I'm currently concidering which one to use on a cPanel system. I've heard some rumours that 2.6.7 is significantly faster, but before I change anything at all, I'd like to hear some reviews/benchmark results on this.

Thank you.

Oh, and it's on Fedora Core 2.

FC2 uses 2.6.x kernels thus if you want to compile your own 2.4.x... you better think twice. Just my thoughts ;)

Originally posted by choon
FC2 uses 2.6.x kernels thus if you want to compile your own 2.4.x... you better think twice. Just my thoughts ;)

You can compile 2.4 kernels on fedora core 2. But in my own testing 2.6 has bought significate performence increases to dual cpu and hyperthreading boxes due to smp being rebuilt.

Hm that's odd.. I just upgraded a box to Fedora Core 2 and I still am running 2.4 without any problems at all..

It is different for your case... from FC1 to FC2... as I thought you install FC2 then downgrade kernel... depending on whether did you upgrade all packages or not...
FC1 (kernel 2.4.x) -> FC2 (running 2.4.x or 2.6.x) tried before
FC2 (kernel 2.6.x) -> FC2 (2.4.x) tried once recently with SATA ... bad experience for me as I need more time to research :(
After you think it is worth your time for running on 2.4.x on FC2, by all means... I just try to ask you to think twice... whether is it worth all the trouble doing so :p
Again, just my thoughts ;)

Just upgraded a server to 2.6.x and frankly it handles load more efficiently (dual xeon 2.0)

This is a dual opteron, running 32 bit mode. I indeed upgraded from FC1 to FC2, and I kept the same drivers as I couldn't find the RAID controller drivers for the 2.6.7 kernel. I'm just wondering whether it would be worth it at all :)

How much better would you say the 2.6.x kernel performs? Just a fraction or does it make a significant difference?

Hm and also, I was just reading about CentOS. Is there any easy way to upgrade from Fedora to CentOS? Using yum for instance? I just need an easy way, as I'd have to upgrade at least 25 machines..

Nevermind about that last question, I just found the appropriate mirrors for that :)

Originally posted by choon
FC2 uses 2.6.x kernels thus if you want to compile your own 2.4.x... you better think twice. Just my thoughts ;)

Why not? You can run 2.4 if you want it. I don't see any problems with it.

I'm currently upgrading from 2.4 to 2.6, if I notice any performance changes I'll post it here :)

Originally posted by Apoc
Nevermind about that last question, I just found the appropriate mirrors for that :)
can you share where? :)

Originally posted by picoyak
can you share where? :)

http://www.centos.org/index.php?option=com_mirror2&Itemid=84


However, I'd be careful with upgrading fedora to centos, as most of the software that fedora is using is newer than what centos supports. I'd be careful with that :)

Is it Core 1 or Core 2? I upgraded from Core 1 to Centos using yum before without problems. If you need help, let me know.

Oh, that's very good to hear. I'll contact you rightaway.

As for core 1 or core 2: some are core 1, some core 2. Ofcourse the software with core 2 is newer, but I think that could be resolved too.

What are the advantages over CentOS between Fedora?

Fedora has a life of ~6-8 months, before a new core is relased and support for the prior core is droped. Centos is based off of redhat enterprise so support is there for a while.

Indeed. I'm not having specific problems with fedora, but I don't like upgrading like 50 boxes a couple times a year. I think the life of fedora is even shorter, as fedora core 3 is coming up as well..

Not only that. I watched an RHE box stand up to a DOS attack that would have killed a Fedora box.

After a lot of research I have found there are some base core differences between the two OS'es. Yes, Fedora could be made to handle it as well as RHE, but why put in that much time rebuilding stuff?

Personally we choose WBEL. CentOS is about the same, but I have read about issues w/ Plesk on CentOS and I have had no issues installing plesk on WBEL.

Due to lack of time I'm sticking with Fedora on most of my boxes for now, but I'm seriously concidering to upgrade to CentOS now. Just need to get myself some time for that though, as I need to upgrade a lot of boxes.

I'll post any success (or not) stories here. :)

Well, our RH9 boxes are now WBEL, but the Fedora boxes are a different story. Still working on that.

Can you explain the differences between CentOS and WBEL please? From what I can see they're both forked out of RHEL, but apart from that I can't see any advantages or disadvantages between them.

They are built by different people and every person builds differently. The differences are minute and I have not had time to test Plesk on WBEL. I had been told of various issues here and there with it and choose to go with WBEL.

The only major difference I know is that WBEL currently supports X86_64 where CentOS does not from what I could find. At least it doesn't have any known download locations.

Sometimes it just makes me wonder how safe it is to base a production server on such an OS. You just don't know for sure whether the people behind it are specialists (well, they probably are), and how dedicated they are to their free product. I mean.. what if they'd suddenly stop supporting the product..

That's just what makes me doubt about whether to stay with Fedora or to go with CentOS (or WBEL). The advantages of CentOS and WBEL are that they are more similar to RHEL and less of a beta product. The advantage of Fedora is that you know that RedHat (with a good reputation as a company) is the actual author of the product.

Ofcourse, the best solution would then be to go with RHEL, but I'm not really willing to pay for that as it's always been free.

www.whiteboxlinux.org You can read up all about the person building it, the library backing it, along with there mailing lists. :)

Yes I know about that, but it's still a lot different from a full team that's developing fedora..

And you think a full team isn't developing RedHat Enterprise?

These are built from the RedHat Enterprise Source RPM's. You could build your own if you wanted.

RHEL's rpms? Is that legal? I mean.. isn't that copyrighted or so? It pretty much defeats the purpose of using RHEL at all...

It's all legal. It really DOES replace RHEL. That's why I've been hoping GNAX would start offering it.

Only certain trademarks, logos, etc.. are copyrighted and these are removed in the builds.

That's really stupid, on RedHat's end. If they'd just copyright it, they wouldn't lose money due to centos. That may just be another problem with centos: if they would suddenly start copyrighting rhel, centos would have a problem.

And Andrew: I'm already discussing the possibility of CentOS. I think they see that there's not all that much effort required on their end (and I believe they are currently testing it on a test box) and it can get them some more customers, so there would be a good reason for them to start offering it. It's not like ev1: they don't have pre-setup servers so basically there's no reason why they won't start offering it soon, I believe.

They can't. Linux is an opensource item. All they can do is force the removal of logos, trademarks, etc.. unless they completely redevelop the OS. What they have done is taken the OS and rebuilt the opensource in manners for enterprise computing.

Well in that case they would be better of writing the souces from scratch, so they can copyright it. Ok then it may not be called linux anymore, but it still would work pretty much the same and that would save them a lot of money.

Actually it probably wouldn't. I personally would be looking at other options. And I'm sure someone would rebuild Fedora into a good enterprise product if they did that.

Basically what they have done is say "You want the Redhat name, you pay for it". And by doing that they are producing more money than they did prior to RHEL.

Yes I know why they made people pay for it, I've seen the market stats of RedHat, I believe they had a revenue increasement of like 300% (as far as I remember).

It's just that they would be making a lot more, if people wouldn't be able to copy it. Ok large enterprises will still pay for it, but smaller companies who have a bit of knowledge of linux will find out about what centos actually is rather easily, and go for the free solution ofcourse.

But on the other hand, they probably don't mind anyway, as it would cost them a lot of time to completely rebuild it all, while they already have a nice revenue as it is.

I guess you're right then, just time for me to find out whether centos or something else.

CentOS (www.centos.org) and WBEL (www.whiteboxlinux.org) are the two major players at the moment.

Yes but once I make the decision, I'll be upgrading at least 50 boxes, so I just have to make sure I make the right decision.. :)

I certainly know that choosing for fedora was a wrong decision, but GNAX left us no choise really..