I am looking for a distribution to replace Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I use my computer mostly for work which includes writing some programs (not heavy development work), but I would also like multimedia support. I have thought long and hard about this and have been to distrowatch.org and for a while was considering Fedora and OpenSuse. But I don't like the fact that with those distributions, it is necessary to upgrade every year or so. At least Ubuntu and Mint have LTS releases.

So now I am seriously looking at a distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, specifically Scientific Linux. I notice that the RHEL-based distributions use 2.6.x kernels while Ubuntu uses 3.2.x and OpenSuse 12.2 will use a 3.4.x kernel when it becomes available next month.

My question is what will the older kernel and presumably older software mean to me in practical terms? What is the price to be paid, so to speak? It seems like common sense to go with something with a 10 year life cycle rather than an 18 month life cycle so why would I not want to do it?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Multi-media support is something you support regardless of your distro. Hardware that is too new to have support in the open source community is not a distro-centric issue - it's an operator issue to be resolved with installing the necessary components once they emerge.

Old Hardware is generally not an issue from a support standpoint, since development in the open source community has already taken place.

Regarding kernels, you are free to install or compile kernels at your leisure. This may require additional libraries and source, etc., but generally speaking, if you want a newer kernel then compile and install it and all of the dependencies.

You're right about the release cycles of many of the more commercialized distros having expectations of you simply re-installing when a new version comes out. That's pretty lame isn't it - but when you mention support life cycles of 10 years there is only one distro that supports this - Slackware.

Currently, Slackware support goes back to oh, I think Slackware 8 or so. There simply isn't any other distro that supports their versions that far back - period.

When you mention Scientific Linux - remember that it is a Redhat clone - the same as CentOS is, and all three of those stem from Fedora.

SuSE is kind of in a world of its own, using RPM based technology, yet infusing its own package utilities as well and support framework. It's good stuff, but you're still sort of hemmed in with the limited ability to roll from one version to the next, like you are with Debian, Slackware, or Arch Linux.

Arch is actually considered to be a "Rolling Release" distro out of the box, it is well documented (very good documentation and support). This means you install it once and you keep it current.

With Slackware you simply make a couple of config changes to a couple of files (litterally, a couple), and you're running what is called Slackware -current, and it becomes a rolling release as well, so you never have to re-install. You can say, install Slackware 10 and there is a documented upgrade path all the way to -current. I don't suggest you go back that far just to prove you can move forward to -current, but you could

With Debian, you set the distribution to "Wheezy", and Debian 6 becomes a rolling release of a sort. Wheezy is currently frozen, meaning that once all bug reports are resolved and the deb folks are happy, Wheezy will become Debian 7, and then you adjust it to be the "Testing" version all over again (They will assign a codename for testing), so it effectively remains as a rolling release.

That's cutting edge. Debian also has bleeding edge - "Unstable", which has its own code name but isn't vetted for stability like "Testing" is. Stick with Wheezy until it becomes Debian 7 and then switch to whatever they're calling the new "Testing" when Debian 7 is released.

That last paragraph you posted doesn't really contain a question that we don't all ask ourselves on a daily basis - What are the drawbacks?

The drawbacks are most notably different depending on the package management system the distro uses.

Redhat (Fedora, Scientific, Oracle Unbreakable, CentOS, etc.) based distros use RPM packaging systems. you are limited by what the repo has to offer in terms of upgrading, and since it is a binary package management system, you will find yourself at some point either re-installing because you can't continue to move forward with the distro w/o painfully following their upgrade process or else actually creating dozens and dozens of RPMs yourself that meet your needs for current applications and their required dependencies - not to mention if it breaks something in your system elsewhere and you have to start recreating core parts of your OS..... Now you're almost in a land of "This is my own distro because of how it has diverged from stock Redhat".

Debian is a binary based (apt) packaging based system too - although they have built in the capability for you t more easily keep your distro current and migrate through the versions. ewboontew is based on this, but when Debian turns left, instead of right, ewboontew has to backtrack because it tries to anticipate (quite reliably, actually) where the Debian GNU/Linux distro is headed, since ewboontu springs from Debian.

If you're looking at Mint... nice ewboontew isn't really in my vocabulary, but Linux Mint DE is - and you can sort of have your cake and eat it too by sticking with Debian fundamentals in maintaining and keeping your OS current. Mint DE is sort of the plug and play of Debians for people who know better than to use ewboontew.

I'll give you a classic example of how you can get hemmed in with a binary RPM based distro. In this case, the distro is CentOS 5 and the software desired was weechat version 0.3.6RC2 I think, or maybe 0.3.7RC2 - I can't remember accurately, only that CentOS 6 hadn't yet been released and a client of mine insisted on having the latest version of weechat installed regardless of the pain involved.

I did it. It took me the better part of two weeks and following the chain of dependencies that led down a dark corridor all the way to glibc being replaced by a version that would never be supported in CentOS 5 meant that this machine was no longer really CentOS, and also that there were probably things in the system that were now broken and undiscovered as a result - those could be fixed too, however, if enough diligence was applied, yet the OS would drift further and further from what CentOS is - I think I had to create about 40 RPMs to get that version of weechat to integrate.

With Slackware, you have a different package management system that is in the end binary based, but it is elegantly layered through source, scripts that compile the source on demand and create those binary packages. If you can't create the package, then you are forced to locate the problem. If you must add dependencies for one application while keeping an earlier version of that dependency so that other parts of the system can use the older libs or what have you, well, you certainly can - which is nice

In your case, I might tend to recommend you take a serious look at Arch Linux - From what you've said it seems to meet all of your needs, and a really slick package management system with a really kewl name too - I'll leave that little tidbit for you to discover on your own, and good luck

I hope that helps

Kindest regards,

.

Since August 1st 2012 the oldest supported Slackware version is 12.1, released 2008.

And Redhat supports there versions for 7 years IIRC.

Although Slack is fun I would go for RHEL.
This is good server distro and has a big company behind it with decent support. (no experience with Slack Support)

I know that this is almost heresy to say on this site, but I really want to avoid Slackware, Gentoo, and Arch. While I consider myself an intermediate user (have used Linux off and on for 10 years, mostly Suse and OpenSuse), I really don't have the time and patience required by those distros.

I posted this and literally found out minutes later that Scientific Linux 6.3 was just released yesterday. I don't know ... the 6.x release is well into its life cycle with RHEL 7.0 set to be released late next year. Maybe it is better to install OpenSuse 12.2 when it becomes available which would carry me through for at least a year and a half until Scientific Linux 7.0 is released. I don't know which is better ... it seems like either way, I'm facing two installations in the next year or so.

I should mention here why I am so adverse to installing the OS so often. I connect to the internet via dial-up, and while I can order the OS on a DVD, every time I re-install the OS, I lose all the programs I painfully downloaded and have to download them all again.

Since you're already familiar with openSUSE, have you considered using their rolling release version called Tumbleweed? I personally haven't used it, but a buddy of mine seems to really like it.

Best of luck in your search.

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed

As you see, I use both a Red Hat based distro (on my desktop) and a Slackware based one (on my old laptop, which finds CentOS a bit demanding). I can't say I've found any disadvantages to using older software.

If you only have dial-up, I don't think a rolling release distro would be a good idea. If you go for CentOS, you can buy the installation disks by post and only download the media codecs and any extras you want. And CentOS, like SUSE, comes with dial-up support, unlike so many distros these days. In Europe we tend to forget the wide open spaces of the USA; Ubuntu's British, where over 99% of the population can get broadband over their phone line.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes, it was really a problem to get dial-up set up on Ubuntu. I had to set up an ad hoc network with my other computer just to be able to download the tools necessary for dial-up. It's good to know that CentOS and openSUSE come with dial-up support. Presumably Scientific Linux does also since it is based on RHEL like CentOS.

Red Hat provide Wvdial by default, so it should be in SL.

For openSUSE, that's more like 16 months, which isn't that much better, I understand. Releases are scheduled every 8 months, and support (repo updates, if that's what you mean by support) continue while a release is 'fresh' and for the duration of the subsequent release. And while this is better than nothing, it is still the reason that I wouldn't consider oS as the best choice for a server box (but, if you don't have many services set up, it may not be that bad...).

Depending on what conclusions you are drawing from this numbering, I could probably say 'not really'. A RHEL release starts off with a kernel number that is current sometime during the release cycle. Once released, it then gets security fixes backported (and the kernel numbers incremented). So, sometime into its life, the kernel numbers are not comparable to anything else out in the wild (except for derived things, like Centos, SL, etc) because any changes that have security implications have been backported, and that leads to kernel reference numbers that seem outlandish compared to anything else.

@MCMLXXIII
I'm not sure how much that helps: Tumbleweed isn't really intended to be fully rolling: wikipedia categorises this as an optionally rolling, but in your case this isn't the main issue. Tumbleweed is intended to be a 'cyclic releases, but with 'instant' updates in-between', which doesn't seem to help much.

Evergreen may be more to your taste as it is more of an LTS-type of thing.

@tallship
Really? Red Hat notes "Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription and extends the overall supported lifecycle from 7 years up to a total of 10 years". That's RH 3 and 4 still supported, which are from back when Dinosaurs were regarded as unreliable new technology. Of course, I don't think that will be to the OP's taste, as, in addition to the normal costs of RH, you have also to purchase the extended support option.

Errr, yeah, bummer. I agree that in this circumstance rolling does nothing for you but distribute the pain a little more evenly. Even that can potentially be useful, as we have one ISP round here that doesn't count downloads between 01:00 and 07:00, or something, and if you configure the system to grab updates then... But, anyway, I don't really see the big advantage of rolling, for most people most of the time.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the heads up on evergreen. I did not know about it.

I have decided to try both Scientific Linux and openSUSE 12.2 when it becomes available. I guess really the only way to decide these things is to try them out.

Hmm, yes, while I can understand what may have pushed you to that approach, remember that you now have two distros to update, rather than one. And, if the bandwidth (and/or time delay) to keep one up-to-date was a problem, what is the bandwidth to keep two up-to-date going to be?

It is difficult to answer that question for you without knowing which software and what use case, etc, etc (...and it is still difficult to answer that question, even if you do know those things), but, as a general guide:

• probably not much, immediately after initial release; you'll be using software that isn't the very latest, because it has had more thorough testing, and that takes time, but that won't be very severe
• towards the end of the life cycle, it could be really quite bad, depending. If you think that you are going to run for ten years before a massive upgrade, you'll be running ten year old software. The easiest way to think about this is to look at what software versions were available ten years ago, and think about running those versions today. I don't think that I'd find that tolerable (ymmv), but you do have the option of cutting your losses at, say, five years, and see how that would feel.

If I'm testing, I won't bother with keeping both up-to-date. I'll just choose the one that fits me best and then worry about updating it.

As far as software goes, I believe that RH backports a lot of software so that even though the kernel may be older, the software isn't necessarily. If I decide to stay with SL, I will probably upgrade in 5 years or less.

I have installed and am testing Scientific Linux right now. I must say that I'm liking it so far. It seems to be much faster than Ubuntu, and really feels solid. I have installed it on an old laptop (which I decided to use for testing), and I can't believe the performance that I'm getting. However, I do GREATLY miss the shear amount of software available for Ubuntu. Even some simple utilities appear not to be available for Scientific Linux.

Hi,

I'm jumping in quite late here but thought I should comment.
From what I've read there are two main things that you want out of your OS. In order of importance:
1. Long life cycle (to avoid large downloads)
2. Access to large variety of prepackaged software including multimedia

From this I would say that Ubuntu 12.04 fits you perfectly. It will be supported until April 2017, and has much more software prepackaged that SL6.

Note also the RHEL (and hence SL) no longer really support inplace upgrade recommending instead a reinstall. Also note that although we are talking about 5 years from now (so things may change) you can upgrade an Ubuntu distribution from CDs (ie don't need large downloads).

Since you were already using Ubuntu 12.04, and are looking for an alternative there must be something you didn't like about it. So, why did you want to change?

Cheers,

Evo2.

1 members found this post helpful.

There are a lot of other repositories available. Have a look here:
http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalRes...epositories%29
All these are suitable for CentOS, Red Hat, or Scientific Linux. But do follow the advice about using the priorities plugin for yum, or nasty things can happen.

1 members found this post helpful.