Ioannis Vranos wrote:
> Art Wildman wrote:
>> SL is meant to follow RH Enterprise Server development, providing a 
>> stable platform for servers and by design prefers stability over the 
>> latest developments. Laptops have always been troublesome due to 
>> poorly documented, proprietary new hardware and their are just as 
>> many laptop howtos which attempt to address the pitfalls. Sound is 
>> not a priority or required service on most servers.
>
> Red Hat EL and SL (and Centos etc) are not aimed only to servers, but 
> to laptop and desktop users too.
>

True there are Workstation editions, but if your hardware is less than a 
year old you may have some difficulty with new hardware like dual-core, 
marvell nics, ati video, onboard sata raid and alsa sound in my experience.

New users frequently expect RHEL/SL/Cent to install without any issues 
on their new toys, which is very unreasonable for an OS that lags 
development by 12-18 months. They should be aware of their new hardware 
compatibility issues, but rarely consult the hardware compatibility 
lists. IMO, Fedora should be considered for the newest laptops/desktops 
or consider purchasing a laptop with RHEL preinstalled and 'certified', 
if they don't want bad experiences getting Linux to work on it.

As their hardware ages they might migrate to RHEL/SL/CENT... and gain 
the stability & slower release cycles needed for 'production' equipment. 
If a user knows what their getting into, trying to install a older OS on 
brand new hardware & willing to persevere some hardware troubles; then 
by all means give RHEL/SL/Cent a try on that shiny new laptop... just 
don't cry to the downstream vendor when some obscure sound driver 
doesn't work. It would be wise to see if the Fedora folks have already 
discovered a solution on a newer release. Servers are usually bought and 
certified for a flavor of Linux with stable hardware, and wise server 
admins usually check the compatibility lists.

Red Hat Hardware Compatibility List - redhat.com
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/hwcert/
http://enterprise.redhat.com/hcl/index.cgi?pagename=

Fedora vs. RHEL - Balance of maturity and features, Release interval 
12-18 months
http://fedora.redhat.com/about/rhel.html

RHEL & Fedora fosters rapid open source development and innovation...
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/019may06/features/fedora_rhel_1/
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/020jun06/features/fedora_rhel_2/
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/021jul06/features/fedora_rhel_3/
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/022aug06/features/fedora_rhel_4/

--
Art Wildman - NWS JAX FL. - http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jax
"I could calculate your chances of survival...but you won't like it."
-Marvin, "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy"