LTS for the server (was: Re: [lug] Ubuntu Hardy Heron release party tomorrow)

[Sean Reifschneider]

dio2002 at indra.com wrote:
 > also is LTS possibly more "up to date" than say a CentOS would be?

Today LTS is more up to date.  A week ago CentOS was more up to date.

CentOS has updates available for 7 years, LTS for 5 years.

Note that not every Ubuntu release is LTS.  The previous LTS release was
6.06.

I wouldn't say either one is more stable than the other.  The primary
benefit of both of them is that they can be deployed to production and then
you can continue to get security updates for a long period of time without
having to re-qualify and port your applications to newer versions of
software as the release you deployed on starts being unmaintained.

My general recommendation is:

    If you prefer Debian, use LTS for your production environment.

    If you prefer Fedora, use CentOS for your production environment.

*BUT*

    If you require a newer version of applications than are in your
    preferred production release (developers always like to require the
    latest version, with no concern for what is going to be supportable in
    production), but the other production system has that package --
    seriously consider using the other system for production rather than
    maintaining your own packages.

 > they choose to be a version or two behind
 > latest greatest.

That's not really true.  They base it on the latest Fedora bits at the time
they freeze it.  They then do extensive testing and fixing, then release
it.  So by that time it may be a version behind, but they don't really say
"We're going to use an old release".  It's just that it takes some time
from when they freeze the latest bits until they release it.

 >i don't want bleeding edge on a server either but
 > wondering if something like an LTS might be just a smidge further along on
 > the backports from newer more current versions?

As far as I know, LTS is using the same mechanism as Fedora.  I think the
RHEL mechanism allows for more testing, since they take a Fedora release
and freeze it, then test and release that, instead of trying to concentrate
on both a Fedora release and RHEL release at the same time, plus they can
get the feedback from the Fedora release to apply towards the future RHEL
release.  And this feeds directly back into CentOS, of course.

Which do I prefer?  Well, most of our customers prefer CentOS, probably by
a factor of 5 or more.  That's just what people are asking for.  The RHEL
code-path definitely has the most eyes on it, but because the Fedora
project tries to push everything it can back up-stream, those fixes are
available to Ubuntu as well.  I don't know how closely they track what RHEL
is doing, but there's no excuse for the two projects to be leveraging from
each-other.

Sean
-- 
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability