> From: McKeever Chris <tech-mail@xxxxxxxxxxx> > Subject: How stable is fedora? > I know this topic has come up before, especially when FEDORA was first > introduced, but now after months of implementing, tweaking and > CORE2, how secure and stable is FEDORA?? Hmm, this may depend on how you're defining "stable" (and maybe "is" :P). As far as stability of the software itself -- how well it's patched and how well integrated are the packages -- I'd definitely give it high marks. Everything works well together. Package management, once you've properly configured your repositories, is a breeze. Security is another matter. I don't mean to be critical of the question, but security is largely how you configure it. A generic server installation is pretty secure, but there are many patches available. You will need to patch and configure various things before putting a Fedora box online (but the same can be said for every other distro and OS). If by "stability" you're talking of the distribution, then that's another matter too. From the product roadmap you have a definite period of support. Having a strict date is a good thing, even if the (approximate) 6-month period is short (and probably too short for corporate deployment). But as with any Linux, you can always pull down sources from the original site (versus the Fedora modified versions) and rebuild so you're not left in the cold. > Currently, we are running RH7.3 for almost everything from mail to DNS to > samba domain control. Can Fedora be implemented in its place > and provide an environment that can be dependable? Works fine for me, but I tend to refresh boxes on a yearly basis. Probably not perfect for a production environment. > > if the answer is unfortunately NO, what other are the more highly recommended > distros The RH commercial offerings have longer support cycles. Or you could use Debian; many of these boxes haven't been upgraded since the 2.2 kernels or earlier and are still up-to-date in regard to package versions. -- * The Digital Hermit http://www.digitalhermit.com * Unix and Linux Solutions kwan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
