I have been running a fedora server without issues for many years and recently updated to FC12. It turned out that there is a bug in OpenSSL in FC12 that caused me a lot of problems and I had to build apache, mod_ssl and OpenSSL from source to get it working.

I'm now looking at migrating to another distribution becasue Fedora is not appropriate for a production server environment in a growing company.

What I want to know is what is the most reliable distribution with regards automatic updates (bug free that is)? I'm comparing RedHat, Ubuntu LTS, Debian, etc. at the moment. Is there any report that looks at this topic?

I'd expect RedHat would have the best, but I also have to take cost into account as it is the only platform that you have to pay for these updates.

I read this but it seems to quickly move away from the "bug-free" question initially asked.

It would appear that the problem is not specifically about bugs, but that Fedora/RHEL etc modify the source they get from upstream before releasing it to you. They do whatever they think is best with it. This for example causes hassle with webapps that expect perl to be exactly as it was released, not with the modifications and customisations that get added.

For that reason (along with eight hundred trillion others) I use Slackware for all production servers. There is no source modification. You get what the developers wrote and if you want to change it that's your job to manage. Making modifications, should you choose, is very easy because all the packages are provided with a shell script (SlackBuild) that creates the package from the source. Modify the script or the source, re-run the SlackBuild and bob's your uncle.

Is that true with Debian also? Do they modify source?

Also, is it true that if you migrate to RHEL you can be tied into it due to binary compatibility, even if you would like to migrate to another platform? If so, is this the case with other distro's too?

Have you considered CentOS? It would seem to me like the most natural choice for you, given your Fedora background and the fact that CentOS is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The modification of upstream source is necessary many times, especially in distros with extremely stable branches (such as Debian). You can't expect upstream to be concerned with making sure updates only address critical issues, so the distro's package maintainers are quite often forced to keep any new features and/or non-critical bug fixes out of the source code. Distros such as Slackware go a different route, by relying more on code provided by upstream as is, to the point where many packages released as security updates will include unrelated bug fixes and sometimes even new features. Both of these approaches have their pros and cons, and either can be better suited for certain situations/users. I say this both as a Debian and a Slackware user.

AFAIK CentOS is actually a worse choice for upstream compatibility as Fedora more often updates the raw version of things that RHEL/CentOS backport into infinity.

I'm leaning towards Ubuntu server LTS at the moment. Seems to have a better release cycle and updates are free. Also I've read that RedHat support is as good as useless unless you have a top notch contract. CentOS is also being considered.

I suggest you should move on CentOS its provide autoupdates.

How do you mean? All the distro's being considered auto-update.

That would be a good choice, IMO. Honestly, I can only remember one instance of Ubuntu releasing an updated package which seriously broke things - and IIRC that was years ago and desktop-centric.

But centos is most reliable and stable in this senario.

And alwys free all updates you just need to update your yum reprosetry.

I don't see what you're getting at here Jilal. Ubuntu LTS has 100% free updates, a better branch life cycle than CentOS, optional paid support, and from what I can tell, a more configurable, open platform while being just as stable as CentOS.

I notice you're a Windows user, have you used these distro's yourself?

That is extremely debatable.