[Lvlug] Recommendations on a More Suitable Distro

[heath petty]

I want to preference my comments with the general observation that
things move quickly in the open source world. This is why Fedora is on
a 6 month release cycle. There are enough interesting and compelling
new features to justify this short release cycle.

Don't count RHEL and derivatives out just yet. While its true that the
5.0 RHEL release was based on FC 6, we are currently in beta for 5.5.
Many new features are being back-ported, and some desktop apps are
getting re-based (OpenOffice 3.0 for example). If you really want a 5
year support cycle then you'll really need to consider a distro
designed for long term support. Centos or Scientific Linux just
follows what RHEL does (follow exactly follow what we do, because they
just rebuild the GPL packages from RHEL, the only changes they make
are removing Red Hat trademarks and graphics), they just lag behind a
month or two.  For my personal use I've been able to build any desktop
applications I've needed on RHEL, and has served me very well while
I've been working at Red Hat. I also know of a number of other people
that use RHEL as a desktop machine for their day-to-day work.

The only other two options I can think of besides Debian, is Ubuntu
LTS, or SLES. I don't think there are any free rebuilds of SLES, just
the OpenSuSE project, which has similar goals to the Fedora project.

-Heath

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 4:42 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.)
> _______________________________________________
> Sent via the Lvlug mailing list Lvlug at lvlug.org
> Set options or unsubscribe at http://lvlug.org/mailman/listinfo/lvlug
> The Lvlug mailing list is hosted courtesy of LasVegas.Net
>