[Techtalk] Redhat vs. Fedora

[Brenda Bell]

I remember this being a recent topic of discussion on this list and thought
you might be interested in the interpretation posted on another list I
participate in.  I'm posting the unedited text here with the original
poster's permission:

"I thought I would take a moment to comment on alot of
the FUD about the whole "Red Hat No Longer Supporting
Linux" that is being thrown around on this list.

If you'd been paying attention on all of the Red Hat
lists you'd KNOW that Red Hat is *NOT* discontinuing
their low cost/free distribution.  The low cost/free
distribution was RENAMED to Fedora when Red Hat
acquired the origianl Fedora project.

All of this "doom and gloom" "the sky is falling"
silliness is just that.  Fedora *WILL* be maintaned BY
Red Hat, and UPDATED by Red Hat.  The difference is
that Fedora is going to be the "current release" of
all packages, where-as Red Hat Enterprise is going to
be the stable technologies.  Which, other than a name
change, is EXACTLY what they have been doing for
several years now.  The BIGGEST difference is that
Fedora will only have a 9-month life cycle, supported
by Red Hat.  Several people are banding together,
including some Red Hat engineers to make a side
project that will be called Fedora Legacy, that will
extend this to an unofficial support cycle of
18-months.

One of the biggest reasons they have done this is
because people have been clamoring for Red Hat to
maintain the latest releases of packages, rather than
just adding patches to stable releases.  Fedora
addresses this.  Red Hat has also been having issues
makine a "retail sales" version of Red Hat Linux due
to the frequent version updates.  RHL Professional
Workstation addresses this.  it is based on the RHEL
code as opposed to the Fedora "cutting edge" code.

FreeBSD has dome similar to the implementation that
Red Hat is attempting to do for years.  They have
FreeBSD -Current for people that want the latest
stable packages.  This is equivalent to Fedora.  They
have FreeBSD -Stable for the people that want the
stable version.  This is the equivalent to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux.  The main difference is that Red Hat
is now charging for their stable branch.

People really need to read what is REALLY going on
before screaming that the sky is falling."

-- 
Brenda
http://opensource.theotherbell.com