[RndTbl] Red Hat v. CentOS

Gilles Detillieux grdetil at scrc.umanitoba.ca
Thu May 22 15:16:02 CDT 2008


On 21/05/2008 9:24 PM, Kevin McGregor wrote:
> If I'm not mistaken, Red Hat just announced Enterprise Linux 5.2. How 
> long might it be before we can expect to see the equivalent CentOS 
> release? And does CentOS provide all of the features of RHEL "Advanced 
> Platform"?

According to the CentOS FAQ, they build from the "upstream" source RPMs 
for the AS version, and they strive to be as close as possible to the 
upstream (i.e. no changes to the source RPMs).  They try to get 
individual update RPMs up within 72 hours, and update sets within 2 weeks.

http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=31
http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=11
http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=7

I haven't seen where they announce these new releases, though, so I 
think you pretty much need to periodically check the mirror sites for 
updates.

Now, according to Red Hat's announcements, the AS & ES versions have 
merged into Advanced Platform for RHEL 5, so I'd expect that's what 
CentOS went with for the source RPMs.  So, likely you get all the 
features except Red Hat's support (and the associated cost).  It would 
be nice if CentOS updated their FAQ, though, as the last entry is almost 
2 years old now.

Myself, I use Scientific Linux, which does make a few changes/additions 
to Red Hat's source RPMs.  They were a bit slow to release 5.1 
(mid-January), so I don't expect to see 5.2 from them for a little while 
still.

-- 
Gilles R. Detillieux              E-mail: <grdetil at scrc.umanitoba.ca>
Spinal Cord Research Centre       WWW:    http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/
Dept. Physiology, U. of Manitoba  Winnipeg, MB  R3E 3J7  (Canada)


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