Re: LedgerSMB 1.3.6-rc1 released

[Chris Travers <..hidden..>]

On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Philip Rhoades <..hidden..> wrote:
> Chris, Darald,
>
>
> On 2011-11-24 00:31, Chris Travers wrote:
>> Hi;
>>
>> Just a few notes to anyone who may be looking for recommendations.
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 5:21 AM, o1bigtenor <..hidden..>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I am also not trying to start any kind of distro war!
>>
>> Noted.
>>>
>>> I switched from Fedora for business use because I got right tired of
>>> having to update every six months (or so). Upgrading sometimes left
>>> me
>>> with issues (I am a serious user NOT a hacker so I still am not very
>>> proficient at troubleshooting) that cost me a lot of time and
>>> sometimes expense. So I made a decision to switch to Debian because
>>> I
>>> liked the idea of longer term upgrade cycle. I would like to stay on
>>> such for precisely that one reason - - I do not like to change
>>> systems
>>> twice a year.
>
>
> I tend to stick on a Fedora version till the end of it's supported life
> so I get about 11 months or so.  Having said that though, Fedora IS the
> bleeding edge for RH . .
>
>
>> First, as a Fedora user let me say that without a doubt it is a very
>> lousy server OS.  I would not recommend running business servers on
>> it.
>
>
> Could you elaborate a little?  I have always been pretty happy with it

Ok.  So with a server, my primary concern is that upgrading things is
always a somewhat risky process.  Basically, when you upgrade, you
risk breaking things, so generally speaking you want to have longer
terms of support and a more lazy upgrade cycle.  And there are a
couple things about the Fedora upgrade process that are particularly
risky.  For example yum distrosync will upgrade major versions of
PostgreSQL for you, meaning if you didn't dump your data first, your
PostgreSQL db is now unusable.
> . .
>
>
>> I develop on it because it gives me early warnings for the kinds
>> of issues that may pop up with the RHEL-family of distros.
>
>
> which is what it is meant for of course . .

Exactly.  I see it as a decent developer OS.
>
>
>> So I do
>> run LedgerSMB on it in an eat-your-own-dogfood sort of way, so my
>> failure to follow my own advice here is rather deliberate.
>>
>> For non-dev installations of LedgerSMB, in my opinion, you really
>> need
>> a distro with long-term support.  This means one of:
>> 1)  RHEL and friends (CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc)
>> 2)  Debian Stable
>> 3)  Ubuntu LTS (and friends, like Mint LTS)
>> 4)  Anything else with a long support cycle.
>>
>> The problems that Darald brings up are real ones.  There may be
>> advantages for us devs ignoring these and working on short-term
>> support releases ourselves.  However I would not today use these in
>> setting up servers for customers.
>
>
> Agreed.
>
>
>> Debian is not a bad distro, and neither is Scientific Linux.
>
>
> I might have a look at a virtual SL setup now on your recommendation!

Scientific Linux has a couple things to recommend it as a Server OS.

1)  It tracks Red Hat Enterprise in both support and versions.
2)  It includes a lot of things that RHEL doesn't include
3)  They beat CentOS to releases.
4)  They are backed by heavy Linux users (Fermi Labs, CERN)

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers