Some review of Fedora 7. First, eWeek concludes: "We were impressed to see how amenable to customization this popular Linux-based operating system has grown." Linux.com also reviews Fedora 7. "Fedora 7 was released last week, a little bit behind schedule, with a spate of new features, updates, and live CD installable "spins" of Fedora in KDE and GNOME flavors. I found a lot of good in this release, but a bug in the FireWire stack that attacked my external backup drive made this release just a little shy of perfect." Update: Two more Fedora articles, a review and a news article.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Incorrect in case of CentOS which is a clone of RHEL. Fedora is actually the basis of RHEL and CentOS.
Not unique to Fedora as it affected early 2.6 kernel based distributions including Mandriva and SLED.
Edited 2007-06-07 10:20
Member since:2005-07-06
I believe he was just saying SuSE was more stable than Fedora (I'm not sure if he was specifically refering to Open Suse, or the pay for distro).
But the thing is, both OpenSuSE and Fedora on a time based schedule; when OpenSuSE was released, it was a buggy riddled distribution, a few months later, it became more palitable. Same can be said for Fedora, a couple of months after its released, with a few updates, you'll find that its stability will improve.
But the same can be said for CentOS - have you looked at the tonnes upon tonnes of patches available for it - just as it has been released? Even so-called 'enterprise distributions' aren't immune to these issues.
No, OpenSUE is to SLED as Fedora is to RedHat Enterprise Linux. Its a community based distribution which the respective companies (Novell and Red Hat) base their enterprise distributions on. The only difference between the community vs. 'enterprise' is the level of support. Apart from that, they're exactly the same. So when you think about it, ask yourself, do you need the support provided by Red Hat or Novell? if not, you don't need an enterprise distribution.
Maybe it is best to refrain from using such open ended statements such as 'production ready'.
I want to be able to install a server, and know that once it is working, I can forget about it's upgrade cycle for a significant amount of time, but be confident that security erata is available.
Then one could argue that what you should be saying is that you need *more* than just software, you need a complete package which includes support.
So therefore, the issue isn't with Fedora, but the fact that you need more than what Fedora provides. All Fedora provides is the software and support is left to the community. You need more than just community support.
So the issue isn't 'ready for production environment' it is "my needs and what the Fedora community can provide don't match up" - thats what should be said, not 'its not production ready' gives the message that Fedora is completely useless.
Edited 2007-06-07 11:31
Member since:2006-03-22
But the thing is, both OpenSuSE and Fedora on a time based schedule; when OpenSuSE was released, it was a buggy riddled distribution, a few months later, it became more palitable. Same can be said for Fedora, a couple of months after its released, with a few updates, you'll find that its stability will improve.
But the same can be said for CentOS - have you looked at the tonnes upon tonnes of patches available for it - just as it has been released? Even so-called 'enterprise distributions' aren't immune to these issues.
Fedora has a release cycle of 6 to 8 months, I believe the official errata support time for a release is some thing along the lines of (R-2)+ 2 months. I.E. a release will be support for up to 2 months after it's second successor is released, this has only just been extended.
This gives you a errata support for at absalute most 14 months.
You state that after a few months, the product stabalises, so take that down to 12 months.
That's a year, that you have a stable system with erata support, you show me an admin that has the time to upgrade all of their servers on a yearly bassis (maintaining one or two servers for one or two users does not count).
Where as RedHat state they will support a product for either 5 or 7 years.
Your trying to equate those to product life cycles?
But the thing is, both OpenSuSE and Fedora on a time based schedule; when OpenSuSE was released, it was a buggy riddled distribution, a few months later, it became more palitable. Same can be said for Fedora, a couple of months after its released, with a few updates, you'll find that its stability will improve.
But the same can be said for CentOS - have you looked at the tonnes upon tonnes of patches available for it - just as it has been released? Even so-called 'enterprise distributions' aren't immune to these issues.
Okay, lets put this straight.
Drop the "you's", I'm 100% happy with the fedora/redhat relationship. I KNOW where I will use one or the other (or CentOS).
The thing that I find anoying is, Person a comes along and says "fedora is shit and buggy and not enterprise ready". A) "shit" is subjective. B) "Buggy" For what I use fedora for, I don't find it buggy, and don't have a problem with the QA implemented, and feel it should not be crtasised for what it is doing. C) It is NOT targeting the enterprise, so why critasize it for this.
Some one may wish to come back and state "Yes it is enterprise ready, at least for my enterprise", then so be it. Enterprise is obviously subjective, and we are coming from entirely different environments.
I'm happy with fedora.
Member since:
2006-03-22
Using the last guys logic (whom you replied to), no one should use OpenSuSE or Fedora because they're buggy riddled POS. Fedora is Red Hats community based distribution for their enterprise release, and OpenSuSE is the basis for Novells Desktop product (SLED SP1 for instance is based on OpenSuSE 10.1 plus patches).
Well, I don't think I'd have read quite such an extream view from his statement. However, yes it could have been cleaner.
I believe he was just saying SuSE was more stable than Fedora (I'm not sure if he was specifically refering to Open Suse, or the pay for distro).
If OpenSuse is to SLED, as CentOS is to RedHat EL, then yes, OpenSuse would be geared more towards a "static production environment", however if it is the same as Fedora, then I would say neither are applicable for a produciton environment (I'll clarify lower down what I mean by production).
Also, 'It is not recommended for production use' - who doesn't recommend it? some nameless person with a blog located at some place in the middle of no where? how do you define production? someone who needs 24/7 uptime and support, or merely someone who wants a distro for his or her desktop use?
Well, I suppose the first thing to clarify is the statement "production use" and what that actually means, as it is bandied about a lot, with out a defenition.
I've been working as a systems administrator for about 10 years now, in various companies. In that time "production use/ environment" has primarily come to mean long support cycles.
I want to be able to install a server, and know that once it is working, I can forget about it's upgrade cycle for a significant amount of time, but be confident that security erata is available.
Fedora, does not, has not, and will not provide this, and I don't want them to.
In addition to this, Fedora has released things that HAVE caused problems, migration to the 2.6 kernel was far from smooth, introduction of SElinux was atrocious (now, it's just fan dabby dosey), I don't want to have things like this thrown on to a "production system".
Kernel upgrades within releases for fedora have broken things quite spectacularly.
I think it boils down to the fact that "production environment" tends not to mean "dynamic", dynamic bad, static gooood.
However, for me on my desktop, at work and at home, fedora has proved to be excellent, desktop and laptop. So from that perspective it's absalutely fine.
Why do people equate 'community based distributions' as nothing more than 'experimental versions'? sure, these companies make up the majority of contributors. If people choose not to muck in and actually contribute, who sit outside these establishment, then why blame Red Hat or Novell? All these companies offer is a distribution based on the community version with long term support both software, telephone and consultancy. What the heck is wrong with that?
Erm, I think your going over board here, the discussion was Fedora and OpenSuSE, at no point in time have we mentioned "community based distrobutions", remember there are many other community based distro's out that other than fedora/ opensuse. Critasism's aimed at them has nothing to do with slackware for example.