On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Ned Slider <ned@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Akemi Yagi wrote: >> >> While we are still discussing the subject (or are we?), *yet another* >> new person posted a question in the forums [1]: >> [1] >> http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=17299&forum=38 >> >> A link to the "planned" what-is-an-enterprise-class-OS article/FAQ >> would have been handy. > > Well, I answered that one this time. Perhaps we could use my answer (below) > as a starting point/draft for a FAQ entry. Feel free to comment or offer > edits as appropriate: > > CentOS is an Enterprise-class operating system (built from the freely > available source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and as such is more about > stability and long-term support than cutting edge. Major package versions > are retained throughout the life cycle of the product, so when RHEL 5 (and > hence CentOS 5) originally shipped with php 5.1.6 you can reasonable expect > that php will stay at that version for the 7 year life cycle of the product. > This is generally what Enterprise wants and affords developers a stable base > on which to develop without fear that bespoke applications will break every > time something gets upgraded to the latest and greatest, but ultimately > buggy version or the API changes breaking backwards compatibility. > > So no, you will generally NOT find the very latest versions of various > packages included in an Enterprise-class operating system such as CentOS. > It's a feature not a deficiency > > Security fixes are backported into the shipped version. See here for > details: http://www.redhat.com/advice/speaks_backport.html Thank, Ned. I went ahead and added this to the wiki FAQ with minor modifications: http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/General (currently the last item) Akemi
