This is a question I hear fairly frequently on both SL and CentOS forums. Here's my two cents.
RHEL/SL/CenOS is a world class stable operating system. It got that way by being refined over time, and it stays that way from a continuos flow of quality bug fixes and updates. With a release cycle of 36 months, and life-time of 5-6 years, RHEL/SL/CentOS is the desired platform for server operating systems and mission critical systems.
Fedora is like the baby brother; the one who wants all the new toys. Fedora's release cycle of 18 months puts it way ahead of any of the RHEL clones. Fedora has an estimated life-time of 3 years. I just recently read that they were dropping support for FC1 and FC2 because of lack of use / limited space. so FC3 is probably close behind.
Now that the background is done, what is the real difference?
I like to put it this way; when you're on the "bleeding edge" of technology, sometimes you get cut. Fedora generally is a stable operating system. I have used it numerous times for various projects. I know people in HPC who use it on a daily basis for their main desktop, and often times for servers. If Fedora is used properly, there is really no downfall from using it.
Now the down-side. Fedora has a very hectic release schedule, often 12-18 months, or roughly half of that for the main RHEL clones. It also has a huge number of bug-fixes and updates always waiting to be downloaded. However, every fix usually brings the system closer to RHEL status since; after all; RHEL clones are essentialll a version behind of what is current: IE... Fedora.
If you're looking to keep a heterogenous solution, then by all means stick with SL. However, if a few people need newer stuff than you can get to run reliably on SL, then Fedora would be an option. Fedora will work hapilly in your all SL environment since its essentially running all the same packages, just newer versions. Its also relatively easy and space efficient to run a Fedora repo.
Another solution would be to have a dedicated fedora "server" that users could run remote x sessions from, to use the bleeding edge software they need.
Overall, Fedora is a good system. I would not recommend using the newest version the first day it comes out, but a few months down the line is fine. With an estimated life cycle of 3 years, it will probably last as long as the machine its on. I wouldn't recommend it for serious scientific applications since it tends to come bundled with every package immaginable, and unless you want to prune it down, its going to be a little bloated.
Personally, I have users running several FC6 machines connecting to our SL based cluster, RHEL machines, and even <gasp> Windoze boxes. Heck, I still have an old Mac 7600 running Yellow Dog Linux 7.1... that has been stable and running 24/7 for several years now.
Linux is an extremely reliable, stable operating system by nature. Unless you try hard to break it, it generally will do its job well. Be warned, though, that Fedora has been known to CREATE NEW bugs through bug fixes, but this is generally very rare, and someone will probably recognize it ASAP, and issue a FIX to the FIX... :-)
- Donald Tripp
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----------------------------------------------
HPC Systems Administrator
High Performance Computing Center
University of Hawai'i at Hilo
200 W. Kawili Street
Hilo, Hawaii 96720
http://www.hpc.uhh.hawaii.edu
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Hannon <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 11:36 am
Subject: SL vs. Fedora...
To: scientific Linux Users mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
> Subtitle: does Fedora actually suck?
>
> Hi folks. This isn't a troll. We run SL on all of our server
> systems
> and most of our client systems around here, and I'm pretty happy
> with
> the situation, except for one thing: we get requests fairly
> frequently
> for software that our user community genuinely must have, but that
> is
> not in the current version of SL. (Examples include Python 2.4,
> PHP
> 5.x, MySQL 5.x, etc.)
>
> We typically respond to this by building parallel copies of the
> software
> in question:
>
> foo.tar.gz --> /usr/local/foo
>
> This approach usually works, but it does have some pitfalls, such
> as
> other programs finding the "wrong" version of foo.
>
> I recently had what I thought was a bright idea: leave SL on the
> server
> systems, but run Fedora on the client systems. Then we get
> bleeding-edge software where we need it and stability where we need
> it.
> The downside is the necessity for frequent upgrades to the client
> systems, but we can kickstart a lot of those, so that isn't such a
> big
> issue.
>
> On the other hand, I've seen some words on this list lately that
> indicate that Fedora is buggy, unreliable, etc. Those kinds of
> things
> ARE big issues. I installed Fedora 6 on an ancient PC at home and
> haven't seen any obvious problems with it, except that the X-
> windows
> display isn't nearly as good as the Windows display was.
>
> If you have any solid experience with Fedora, I'd appreciate
> hearing
> your opinions of Fedora. Thanks.
>
> - Mike
> --
> Michael Hannon mailto:[log in to unmask]
> Dept. of Physics 530.752.4966
> University of California 530.752.4717 FAX
> Davis, CA 95616-8677
>
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