Essential difference between CentOS and Fedora (Was: rpmforge and {enterprise, } Extras)

[Dag Wieers]

On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

> Dag Wieers schrieb:
> > On Sun, 24 Sep 2006, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > 
> >> - rpmforge wants to (or does already?) build for distributions like Suse
> >> or SLES (someone indicated that to me in private on IRC some weeks ago)
> > We do not.
> 
> Sorry. I thought I read such stuff somewhere on the rpmforge website in
> the past, but seems I was wrong. And somebody told be that some guys
> close to rpmforge consider building for SLES9.

Yes, we discussed this at one point as about 50% of the packages back then 
translated directly to SLES9. And with adapted RPM infrastructure this is 
possible. But until now we always used the native RPM capabilities and 
this brings us back to the lowest common denominator.

If RPM functionality would be backported, it would ease our work and it 
would foster RPM functionality development. As long as an RPM improvement 
may take 6 or more years before it can be used for the collection of EL 
distributions, it's a waste. I hope someone from Red Hat is paying 
attention :) Or maybe jbj. Maybe pyrpm is the answer to this one.


> > [...]
> > However we are very interested to work together with other packagers as 
> > most of the work is identical. What's more, most of the bug-reports are 
> > identical so it makes much more sense to combine the effort for 
> > bug-tracking and package-development. (tracing patches, security 
> > problems)
> 
> Then we really should work towards in more co-operations between
> rpmforge and Extras (and livna).

Of course.

 
> > But now that most RPM community repositories are in control of vendors 
> > (see OpenSuSE and Fedora). There is even less interest to join forces.
> 
> Well, I think taking to each other is in the interest of most packagers.
> Maybe a common wiki could help where special pacakge knowledge and
> patches could be shared.

I much more prefer a tool that can compare SPEC files (and patches) and 
keeps a list of updates between comparisons. Something that you can ask 
"what's new for this package according to the other projects" and then a 
common forum where you can discuss these changes with your fellow 
packagers.

Something that centralizes both changes, bugreports and discussions.

PS By packagers I did not mean RPM packagers specifically.

 
> >[...]
> 
> >>> - rpmforge builds new packages often for several distributions including
> >> those that are in "Maintenance state" (FC3, FC4 currently); Fedora
> >> Extras is more conservative here
> > 
> > What about RHEL2.1 and RHEL3 ? People need a decent subversion for those.
> > If you apply your current rules to the release of RHEL2.1 or RHEL3 you'd 
> > be providing subversion 0.19 ad 0.90. Very stable and pretty useless !
> 
> Well, those people are still on RHEL 2.1 and RHEL3 for some reasons.
> Probably because kernel, gnome, X, and several other stuff is working
> quite well for them. So if they don't want newer versions of that stuff
> -- why should they want a new subversion?

How about being restricted to RHEL2.1 or RHEL3 because other teams 
(security, management) have specific rules about supportability of 3rd 
party software. Even though stuff works on newer distributions it may not be 
(and often is not) supported. As a result we are forbidden to migrate to 
RHEL4. And these RHEL3 systems will be in production for another 5 to 6 
years.

System administrators in big companies are restricted by a lot. We're not 
on top of the decision-making. One can mock the situation but it is bitter 
earnest if you're in it :)

People choose EL simply because it makes them not having to upgrade when 
they don't need to. If they were going to upgrade every 1.5 or 2 years, 
they might as well go with Fedora. That's is the big difference. That's 
why CentOS is so popular, probably even more popular than Fedora. 

Especially for all those Linux deployements that one might see as an 
appliance. (MythTV box, your family computer(s), your file/web server)
Everything that does not change or where change is predictable.

But I don't have to tell you this.

 
> But I don't think discussing this further makes much sense. I can see
> you position and I can understand that point of view, even if it differs
> from mine. So agreeing to disagree here might be the best here.

That's fine.

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]