On 07/23/2011 11:35 AM, 夜神　岩男 wrote:
> 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

I certainly agree with your sentiments concerning support via the CentOS 
community, and even more so from some of the other Linux distributions 
that are not aimed for stable production but rather for either 
enthusiasts or casual users.  The issue is that many of the CentOS (not 
to mention Ubuntu ... ) users are typical end-users, used to the MS 
Windows or MacOS environments, and some from business vendor supported 
systems for which source is not available and with (more or less) full 
paid technical support -- typically a management information systems 
background at best, not a rigorous computer science or engineering 
background (MIS:  how to use an information system for the mission of an 
organization, typically financial gain; CS:  how to develop and build 
the fundamentals upon which information systems can be deployed).

To be clear:  this is not a "friend", but a high ranking engineering 
person at a vendor who was presenting his personal, or his firm's 
internal, expert opinion.  My posting was an attempt to discover any 
data relevant to the opinion, as well as to at least get the 
distribution release testing policy/methodology for SL (and perhaps 
CentOS if there were any CentOS organization persons on the SL list 
willing to comment) once there is a release of source from RH (source 
that RH is required to release).

As to your query:  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?) -- regrettably, I lack the staff (because of 
funding) to undertake any such systematic comparisons, or even detailed 
stress testing of whatever distribution currently is being deployed (on 
this laptop, CentOS 5.6, whereas on my workstation and on our new 
research cluster GPU compute engine, SL 6.x, x being kept current 
production).  Thus, my experience is anecdotal, and in terms of the 
actual process of deployment of either SL or CentOS (or RHEL for that 
matter), an outsider looking in and not seeing much past the "magician's 
robe" until the "rabbit is pulled out of the hat" -- that is, a distro 
is released in any form (beta or production).  I was hoping that at 
least for SL, the curtain would be lifted as to how RHEL source is 
converted into a SL production distribution (if this is documented, the 
relevant URLs would be appreciated).

Yasha Karant