Can we please stop emails like this? It's getting really annoying. This is a technical support mailing list.
On 07/26/2011 11:54 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: > I am posting the item below not to start any "flame wars" nor to be any > mythological creature from Middle Earth or anywhere else, but rather to > put forward what I have found from one "professional" analysis of the > RHEL situation -- and not an analysis for which I have sufficient data > to support. In the article below, the conclusion "push" seems to mean > that either RHEL clone is the same. Rather than simply including a URL, > I am posting the entire article for any later historical archiving -- > unlike academic journals and articles that exist for posterity, much of > the commentary of the computer technology areas seems very ephemeral. > Nonetheless, when RHEL 7 and its clones come about, there may be > interest in examining the historical commentaries, just as there is in > discussing any evolving technology (e.g., HEP detectors). For my > personal choice for X86-64 systems that need to support 64 bit > operations, I have switched to SL 6 ; for systems that can live with > IA-32 operations (e.g., my laptop and other work computers), I am > staying with CentOS 5.x for now -- when these switch to RHEL 6.x, I > suspect I will be switching to SL 6 simply because I do not want to > support multiple environments for production. > > From URL: > http://lostinopensource.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-clone-wars-centos-vs-scientific-linux/ > > The Clone Wars – CentOS vs. Scientific Linux > 2011/07/13 jduncan > > With Linux in the Enterprise, RHEL is king. Sure there are people who > love and use Debian, or Suse. I would imagine that if you looked hard > enough you could likely find somebody who’s using Slackware or Gentoo in > a business somewhere. But I think it can safely be said that RHEL is > currently the dominant enterprise Linux distribution. Then, of course, > there are the clones. If you so choose, you can forgo Shadowman’s > Support team and either compile the freely available Redhat Source RPMs, > or choose to use a community-supported RHEL clone. Currently, the two > most popular of those clone distributions are CEntOS (Community > Enterprise Operating System) and Scientific Linux (SL). > > So if you have decided to not utilize Redhat support, which of these > downstream clones is the better choice? With the recent (much delayed) > release of CentOS 6.0 in the past week, many companies are looking to > move up to the RHEL 6.0 family of operating systems. But is CentOS still > the right choice? Being a primarily CentOS shop, and being more than a > little OCD myself, I decided to compare the two in as practical as a > manner as I could. Below are the results. > > Maturity: > > When it’s running on production, you don’t have time to wait on a tiny > community to figure out how to backport in some obscure cross-site > scripting vulnerability in an even more obscure module in your favorite > language, even if you’re part of that community. An enterprise operating > system needs to have an active and robust community to support itself, > paid or not. > > CentOS has been around for a long time and has a huge following. There > have been murmurs of late about the core contributors getting tired, and > the delay in CentOS 6.0 was the evidence. I don’t believe that fully, > but I do believe the project could do with some fresh blood and possibly > some new ideas. But I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon. > > Scientific Linux hasn’t been around nearly as long, at least on the > scale that it is currently enjoying. The community, however, is vibrant, > and is backed by several large research labs such as CERN and Fermilab. > Big plusses. > > Advantage: Push > > Workflow: > > In Open Source software, the process is often times as important as the > product. While I don’t believe there is anything massively different in > how these 2 projects are doing what the do, SL is certainly better at > talking about it and making the community aware of how it’s working. > This presentation(PDF) is a pretty great one, even if it’s a little > dated. SL Community, I’d love to see an update, for the record. > > Advantage: Scientific Linux > > RHEL Compatability: > > This used to be a much larger difference, as late as version 5.x. > Scientific made some pretty large changes to the RHEL repository > structure, and added in some packages of their own. CentOS has always > been as faithful a clone as was possible at the time. This is largely > cleaned up in version 6.0, with the extra SL packages moving out to > external repos, but much like the workflow advantage above, perception > is still a strong influence. > > Why is this important? Well, like lots of people, we’re a mixed > RHEL/CentOS shop. It just makes life SO MUCH EASIER. > > Advantage: CentOS > > Mirror Speed and Availability: > > I couldn’t find any perceivable difference in this category. Both > networks are robust and highly available. > > Advantage: Push > > Community Support: > > This is one of the most important factors when adopting a distribution, > and sadly the one answer I’m not able to fully answer. I utilize CentOS > support all the time, via the web, forums, and IRC. I’ve only > occasionally sought support for SL, and this was way back in version > 5.2. So I’m not really qualified to answer this one fully right now. > However, I see active forums off of their home page and a 10 minute > visit to the IRC channel on freenode saw plenty of conversation for a > Tuesday night. I don’t think SL would have grown so much without good > community support. > > Advantage: Push > > Lifecycle Support: > > This was the one that surprised me. > > As expected, CentOS mirrors the RHEL lifecycles. RHEL/CentOS 5.x will be > supported through 2014. They haven’t updated their wiki yet, but I’m > sure 6.x will be the same, with a full 7-year lifecycle. > > Scientific only plans on a three year lifecycle. But on their forums > they also mention supporting things in theory as long as Redhat does. So > I’m a little confused on this one. > > While I don’t typically plan on using the same OS for longer than 3 > years, if it ain’t broke, I’m certainly not fixing it. > > Advantage: CentOS > > So those are my thoughts on the situation. Scientific Linux is > definitely on the rise, and CentOS certainly needs to air out themselves > a little. But at least with version 6.0, we’re still going to be going > with our tried and true CentOS. I’m just not comfortable enough, yet, > with the Scientific Linux community, mainly because they still don’t > quite know how long they plan to keep their products alive. Out of this > look at RHEL clones, though, the single biggest thing I’ve discovered is > that I’m going to have to keep evaluating this choice down the road.
