Mike,

On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 05:54:52PM -0500, Mike Miller wrote:
>>> I've been using RHEL for years and Ubuntu for a few months and Ubuntu 
>>> seems to be a lot easier for me.  I like apt-get, for one.  RHEL software 
>>> is often way out of date.
>>
>> You mean "stable", right?
>
> Right -- that's the term!  ;-)  Well, the funny thing is, something that 
> has been out for 3 years may not yet be labeled "stable."  Is that because 
> it has proved in testing to be unstable, or is it because they haven't 
> completed testing yet, or is it just that they are too lazy to get around 
> to admitting that they should upgrade their packages?  I never know for 
> sure, but I do know that there are bugs in some of the programs I'm using 
> on RHEL that were fixed in a new release of that software several years 
> ago.  So sometimes it seems like the old software I am using is literally 
> unstable (prone to crash) and the newer versions are improved but not 
> readily available to me (for my own protection, of course).
>
> So, given the option, I prefer to just install the newest stuff and hope it 
> is OK.  The alternative is to stick with old software that isn't being used 
> anymore by most people, so it isn't continuing to stand the test of time.  
> Why should I think the old version of the software is better than the new?  
> The reason for changing it is to make it better.  Some things are a pain to 
> upgrade, so I won't be in a hurry, and with a few things like sshd, it 
> might be better to give it a few months after a new version comes out (or 
> just not upgrade because of the hassle).

Software is never 'done'.  There are always at least a few things to
'fix' or 'enhance', and all the twiddling can add new things to 'fix'
or 'enhance'.  Bjarne Stroustrup said "There are only two kinds of
languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses",
and the same can be said about software in general.

>>> What differences would affect functioning of Oracle or the Oracle 
>>> installation process?
>>
>> The instructions might refer to files paths that you don't have or 
>> installation scripts might try to modify the 'wrong' files.  And if you 
>> call Oracle, for support, you might be refused on the grounds of not using 
>> a 'supported' configuration.  That's why I suggested Centos, because it is 
>> as close to RHEL as possible.
>
> I'll have to study CentOS a little bit.  I've heard the name many times but 
> never knew about the relationship to RHEL.
>
> See, I thought the problems with "wrong files" were supposed to have been 
> dealt with by the LSB, but...
>
>
>>> Do the newest versions of these distros conform to Linux Standard Base 
>>> (LSB)?  If so, doesn't that make them much more alike than they used to 
>>> be?
>>
>> Yes, they do contain the LSB compatibility packages.  The problem is that 
>> the vendors test against well-known versions of well-known commercial 
>> distributions, and not against LSB.
>
> Interesting.  I might have to get in touch with Oracle tech support to see 
> what they say about Ubuntu.
>
> I guess I don't understand LSB because I thought the idea was that distros 
> would comply to a standard and then all programs would work on all distros. 
>  The library versions would be the same and all paths to libraries and 
> other important files would be the same.  It seems that you are saying that 
> LSB is a set of packages that allow developers to make software that works 
> with LSB, or they can ignore LSB and make it work on RHEL but not on 
> Ubuntu, and so on.  I'm a little disappointed by where that went.  Getting 
> cooperation from distro developers is probably like herding cats.

To be fair, it's not the distro developer's fault.  On one hand, they had
their own ideas about 'how things should be done', in terms of packaging,
configuration, build options, frequency of release, etc.  On the other
hand, the software vendors were used to supporting the releases from
the major OS vendors, which happened every few years and were (and
still are, if you ignore the security hot-fixes) very conservative.
Sun was releasing Solaris every other year.  HP-UX, about the same.
Windows NT was every three years or so.  And then Linux exploded with
this myriad of distributions all similar but different 8^)  It's already
hard to test your own software on a single platform.  Doubling or
tripling your test matrix is hard to justify.

Cheers,
florin

-- 
Bruce Schneier expects the Spanish Inquisition.
      http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/fact/163
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