On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 03:47:17PM +0800, Ow Mun Heng wrote: > I'm looking more towards the limited life_span of FC compared to it's > RHEL counterpart. (which is where tao linux/CentOs etc... comes into the > picture) > > I'm getting a bit flustered with the term "legacy" where a normal FC > life-span is only like 18 months before the "legacy" becomes obsolete (I > think, correct me) > > Now, RHEL is supposed to last for 5 years. (which is a bit too plenty > many) Hence, the question of using Tao Linux/Cent Os instead of Fedora. > > Now, I can always roll my own rpms based on source packages as it _is_ > faster than the mirrors can come out with updated ones. But that's > another story. (If I had a better/beefier box, I'll just run Gentoo on > it, but since this is a P133 w/ 128MB Ram, Its more like.. Tough Luck.) > > Thoughts.. I currently run Red Hat Professional Workstation as my home server. I added a few packages from dag to complete what I need, recognizing, of course, that the dag packages are unsupported by Red Hat. I also ran Tao Linux for several months before I repurposed the box to run FC3. I have production RHEL servers at work along with my older servers still running 6.x and 7.x. Given that we're still running 6.1 and 6.2 in production, it's obvious how much we like to do upgrades. Basically, the OS gets upgraded when the hardware gets replaced. RHEL/Tao is ideal for that kind of situation. Given that you have older (legacy :-)) hardware, you're not looking for cutting-edge software, most of which is less efficient than earlier releases, especially on the desktop front. I found Tao to be as stable as RHEL and the updates no more than a day behind Red Hat's releases. If I did not want any support at all, I would not hesitate to run Tao in production. The only significant advantage to Fedora over RHEL is the ability to run new software. If this is not important to you, then run RHEL or Tao (or one of the other RHEL rebuilds). Realize, of course, that the decision is somewhat permanent - you can't change your mind without a complete re-install. Don't decide next month that you really want the features from a 2.6 kernel and try to install that on your RHEL/Tao system. Don't even decide you want KDE 3.3 instead of 3.1. For just about every package, you'll be a bit behind. However, you will be more stable and won't be updating packages every other day like you're doing on FC3. You won't see your system going to Brazil or Sweden to get security updates (changeable in FC3, but the default is to wherever the heck it wants to). I would expect Tao to outlast your hardware. My personal opinion is that for servers, stick with RHEL or Tao. For desktops that want stable software, ditto. For desktops that want the latest and greatest tools, Fedora might be good for you. -- Ed Wilts, RHCE Mounds View, MN, USA mailto:ewilts@xxxxxxxxxx Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program
