I am a Slackware user trying to get to know RedHat a little better by using CentOS. Besides the internal differences, there is one point that is puzzeling me.

I keep my Slackware up to date with the security updates. For Slackware 10.1 and 10.2, this amounts to a weekly check, a few upgrades every now and then, quick and fast.

I check for CentOS updates once a week as well, but I am overwhelmed by the large number of updates and the long download and update time. Mind you, my Slackware is a full install, whereas CentOS is not.

Why is it that CentOS has so many security upgrades? And if you have to manage a medium-sized server farm, isn't staying up to date becoming a full-time job?

centos has as many upgrades as redhat does. all they do is take any redhat updates, de-hat them and release them to their community. Slack trundles along doing its won thing, whereas redhat and centos are intended to be entrprise level operating systems, hence quick pat hes when deemed necessary.

IF you manage a full server farm then you can easily set up your own local yum repo, upon which you place your own updates you trust to rollout, and each server just does an auto update on a cron job. doddle.