely important in an s390 environment, etc. I appreciate all the information my initial post about Fedora raised. And I'll lurk here for awhile as well. Thanks, Tim Stalker ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
