Greetings,
I am new to the Fedora distro area and have been reviewing some Fedora-based distros recently. I have narrowed my choices down to just three to possibly try, however I want to make sure my understanding of each are correct and accurate.

1) Fedora is aimed at software developers who like running the very latest and greatest software. Fedora is more on the bleeding or cutting edge of things and is a very community driven distro. It's not intended to be a server distro nor even a stable desktop one, but more of a desktop platform for programmers and developers who like to innovate.

2) Red Hat is aimed at business's who need dependable 24/7 support and are willing to pay for it to get it. Red Hat is based on Fedora so not all that stable and thus more of a desktop distro. Being based on Fedora, Red-Hat also has rapid innovation similar to Fedora and tends to also be on the cutting edge of things, though perhaps maybe not as much...

3) Cent OS is aimed at the business server side of things and is intended for business's who either don't need support or have their own in-house support. Cent OS is rock-solid stable and is more on the trailing-edge of innovation or maybe doesn't see any innovation at all....

Please feel free to correct any of my mis-understandings...

Thank you

Fedora - Pretty much correct.
RedHat - Wrong about it being "more of a desktop distro", totally wrong, Redhat is totally geared as a stable, long terms supported SERVER implementation. RedHat sacrifices being towards the leading edge in terms of versions of packages and concentrates on stability.
CentOS - Effectively a recompile of RedHat, 99.9% binary compatible, "user / community" support.

fedora is owned by red hat (i think of it as their market beta test -- like a minor league team in baseball).

things that work well in fedora end up being rolled into the next stable release of redhat enterprise linux.

centos is effectively the same as rhel without the redhat trademarks (therfore if you are a corperation you wouldnt pay for the support contract -- essentially you are on your own to fix issues/downtime).

I wouldn't say that Fedora is aimed at software developers particularly. A lot of techies like having the latest (and, presumably, greatest) available to them, and it just so happens that there are a number of software developers in that population. But 'bleeding edge and prepared to suffer a few glitches because of it' more or less sums it up.

Some people do run Fedora as a server distro, but I've never really thought that makes sense (but each to their own, etc, etc).

Red Hat has Fedora as its 'sandbox' in which upcoming innovations can receive months and months worth of real world testing before the Red Hat team finalises its work on them, to ensure the highest levels of stability (both senses). It does not tend to be on the cutting edge of things. RH is primarily aimed at servers, but can also be used for other applications.

With the exception of proprietary things such as trademarks and so on, Centos is a re-compile of source from the appropriate version of their upstream (RH) and so is as innovative or as stable as RH. Innovations take their time to work through to either RH or Centos, but they are thoroughly tested by the time that they get there.

If you think about it carefully, the rate of innovation on a conservative distro like RHEL is going to be nearly the same as a bleeding edge one, primarily there will be a longer lag before innovations hit the conservative one.

Note that, for all matters 'distro', the site Distrowatch is a good reference.

Edit: I note that out of you dozen posts of today, the subject is primarily 'Compare this distro to that Distro, and their positioning in the market, etc'. That could probably have been done more efficiently, and 'Distrowatch' can help you with a lot of that. As can reading existing posts on those subjects...

I noticed that the Distrowatch site says that Red Hat is based upon Fedora. That doesn't make sense. How can a rock solid stable distro be based upon an experimental distribution? Am I missing something?

Yes, you're missing something.

The 2 line version:

Fedora is RedHat's "bleeding edge" project, it's where new things are done.
The new things that work and are stable eventually end up as part of the RedHat Enterprise Linux distribution.

well fedora is NOT owned by redhat!

fedora is not even part of redhat - not sense fedora6

fedora is it's own corporation ( llc) .


BUT

fedora is being used BY redhat to test POSSIBLE !!! things to include into RHEL

they do share a LOT of the same developers .

so what fedora tests ?? MIGHT ?? show up in RHEL -- maybe ???


now RHEL is primarily designed for the server BUT also the office and laboratory
I tend to look at it this way

top ten uses - LIST ( a Letterman "top ten" list would be fun)
1) server
2) office
3) laboratory
4 through 9 -- any other use EXCEPT FOR USE #10
10) home use

now CentOS and ScientificLinux do add EXTRA software that make then a bit more usable in the Office and Lab ( and even for some home use)

then look at the lifespan

Fedora's is ONLY 13 months
-- WAY TOO SHORT for a production or even a testing server
and also WAY too short for the 100+ machines in an office ( or 10 in a small office)
and WAY WAY WAY to short for a Laboratory
there is NO WAY i would want a STEM ( scanning tunneling electron microscope) using Fedora


CentOS only supports the current MINOR version but supports the major for 7 years

ScientificLinux
same as Cent but with security backports to minor versions ( like RHEL)

RHEL
10 year support - but you have to buy it $$$$

I do not know where you got that from!

From this page (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Main) -

There is no Fedora llc!

In fact, Fedora's legal is Red Hat's Assistant General counsel!!

Wait, Fedora can be used anywhere and on any platform and for any use. I use mine for a stable PC/laptop and has been working fine . I use the latest/greatest, Fedora 20 (xfce environment) and has been running all my games and movies and been very stable with no errors (so far). I dont see why people do not like fedora as a desktop. I use it and nothing has been significantly wrong with it (through the years I've used it since Fedora 7). Fedora is the cutting edge of what Linux can do for you in the future ( if it works correctly).