For anyone who has been following this thread and who is interested here is the decision I have come to regarding using FC1 on my new web/email/app servers..
I started by digging around trying to find a sutable replacement for RH9.. Many said Gentoo and Debian (Debian incedentally is the fastest growing linux distro according to the latest netcraft survey!!) as well as a few others like Suse..
So I started down the path of testing them out..
Firstly Gentoo.. The community are very active (hopefully FC will grow to be the same) and offer lots of help but unless you are very comfortable building your entire system from stratch and compiling software from source I would say stay away.. My experience of a few years on Linux was not enough to give me that warm fuzzy feeling when it came to *trying* to make it work.. After a 2 hour install process it took me about half an hour to break it..
Next I tried Debian.. The "Stable" version its too old and the packages are outdated.. There are offspring sites that are providing packages from the "unstable" branch to try and bring "stable" up to date.., I moved on and tried the "unstable" version.. This installed and has a much better installer but I could not see how to setup software RAID during the install and I didn't have even the faintest clue how to do it after the install so this was a problem, also I wanted to used LVM so that would have been another issue all together..
Now onto the RPM based distros I tried..
Firstly Trustix.. This is an awesome distro with a minimum install of only 90MB.. It is great for single service systems and appliances but I did find it a little restrictive and because they have changed the names of many packages and to when I tried to build some packages, by following the instructions, on it there were problems because it was looking for the wrong thing or in the wrong place..
I looked at SuSE, its nice enough but it is really far more aimed at the desktop area (something I think Fedora may also end up as!) than at being a server.. Probably becasue they rae commercial as well so to get a sever you have to buy a server, also there are no ISO's avalible for the free version..
Then I came full circle back to Fedora, for all its faults it does actually work well, and its compatible with all the software out there that is compatible with RH so thats a good thing..
My concerns with Fedora..
1) Redhat being in control of FC's destiny may force it down the path of becoming a home user desktop more than a server platform because they want people to buy RHEL which IMO is just way to expensive and we just could not afford it.. The RHEL WS is more expensive then Windows XP so I am not sure what they are going for there..
2) Upgrades from one version to the next may be rocky and that could be a problem on servers..
3) Security patches may take a while to come out leaving th server open to an attack if th exploit is remotely exploitable..
The things I like about Fedora..
1)It runs, works and feels like RedHat which I am familiar with, and its sponsored by RedHat.. (even with my concern in point 1 above)
2)Most packages that are not included with it should be able to run snce FC is exactly like RH..
3)With projects like Fedora-Legeacy starting up it means hopefully a longer life cycle..
4)Good hardware support.. ( My SATA server runs like a dream)..
5)and last but not least a fairly strong and growing community which will hopefully grow to rival that of Gentoo and Debian..
So the pro's out weigh the cons.. :)
Sorry for the length but I just thought I would share my experience..
Later..
