[WBEL-users] WBEL Vs Centos ? :-S

[mailing-lists@hughesjr.com]

> Hi,
>
> I work for a small company whom are just "too poor" to buy RHEL :-(
>
> I'm looking to upgrade from RH9 and would like to get some users opinion.
>
> I have 6 commercial servers that need upgrading, I'm concerned about
> security (as ones a webserver).... and the recent issue about timely
> updates... although I think that's kinda cleared up now... right ?
>
> I respect that WBEL is run by a library, and they are free to do what
> they wish, and think they are doing some great work by trying to fill
> the gap that redhat made.
>
> My concern about upgrading is that one member of the WBEL-User list
> said this.....
>
> "My 2p worth. I still run Wbel myself on a few machines. None of which
> run in Commercial Environments. I install Wbel no more. "
>
> which raises they question, should i install WBEL ?
>
> After some research I found an alternative (Centos), but I realise
> that they are an online community, there's nothing "physically"
> keeping them together or working.... Hence ... if their updates are
> more timely now, who knows that the project will even exist in a years
> time, and if I'm gonna have to upgrade in a years time I might as well
> use Fedora ;-)
>

The CentOS group currently has several people involved in operations, and
there is a 2.1 and a 3.0 branch.  One of the 3.0 guys is the person who
maintains YUM (seth vidal).  There are several people involved that have
their businesses tied to maintaining CentOS support:

http://www.centos.org/support/commercial

I would vote that they are pretty stable.

There are also 15 current rsync mirrors, and at least double that amount
of http and ftp mirrors.

Not to mention that the updates are usually done in 24 hours.

> Yet, a library ensures that the project is likely to stay alive,  You
> need somewhere to keep books right ? But that said surely their
> concern is their business, not supporting the WBEL community.
>
> Please can I have some feedback / thoughts ?
>

I have moved all my production servers from WBEL to CentOS.

> Since I don't like freeloading, and I guess this mail sounds like a
> freeloader whinge, once we've upgraded; we'd be happy to give
> something back to the community... ftp mirror maybe, or if someone
> could offer some advise we could "respin" some updates !  ;-)

As far as community participation, CentOS might allow it, WBEL will not.

Don't get me wrong, what John Morris did is very good ... he built an OS
for his use, provided it to the General Public for use as is.  He
maintains it for the Library, and if it is also of use for you, you can
use it.  There is nothing wrong with that, if that is what you are looking
for.  If you want community involvement, community updates, community
websites, well it's just not that project.

I just think people should not have the expectation the WBEL is community
operated, it is not.  It's NOT like debian or gentoo where others can get
involved.  I know, I tried really hard to do so many times.

The last WBEL update pushed to the NCSU server (at least 6 hours ago) was
from 10/10/04 ... there have been 15 seperate security related patches
since then ... it's been almost 2 months.  That is way behind ... by any
definition.  CentOS has pushed all updates (including those released
12/2/04) ... usually within 24 hours (except for the quarterly updates,
which take about a week).

There are also another 4 RHEL rebuild choices ... Lineox (not free, but
very fast on updates), Scientific Linux, XOSLinux, and TaoLinux.

Johnny Hughes
<http://www.HughesJR.com>