FC5 in a commercial product (was Re: Wanna give me a hand debunking this?)

[Karl Larsen]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> Eric wrote:
>>
>> At 06:46 PM 11/20/2007, Les Mikesell wrote:
>>
>> <LM>>>>>The piece that it misses is that there are (so far...) 3 
>> releases of fedora for every RHEL.  As the RHEL cut time approaches, 
>> fedora becomes increasingly reliable, so RH resources are doing 
>> something.   However, after the cut (which will have pretty much the 
>> same versions of everything the concurrent fedora has minus some 
>> kernel features), fedora returns to its wild and crazy ways for its 
>> next 2 releases.<<<<
>>
>> Where did FC5 fit in the sequence?  If the 3:1 ratio is more or less 
>> absolute, I'd guess that FC5 was Wild And Crazy #2B and FC6 was Sorta 
>> Quiet And Stable #2.
>
> Yes, RHEL5 was cut towards the end of FC6 development.
>
>> (We use FC6 for our company's Asterisk PBX server and it has been 
>> rock solid so far.)
>
> But active development has stopped on FC6 and bug/security fix updates 
> will stop soon.
>
>> We have a new client who is using FC5 in a commercial coin-operated 
>> entertainment machine.  Now, obviously a software failure in a 
>> machine like that isn't going to cause any direct injury (might cause 
>> indirect injury when the user gets pissed and throws a chair through 
>> the front of the unit) but neither will it help the company's 
>> reputation in any measurable way.
>
> Bug/security fixes have already stopped there.
>
>> I have already told them that using Fedora (any Fedora) in a 
>> commercial product is probably Not A Good Idea, for reasons 
>> elucidated often in this and other forums.  Are there any articles or 
>> white papers written by members of the Fedora team, or others who 
>> know far more than I ever will about this stuff, that I can download 
>> and show to our client?
>>
>> I have suggested that they move to RHEL or CentOS... any others that 
>> are specifically targeted to reasonably-high-reliability commercial 
>> systems?
>>
>> (There are no hard real time requirements in the system.)
>>
>> But now, let's back off for a minute and think about this.
>>
>> The kernel is pretty much the same across all distros, isn't it?  
>> Isn't F7's 2.6.21 pretty much the same as RHEL's 2.6.21 or CentOS's 
>> 2.6.21 except for some differences in configuration?  And are the 
>> kernels still following the convention of the even-numbered releases 
>> (2.4.x, 2.6.x) being the stable ones and the odd-numbered releases 
>> (2.3.x, 2.5.x) being the unstable "development" releases?
>>
>> If that is true, and understanding that individual kernel releases 
>> may have problems unique to that release (e.g. 2.6.23 might have 
>> broken something that worked fine in 2.6.22), what else is it about 
>> Fedora that makes it not-quite-ready-for-prime-time?  The 
>> applications and utilities, and perhaps some of the drivers and 
>> daemons, right?  So, if our client's application isn't using any of 
>> the distro's applications, and only a minimal number of drivers and 
>> daemons (that can be individually validated, or perhaps rolled back 
>> to previous stable versions), what is it about Fedora that's likely 
>> to cause trouble?
>
> The quality is not so much of an issue if you take fedora near the end 
> of a development cycle, but then you won't be able to get updates for 
> very long.  In any code base the size of a linux distribution there 
> are always going to be bugs that aren't discovered until later.  The 
> real value of the enterprise distributions is that they provide 
> updates to fix these bugs without surprising behavior changes over a 
> period of many years.
>
    You guys are not considering what Micro$oft has done and what the 
Public has done to them. It is interesting that HP offers new computers 
with Windows XP (with all the updates) and they are selling 5 to 1 ahead 
of the new version to business users. The new computers in stores come 
only with the new stuff already installed and are doing well. But there 
is trouble ahead because the bugs have not been removed yet. It is going 
to be interesting to see how many updates it will take.

    Fedora is in the same boat twice a year. This is I think too often. 
A new edition every year (which is really nothing but the previous 
version with most of the bugs gone and some new things like pulse-audio 
which most people have deleted :-)

    Some will say well Fedora is free and Windows cost $100.00. Well, 
the cost of Windows is NOT their problem. It cost's some serious money 
to make sure it is in every store in the world. The PC is made to run 
Windows. Micro$oft does well with their technical help which is 
expensive. And they get giant business orders.

    Fedora is interesting because they have real experts on this list 
that get people like me through the hard spots. As for whether FC5 is a 
commercial product heck no. It was produced and debugged by the Fedora 
method and it IS a good version for business when it does what they want.

    I am thinking long and hard about quiting the update game and live 
on F7. I got 250 updates and it runs real good! I am a Linux person like 
the business people who want Windows XP because it works for them.




-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.