Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Released

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 (RHEL 7.3) is shipping today...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Red-Hat-Enterprise-Linux-7.3

[SyXbiT]

This took a really long time coming, and it doesn't look like there's much here for bare metal users.
I've wondered a lot about RHEL and Ubuntu competing. RHEL still has the serious enterprises, but most startups or cloud companies are using Ubuntu. RHEL is definitely superior to Ubuntu in many ways, but people turn to ubuntu for 2 reasons: cost, and release cycle. I'm not sure why Red Hat doesn't try to fix this.

[hugo8621]

Or just use CentOS. IMHO Debian is as dated as CentOS, but I like the rpm repo's and package manager of the RHEL world better then Debians. But I guess this is just up to individuals tastes...

[Guest]

What reason is there to use CentOS or RHEL over Ubuntu? The only difference I'm really aware of is the MAC (AppArmor vs SELinux), cost (regarding RHEL), and package selection (Ubuntu having more software available). I'm not aware of the release cycle differences exactly (CentOS iirc lasts a decade per-release?).

On the same note, what reasons are there to choose Debian over Ubuntu? From a random post I read a bit ago, Debian doesn't come with a MAC?

[hugo8621]

What reason is there to use CentOS or RHEL over Ubuntu? ...
On the same note, what reasons are there to choose Debian over Ubuntu? From a random post I read a bit ago, Debian doesn't come with a MAC?

personal preference?

[SyXbiT]

What reason is there to use CentOS or RHEL over Ubuntu? The only difference I'm really aware of is the MAC (AppArmor vs SELinux), cost (regarding RHEL), and package selection (Ubuntu having more software available). I'm not aware of the release cycle differences exactly (CentOS iirc lasts a decade per-release?).

Benefits of RHEL (and CentOS):
They patch 0day really quickly. Ubuntu tend to wait for Debian to patch it, and then just copy it (see all the OpenSSL problems recently as a good example).
I don't have data to back this up, but RHEL is more stable.
Red Hat actually develop code like systemd, xfs etc... And these things are fully upstream, used by others with no shady CLA. Ubuntu needs CLA for most stuff. They've had some success with customer work on the desktop, but not on the server side.

About the release cycle, I didn't mean the number of years the product is supported, I meant the frequency and predictability. Let's say you're a startup, and you want to build something today. What are you going to use? Ubuntu 16.04, with all the latest stuff, or RHEL/CentOS 7.3, which runs on a 3.10 kernel (granted with a bunch of backports). I understand that the really big enterprises want 10 years of support, and move to new OSes very slowly, but the cloud born companies are able to easily more from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04, and want to do it. They don't want to wait 3.5 years between RHEL releases.

[torsionbar28]

What reason is there to use CentOS or RHEL over Ubuntu? The only difference I'm really aware of is the MAC (AppArmor vs SELinux), cost (regarding RHEL), and package selection (Ubuntu having more software available). I'm not aware of the release cycle differences exactly (CentOS iirc lasts a decade per-release?).

There are a lot of reasons. I'm not familiar with Ubuntu's enterprise support model, but Red Hat has robust 24x7 phone and web support. When you have a business to run, this matters, a lot.

Red Hat also owns JBoss, Red Hat Virtualization (oVirt), Red Hat Satellite (Spacewalk), and has a fully supported OpenStack solution. Having all these things under one vendor support umbrella makes a lot of sense, it's a compelling ecosystem.

Plus when you look at the major 3rd party business software products, Oracle database for example, they support only the enterprise grade Linux distros, usually that means RHEL and SLES.

Lastly, you get 10 years of vendor support and security patches with RHEL, which is great when you're running a business. Other distros force you to upgrade the OS every year (or less) to stay in a "supported" state.

I can see how startups and independents might go with something cheaper that they hack together themselves and self-support, but when you have a business to run, that's not really an option.

[thunderbird32]

We're only on RHEL because the (sadly) closed-source application we are running on our production systems requires it. They decline to provide support if we run on anything else, even CentOS is unsupported.

[dweigert]

There are also legal reasons to use a supported enterprise distro, for liability purposes.

[M@GOid]

There are a lot of reasons. I'm not familiar with Ubuntu's enterprise support model, but Red Hat has robust 24x7 phone and web support. When you have a business to run, this matters, a lot.

Red Hat also owns JBoss, Red Hat Virtualization (oVirt), Red Hat Satellite (Spacewalk), and has a fully supported OpenStack solution. Having all these things under one vendor support umbrella makes a lot of sense, it's a compelling ecosystem.

Plus when you look at the major 3rd party business software products, Oracle database for example, they support only the enterprise grade Linux distros, usually that means RHEL and SLES.

Lastly, you get 10 years of vendor support and security patches with RHEL, which is great when you're running a business. Other distros force you to upgrade the OS every year (or less) to stay in a "supported" state.

I can see how startups and independents might go with something cheaper that they hack together themselves and self-support, but when you have a business to run, that's not really an option.

I have a friend who works on IT and he's using RH too on the servers he administrate. He started with Debian, to Ubuntu, CentOS and now to Red Hat. The 10 years of support without a reinstall (if the hardware didn't give up first) and the 24/7 phone support sealed the deal for him. When you need a service to work 24/7 and people start to breath on your neck to have the service back on line ASAP, you take all the help you can get, if the money is available, of course.