Fedora Makes a Terrible Server?

[Les Mikesell]

Tim Alberts wrote:

>>> Unfortunately, everything that is beneficial about Fedora comes with 
>>> the price of 'not quite as well tested' status as RedHat or CentOS.
>>>
>>> Honestly I feel like a backstabber by using CentOS because I've been 
>>> with Fedora since before Fedora (RedHat 5.1 was my first Linux 
>>> experience), and using CentOS is reaping the benefits with no 
>>> contribution.
>>
>> If you go back that far, you should realize that fedora is 
>> approximately like the old RH X.0 releases (X from 4 to 7) and Centos 
>> is like the old RH X.2 or X.3 releases (free download of the tested 
>> and more stable releases).  The numbering scheme is just different 
>> now.  The for-pay-only RHEL is the part that diverged from the old 
>> scheme.
> Yeah there are different groups filling the roles all along the 
> life-cycle of each release version.
> You could even say that CentOS provides what FedoraLegacy intended to 
> provide.
> Not really the point of what I'm saying though...

The point I was trying to make was that in the old days when RH made its 
  name by getting a community of users involved, the users who tested 
the X.0 versions and reported the problems that made the fixes possible 
were eventually given access to the X.2/X.3 versions containing those 
fixes.  Fedora/RH no longer works that way. The community putting up 
with the X.0 problems never gets a stable update unless they switch to 
Centos.  The next fedora release will be like the old next X.0's were.

> Again my question, how can Fedora produce a better tested product? 

Fedora has the option of rebranding the Centos packages for a long-term 
supported version or building their own similar version from the RHEL 
sources.  I think it would have been trivial to slipstream the FC1 
updates to a copy of the Centos 3.x update repro, the FC3 -> Centos4, 
and FC6 ->Centos5.  In fact I think there are people who have done that 
with yum even though it wasn't planned to work.

> The 
> way it is, it's dis-respectful to the Fedora project for people to post 
> things like:
> 
> http://www.mjmwired.net/linux/2008/02/11/fedora-makes-a-terrible-server/
> 
> because it is the work of the Fedora Project and the users who end up 
> testing the software and suffering through software bugs and poorly 
> packaged projects.

I don't think so.  Post something on the fedora developers site about 
focusing on stability and you'll find no one is interested.  In fact 
they will point out their objectives: 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives are to stay on the leading edge 
and close to upstream development instead.  It is not disrespectful to 
say that they are meeting their objectives.

> CentOS and RedHat would be no where near as stable 
> without Fedora.

No one says they would - but that doesn't make fedora a reasonable 
server platform.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com