Upgrade from RH Enterprise to FC 5: what problems to expect?

[Thomas Cameron]

Rob wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Main issue is:
> What are the essential differences between
> RedHat Enterprise (Taroon), and FC 5?
>
> A while ago, a vendor of commercial software
> insisted his software ran only when using Redhat
> Enterprise Linux. Eversince we are stuck with
> RedHat Linux WS release 3 (Taroon Update 5).
>
> This RH Enterprise version is 'not-so-legal',
> and thus we can not upgrade or fix bugs.
> Hence, I consider installing Fedora Core 5 instead.
>
> The boss here is suspicious about my plan, because
> "the vendor has said to use Enterprise" etc.,
> although the vendor never was explicit why.
>
> What kind of traps could I expect to happen when
> upgrading Enterprise (Taroon) to Fedora Core 5?
>
> Thanks,
> Rob.

Instead of using a distro that leeches all the hard work that Red Hat 
does, why don't you just pay for the darned software?  WS is only $179, 
for Heaven's sake!  See http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/client/ for 
details.

If your company is in the position that $179 is a problem, you need to 
run screaming in the other direction.

Going from RHEL 3 to FC 5 will very possibly be problematic.  You're 
going from the 2.4 kernel to the 2.6 kernel, and that is significant.  
You're going from glibc 2.3.2 to 2.3.4, which isn't huge but may be 
problematic depending upon your applications.  You're going from Apache 
1.3 to 2.0.  You're going from XFree86 to Xorg, etc, etc, etc.

Additionally, if your company relies on this application, don't you 
think you need support for the platform upon which it runs?  If I'm 
running my business on an app, I certainly want to have help if there is 
a problem!

Thomas