On 07/24/2011 02:14 AM, Yasha Karant wrote:
> A vendor professional systems person whom I know has been requested to
> install SL 6 on a system that is being configured for us. In a
> discussion with him, he gave me the opinion that his (vendor's)
> experience with SL is that it is "buggier" than CentOS, and CentOS often
> "fixes" RHEL bugs.

They both fix bugs when found and both communities are fairly good at 
pushing those fixes upstream. I find the documentation of bugs in SL 
more concise and helpful than in CentOS (seems the ones submitting bugs 
are less prone to freaking out at their computers or submitting SWAGs to 
bug trackers). There is definitely less hand-holding within the 
community -- and a lot fewer requests for hand-holding from what I've 
observed.

> For anyone on
> this list who is familiar with the post-RH release handling and
> qualification/testing procedures of RHEL source by either or both
> organizations, or by the Princeton University distribution of RHEL,
> direct comments would be appreciated. Is there any factual data,
> including procedural differences, to support the opinion that I have
> been given?

I am not aware of any actual test data that compares the various RHEL 
derived distros under any stress in a meaningful way (are you 
volunteering?). I have deployed RHEL6, SL6 and just recently toyed with 
CentOS6 test deployments, and found not enough difference to warrant 
including CentOS in my thinking for now (for non-technical types with 
deadlines RHEL is worth the money, though).

Anyway, CentOS 6 was just released the other day -- it hasn't been out 
long enough to compare or for deep, weird problems to be uncovered yet; 
SL6 is fairly well understood at this point. But, name recognition alone 
goes a long way to framing most people's interpretation of software (and 
other things), so bear that in mind when listening to people.

 From a non-technical perspective, however, there is a huge difference. 
The SL6 community has far fewer knotheads than the CentOS community, and 
accordingly less drama. It also feels easier to find things, though I'm 
not quite sure why (fewer meaningless articles laying about?). In fact, 
I've never had to ask a question on list before. SL is therefore 
considerably less buggy as a community. The frustration index is a lot 
lower with SL6 in other than social ways. The development and release 
process is a lot less mysterious than CentOS, for example, and this 
makes planning a little easier.

tl;dr: No hard data to support your friend's claim. SL6 is lower on the 
stress & drama scale.

-Iwao