[lug] Moving from RedHat 8 to Fedora

[Collins Richey]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 20:28:05 -0600, Hugh Brown <hugh at math.byu.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-02-21 at 19:34 -0500, Gordon Golding wrote:
> > I'm thinking of taking an old RedHAt 8 machine down and rebuilding it with Fedora.
> >
> > 1)  What's the opinion on Fedora vs. RedHat?  Is it _really_ better?
> >
> > 2)  Can anybody think of major issues that I need to wath out for?
> > Our code-base is Java 1.4 with Postgres.
> 
> I recall having to track down some minor annoyances when we made the
> jump from postgres 7.2 to 7.4 (in a former life => I don't remember what
> they were).  I'd test the jdbc driver you are using now and the one
> you'll use with 7.4.
> 
> The reason for not doing Fedora is that you don't want to upgrade often
> (a 1 yr life cycle is a best case scenario right now).  If you want
> something stable/supported for several years and the cost isn't a
> problem, you might want to try one of the commercial distros (RH or
> SuSE).  Otherwise I'd go with a Debian or Gentoo because of the greater
> flexibility and the huge package availability.
> 

Yeah, I was replying based on the free-as-beer and RH way of doing
things, as opposed to paying for a commercial package.

Certainly nothing wrong with Debian or Gentoo, but either requires a
culture shift when all your existing setup is based on RH.

If the system in question is a server rather than a desktop, the
limited number of packages in Fedora is probably not a deal breaker.

I've been running Gentoo since pre-release days, and I've certainly
been spoiled by the availability of packages.

Currently I've put up Fedora just to learn what the rest of the world
(that is, the sun-sets-and-rises-by-RH world) is doing.

-- 
 Collins