[Lvlug] Recommendations on a More Suitable Distro

[High Mobley]

I'm not aware of any (free) Linux with 5-year support cycles.  You
might consider RHEL.  I would expect that they provide long term
support.  Debian is the best candidate I know of if you want long term
support on a Linux distro.  In fact, if you start with a version of
TESTING that has been available for 9 to 12 months, you can squeeze
almost 5 years of support out of that Debian release as it progresses
to STABLE.  And Debian's TESTING version has always been as solid as
all the other distros' stable releases for me.

You might also want to consider some of the BSD variants.  I haven't
worked with them closely for a while, but I suspect that FreeBSD is
more likely to have long term support for their releases than OpenBSD
or NetBSD.

High Mobley
q!Bang Solutions
(702) 518-6932 main
(702) 523-6786 mobile
(702) 446-0341 fax
high at qbangsolutions.com
http://www.qbangsolutions.com



On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 3:42 PM, Patrick Bartek <bartek047 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've been with Fedora since Core 3 (I'm now at 12), but since they went to a 6 month release cycle and 15 month support, I've become increasingly frustrated and dissatisfied with it.  Each upgrade I've done (since FC6, I only upgrade every 3 release) has taken longer and longer to fix problems.  With 12, I even joined the Fedora mail list for help.  I realize that Fedora has always been the testing lab for cutting edge features, but it has gotten too cutting edge for me.  Computers aren't my business, I just use them for my business.
>
> I want a rock stable distro that doesn't require upgrading every 15 months or so because support is dropped.  I want a distro that has the same life cycle I have with the personal systems I build: 5 or more years; and is only replaced when circumstances, progress or new requirements necessitate it.
>
> I guess what I really need is an Enterprise OS (free, of course), but for the desktop instead of a server.  To that end, I've examined CentOS 5.x and Scientific Linux 5.x, but they seem to be based on Fedora Core 6 code.  Too old for my needs.  Otherwise, their release cycle and support time are what I'm looking for.
>
> (I hear a rumor that RHEL 6, when release the latter part of this year, will be based on Fedora 12/13, but I doubt it.  If that's the case CentOS or SL will be perfect.  We'll see.)
>
> Debian has the reputation for stable releases, but they have changed to a 2 year release cycle with 3 years support.  That's still okay, but I would have liked 4 or 5 years support.
>
> So, any other suggestions for me to look at.
>
>
> B
>
> (Sorry I haven't been able to attended any of the meetings the past 2 years or so, but work come first; however, I still lurk.)
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