CentOS or RedHat???
 

Well i know that many of you would want to grill me after reading the title, as the question has been asked so many times in so many different places. But before the rants flow, hear (read) me out.

I am a budding IT engineer and as summer training for this year, I would be undergoing certification training for Oracle DBA as well as RHCE. Now the thing is that I already use slackware, and that is probably enough to train anyone substantially at linux (at least the generic part). But the reality is that rhce involves many questions which focus specifically on RedHat and also Oracle DB supports (officially, anyways) only RHEL.

Also, I have a source that can get me a genuine copy of RHEL (for free). But I'm wondering if there is any difference (at all) between CentOS and RHEL, when it comes to the above mentioned usage. Is there any such changes made to CentOS that would make it unfit to be used as a base for RHCE??? I know that CentOS is built to be completely compatible with RHEL binaries (and i know that oracle would run equally well on it), and am really wondering if it would really be worth utilizing that source of mine??

And lastly, it turns out that oracle also provide a distro of their own, which is also based off RHEL. Any words on that???

Only branding. If you can legally get and use RHEL, go for it. Else just use CentOS.

That was QUICK!!! Thanks.. Much appreciated.