CentOS - Jan 2006 - Volume of patches for CentOS vs Fedora

I'm trying to come to a decision between CentOS 4.2 and Fedora Core 4 
for use on a server.  One of the things the server will be serving is X 
desktops so there are some advantages to Fedora.

However, one thing I can't help but notice is that the patch volume for 
FC4 from Oct 11 2005 thru the present compared to CentOS 4.2 for the 
same period is about 5 times greater.  In fact, since June, there are 
899 RPMs in the FC4 updates directory for FC4 which seems absolutely insane.

CentOS is a smaller distro, but not that much smaller.  Also, I 
understand that CentOS's parent distro (from a prominent North American 
Linux Distributor) is supposed to be better tested before release than 
Fedora.  But still, there must be some other factor to explain the 
disparity.  Like CentOS only releasing a patch for security problems and 
not bug fixes or something like that.

Could someone enlighten me?

Thanks,
Steve Bergman

Steve Bergman wrote:
> I'm trying to come to a decision between CentOS 4.2 and Fedora Core 4 
> for use on a server.  One of the things the server will be serving is 
> X desktops so there are some advantages to Fedora.
>
> However, one thing I can't help but notice is that the patch volume 
> for FC4 from Oct 11 2005 thru the present compared to CentOS 4.2 for 
> the same period is about 5 times greater.  In fact, since June, there 
> are 899 RPMs in the FC4 updates directory for FC4 which seems 
> absolutely insane.
>
> CentOS is a smaller distro, but not that much smaller.  Also, I 
> understand that CentOS's parent distro (from a prominent North 
> American Linux Distributor) is supposed to be better tested before 
> release than Fedora.  But still, there must be some other factor to 
> explain the disparity.  Like CentOS only releasing a patch for 
> security problems and not bug fixes or something like that.
>
> Could someone enlighten me?
>
> Thanks,
> Steve Bergman
CentOS is server class stable although conservative. Fedora is bleeding 
edge and acts as a testbed for what sometimes winds up in CentOS. If you 
bleed a lot.. you need to get patched up a lot. I think what you have 
just researched proves why many of us run CentOS instead of Fedora... 
reliability.. and not getting burned or cut by the latest release of a 
package which has not been tested in a real world environment.

Best,
John Hinton

On Fri, 2006-01-27 at 02:18 -0600, Steve Bergman wrote:
> I'm trying to come to a decision between CentOS 4.2 and Fedora Core 4 
> for use on a server.  One of the things the server will be serving is X 
> desktops so there are some advantages to Fedora.
> 
> However, one thing I can't help but notice is that the patch volume for
> FC4 from Oct 11 2005 thru the present compared to CentOS 4.2 for the 
> same period is about 5 times greater.  In fact, since June, there are 
> 899 RPMs in the FC4 updates directory for FC4 which seems absolutely
insane.
> 
> CentOS is a smaller distro, but not that much smaller.  Also, I 
> understand that CentOS's parent distro (from a prominent North American
> Linux Distributor) is supposed to be better tested before release than 
> Fedora.  But still, there must be some other factor to explain the 
> disparity.  Like CentOS only releasing a patch for security problems and 
> not bug fixes or something like that.
> 
> Could someone enlighten me?
RHEL only gets security updates between update releases. Since RHEL
update releases correspond to CentOS minor versions,
non-security-related updates usually only occur once every 3 months and
in one fell swoop, not piece-by-piece as in Fedora.

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazquez at ivazquez.net>
http://centos.ivazquez.net/

gpg --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net --recv-key 38028b72
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL:
<http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20060127/da8d4b51/attachment-0005.sig>

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:
>RHEL only gets security updates between update releases. Since RHEL
>update releases correspond to CentOS minor versions,
>non-security-related updates usually only occur once every 3 months and
>in one fell swoop, not piece-by-piece as in Fedora.
>
>  
>
Thank you.  So, am I correct in saying that every 3 months, the packages 
in the updates repo get moved to the new main repo, replacing the old 
versions, plus bug fix releases get added to the main repo at the same 
time.  Then the updates repo starts off empty again and new packages are 
issued to it for security reasons only?

-Steve

Steve Bergman wrote:
> I'm trying to come to a decision between CentOS 4.2 and Fedora Core 4 
> for use on a server.  One of the things the server will be serving is 
> X desktops so there are some advantages to Fedora.
>
> However, one thing I can't help but notice is that the patch volume 
> for FC4 from Oct 11 2005 thru the present compared to CentOS 4.2 for 
> the same period is about 5 times greater.  In fact, since June, there 
> are 899 RPMs in the FC4 updates directory for FC4 which seems 
> absolutely insane.
>
> CentOS is a smaller distro, but not that much smaller.  Also, I 
> understand that CentOS's parent distro (from a prominent North 
> American Linux Distributor) is supposed to be better tested before 
> release than Fedora.  But still, there must be some other factor to 
> explain the disparity.  Like CentOS only releasing a patch for 
> security problems and not bug fixes or something like that.
>
> Could someone enlighten me?
CentOS is effectively (whether the maintainers are allowed to say it or 
not) Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  It's *supposed* to be rock solid and 
patches are only applied when necessary to fix security or serious 
usability issues.  FC4 is a development distro that is designed to flesh 
things out before (drumroll please) they are considered to be applied to 
the more stable RHEL source tree.  So there are supposed to be more 
patches to FC4.  It's by design.  That said, if I was going to use a 
server for real work in a production environment, there is no way I'd 
use FC4 and I'd stick to something a bit more "boring/stable" like
CentOS or RHEL.

Cheers,

Steve Bergman spake the following on 1/27/2006 12:18 AM:
> I'm trying to come to a decision between CentOS 4.2 and Fedora Core 4
> for use on a server.  One of the things the server will be serving is X
> desktops so there are some advantages to Fedora.
> 
> However, one thing I can't help but notice is that the patch volume for
> FC4 from Oct 11 2005 thru the present compared to CentOS 4.2 for the
> same period is about 5 times greater.  In fact, since June, there are
> 899 RPMs in the FC4 updates directory for FC4 which seems absolutely
> insane.
> 
> CentOS is a smaller distro, but not that much smaller.  Also, I
> understand that CentOS's parent distro (from a prominent North American
> Linux Distributor) is supposed to be better tested before release than
> Fedora.  But still, there must be some other factor to explain the
> disparity.  Like CentOS only releasing a patch for security problems and
> not bug fixes or something like that.
> 
> Could someone enlighten me?
> 
> Thanks,
> Steve Bergman
Think of Fedora as a giant public beta test, and the Enterprise versions as
the result.

-- 

MailScanner is like deodorant...
You hope everybody uses it, and
you notice quickly if they don't!!!!