[CALUG] Linux choices

[Sean Wilkerson]

Russ,
A distro discussion can quickly become a very personal.  Many long-time
*NIX enthusiasts use a variety of distros depending on need.  Currently I
am suing 2 flavors of debian, gentoo, fedora, 4 flavors of RHEL, CENTOS,
Kubuntu, and that doesn't count bootable linux distros that I use fairly
frequently.

You should just choose a distro that is well-known and well-maintained and
get to know that one for now.  When you are ready to venture out, you will
certainly find things you like and don't like about both your new and old
distro, and you will start to develop your sense of specialization based
on need.

Although I would not run ubuntu on a server (just personal preference, not
trying to insight a flame here), I love it on my laptop.  I currently run
kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE instead of GNOME as default desktop).

To answer your specific questions:
- CENTOS is a RHEL clone.  Go with it if you want an RHEL-like build but
don't want to pay for updates or be hassled by RHN (RedHat Network)
licensing issues.  I have been fairly successful running RHEL with CENTOS
patches in an environment where the customer wants an official distro
(read Redhat), but licensing with Redhat is too expensive or complicated
(it can be both).
- Fedora will be more cutting edge than RHEL/CENTOS providing more recent
apps and libraries enabling you to run all the latest stuff.  Depending on
your intention here, this might be easier to work with, though also might
not be as stable or as compatible with everything you need to do.  Many
COTS applications which require linux also REQUIRE RHELX and will not
work(1) on another distro such as Fedora.
1) However, a lot of these apps just check for a specific string in
/etc/redhat_release and on many occasions I have fooled these apps by
putting the write redhat_release file on another distro which is not
officially supported, but works well.  Note, this is not recommended for
compatibility with a COTS application, but it can work.
- Whatever you run, make sure you are applying regular patches if the
system is networked and especially if it is remotely-accessible.  If you
cannot successfully patch your RHEL system with RH patches without paying,
then switch to other patches (e.g. CENTOS or dag.weers), or change your
distro to something you can support.

Sean

> Hello,
>
> I want to install and dual boot a another version of linux at home.  I'd
> like to backup data, share files between Windows and Linux, practice web
> development, web deployment, scripting, have a stable, dependable system,
> and learn more about Linux. I am a recent CS graduate.   I'm looking for
> pros/cons on wheteher to use RHEL vs. Fedora.  Are there big
> disadvantages/limitations in using RHEL and not paying for support?  Do I
> have
> access to the same package updates/resources that a paying customer has?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Russ Main
>
>
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