Hi All,

I'm setting up a new hosting server and I'm trying to descide between Redhat Enterprise and Fedora (probably core 2). What are your thoughts on this matter? I'll be using cpanel.

-Marc

I would use Redhat Enterprise or its free clone CentOS. Its a very well supported product, updates are timely etc. Fedora on the other hand is not a great server choice, for one many of the programs included are cutting edge stuff that is still being tested, the lack of testing means little help when you run into a problem, and more chances of running into a problem. On top of this they completely abandon their old releases after a few new ones, meaning there will be no longterm updates for the OS.

I highly agree with u2mike. Fedora is not a good choice for a server OS. Fedora is designed as a beta desktop OS for testing the latest technologies. Once new featuers have been tested in Fedora, they are later added to Red Hat Enterprise. There is no support for Fedora and their release cycle is very short (about 6 months) compared to the slower releases of RHEL. Since they don't provide updates for older relases of Fedora, you would be forced to upgrade your OS very often just to stay patched.

Have somewhat of the same problem here ... and some add-on questions:

We use RedHat 9 for several Plesk servers, but now we like to get several more cPanel/WHM servers with Linux, and I also tend to get RedHat Enterprise 3.

My questions are these:

"Redhat Enterprise or its free clone CentOS" -- how much is RedHat Enterprise in license fees, if anything? Some colleagues tell me they don't have or need (?) a license, or at least not more than one for several servers. Is that correct? So, with 5 or more servers to set up, what's the cheapest solution.... never heard of CentOS.

Then, can you suggest a *good* extensive handbook for RedHat Enterprise, or a Linux handbook that also covers RedHat Enterprise? (My Linux books are outdatated.)

Thanks!

Centos/Whitebox/Tao are all RHE clones and work very well.
FC is a testbed for RHE and has a very short life.

oclick - your colleagues have misled you. Licensing details are available on redhat's site.

Centos is probably the best option of the non-commercial releases as it has been adopted by a number of vendors and has a strong development community behind it as a result