3 ms·

If you want to run the latest, greatest, bleeding edge version of $foo, CentOS may not be for you.

• baruch 9y ago
  It's not just the latest. Debian stable doesn't have the latest but it does have a larger selection of official packages.
• scbrg 9y ago
  And neither is Debian (stable). But given that they're often used for the same purpose (servers), it's not that irrational to compare them. Having a larger, supported package selection (even if it's a bit old) may be a good thing, and relevant when you choose your distro. For the record: I have no idea how the package selection compares between CentOS and Debian - I've been firmly in the Debian camp since forever, and stay there mostly for other reasons, of which laziness is the most important one.
• tooltalk 9y ago
  Well, I noticed that CentOS/RHEL distro's have quite old versions of everything, but Debian stable doesn't seem all that cutting edge either. I find myself reaching out to backports and even sid to get what I need at times. At my new job, we recently had that debate -- and I was quickly overruled for recommending CentOS/RHEL. My employer is a Java shop, I can almost always find rpm and deb pkg's for most stuff we need.
  • rwmj 9y ago
    RHEL works by backporting bug fixes and new features into the old versions. Don't go by the version numbers, check the availability of features instead.
    • deadbunny 9y ago
      Backporting features and not bumping versions is redicilous though, especially when that means v3.1 of upstream is different to v3.1 in your repo.
      • rwmj 9y ago
        RHT's market cap is over $20 billion today so that says it's providing real value to customers.
      • pferde 9y ago
        You're just not their target audience. Others are willing to throw money at Red Hat for this "rediculousness", though.
  • jlgaddis 9y ago
    FWIW, you can find newer versions of some software packages via "Software Collections".