fedora or centOS
 

I wanted to know which is a better OS for running a server, fedora or CentOS.It's going to be quite a big server, and short interval updates won't be an issue. Please give your reasons too!

Since you don't say what KIND of server, on what kind of hardware, in what environment, and what you mean by "big", how do you expect anyone to give you a decent answer?

Best anyone can say is, if you're running a server, use a server-centric distro, like CentOS. Otherwise, use whatever you like...it's YOUR server, so use what fits YOUR needs.

server
CentOS 5.5
cent ( like red hat) has a 5 year life span

fedora has a 13 month life span and a NEW ( very very new) version every 6 months ,
that can and do brake things in the previous version .

so unless YOU DO want to do a full clean install every 6 months ( or role the dice with "preupgrade" )


Use CentOS 5.5

I would agree with using CentOS, but be careful. I recently switched a server from Fedora to CentOS, and noticed that the version of OpenSSH was old enough that it was missing a feature that I used. Read up on the versions of all the software packages you'll need, and make sure that they're recent enough on CentOS. If not, you'll have to roll your own package.

What feature is that? I didn't know that openssh had added any new features.

It was the ability to set specific chroot settings per user or per group.

I would suggest it's rare to find anything Fedora does better then CentOS in regards to service specific tasks. Fedora tends to be more aimed at developmental and desktop usage while CentOS is based more off of RHEL what is far more server based. A trade off for going for a server based distribution is that will not use the latest and greatest but rather the proven and tested since you don't want software that can potentially fall over itself, Fedora does use the latest and greatest what can often break things.

I would agree with r3sistance there. Fedora was constantly upgrading to bleeding edge (but not always stable) software. That, combined with the longer release duration, made me make the switch to CentOS for my server.