Kevin Mark wrote:
On Sat, Jul 10, 2004 at 05:08:26PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:Stelios Asmargianakis <linux@climbincrete.com> writes:I want to ask why to choose Debian than Fedora or ES for example that comes with 2.6 kernel and latest packages.Wrong question. Right question is: "Why should I chose Fedora or ES when they ship by default with software that wasn't thoroughly tested, when I can get a well-tested, rock solid OS from Debian instead?"Hi Paul, As someone who used to use redhat and now uses debian, I have become aware of the 'process' that software goes through to get into 'stable'. I never found out if Redhat had a similar process. Could you or anyone else shed some light on this? (Because of RPM-hell I never plan to go back but just are really curious) -Kev
This is not a good place to get an unbiased opinion. If RHL ES is as unreliables as Debianistas would have you believe, nobody would be using it and Red Hat would be bankrupt.
As you might surmise, neither of those is true. Warning: my knowledge may be supercede by Fedora.Red Hat releases untested packages to the public: basically, anthing that the RH people are working on goes into rawhide. I'ts about equivalent to Sid.
It goes through one, two or even three beta cycles. These are open to the public, and I was one of many who participated in Taroon, the beta of the current Red Hat Enterprise series.
Problems are discussed and fixes released during the beta cycle. On my suggestion, RH opened its RHEN more fully to the beta users - initially one had to reregister. FOC, but annoying. RH uses bugzilla (which I don't like, but which does a competent job).
I expect that RHEL betas get some serious thrashing from many corporates, almost certainly including IBM, Sun, HP etc.After all, they want to get it certified on their hardware.
If you want to see who's beating up on Linux, take a look at the Linux Test Project which (I think) is at ltp.sf.net - it's not talking to me atm.
You will get any number of people here who will tell you how much more stable Debian is than xxx, but I doubt whether the actually have measurements to back that view up. Sometimes, newer software is more stable than old: I would expeft that in general new kernels are more robust than older ones I have a box running RHL 7.3: uses kernel 2.4.20 whereas Woody is running 2.4.18.
Sometimes you want newer technology because the old won't do the job at all. Want to use 11g wireless? The prism54 driver is standard in Linux-2.6.5 (might be in the latest 2.4 too, but that's the latest, not what's in stable).
Sometimes you want newer technology because it helps get your work done better: do a quick check here and suspect you'll find most using either Sarge or Sid, at least for their desktop.
According to a chap at HP I exchanged email with, all current HP OJ, IJ and LJ products are supported on Linux. On Woody? I don't think so.
According to RH when Fedora was announced, it's for those who want cutting-edge technology. I guess that means that some will get their fingers cut.
RH EL is for those who want a stable, supported environment. To pricey for me, but it seems not so for all.
I recall a while back MS was advertising five-nines reliability for Windows Server 2000. My guess is that all mainline distros beat Windows Server 2000.
Now, if you find some of my posts to RH lists over the years, you will find a different view:-)
-- Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaaaaa@computerdatasafe.com.au Z1aaaaaaa@computerdatasafe.com.au