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Cratylus
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#17 id:43200 Posted Mar 9, 2010, 10:42 pm
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David Haley said:Solaris might be a good platform for many reasons, but frankly I find that the outdated libraries and applications available for it make it more of a pain to work in than boon. And yes, it is fairly different from Linux.
h8r
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Deimos
Conjurer
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#18 id:43201 Posted Mar 9, 2010, 11:25 pm
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Kjwah said:Personally, I've had decent success with CentOS but their PHP is quite a bit out of date. All the patches in the world can't bring it up to date... lol
I don't mean to be pedantic or anything, but claiming CentOS's PHP package is out-of-date is kind of misleading. Enterprise level OSes don't push the latest and greatest software packages for a reason. They require rock solid stability, and cutting edge software is the antithesis of that. The reason I say PHP isn't out-of-date is because CentOS (along with RHEL, which is basically what CentOS is) backports bug/security fixes. In other words, they go into their software packages and fix the same bugs that the developers fix when they release new versions. So, while you might not get the latest new features, you'll still always have the most up-to-date stability and security.
Anyway, if you want PHP 5.3+ on CentOS, it's extremely easy. Just grab this popular repo config from a well-known Fedora contributor, install it, and "yum update php php-* --enablerepo=remi". He also has the latest MySQL packages, if you want those as well. I've done this on both CentOS (work) and Fedora (home).
Oh, and if you couldn't tell, I'm a pretty big Red Hat fanboy. I've used just about every major flavor of Linux that's been released in the past 15 years, and I always come back.
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Any sufficiently advanced magic will run circles around technology.
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David Haley
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#19 id:43205 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 12:57 am
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You're not guaranteed to get every bug fix if you rely on backports. Some fixes require more than is easily possible with a straightforward backport. Also, this is assuming that the developers continue fixing stuff for older versions in the first place. Say you have PHP 2 on your server, and the current version is PHP 7 (making up numbers). What is the likelihood that a random bug fix to PHP 7 will really apply to PHP 2? So yes, a good maintainer will do what they can to track fixes, but eventually that becomes rather difficult to do and you will start lagging unless the developers provide backwards support in addition to your maintainer. Of course, the advantage is that you're not getting all the bugs that come with the new features, so it's a trade-off really.
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Blinx
Apprentice
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#20 id:43220 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 9:42 am
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Cratylus said:Blinx said:Anyone using the more exotic stuff? Like Solaris, Darwin, Pure Darwin, Free BSD, Firefly?
I found out about Solaris and Sun's Virtual Box being free, just recently. I fear I can't hold back the geek in me any longer, now. 
Solaris 10 is an excellent server platform. I don't recommend it as a desktop, really. For
a Solaris desktop use OpenSolaris instead.
There will be a substantial learning curve if all you know is Linux.
-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
And if all I know is Windows and Unix? :)
Never really used Linux, at all.
My idea is to use Solaris as a host system, since Virtual Box should be faster on it, than say on Windows or MacOSX.
Most of the programmer's work would be done in a Windows XP VM, while the server would run either under Solaris or in a Darwin window (heard Pure Darwin is pretty close to be added to the Virtual Box support base).
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Deimos
Conjurer
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#21 id:43225 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 10:14 am
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David Haley said:You're not guaranteed to get every bug fix if you rely on backports. Some fixes require more than is easily possible with a straightforward backport. Also, this is assuming that the developers continue fixing stuff for older versions in the first place. Say you have PHP 2 on your server, and the current version is PHP 7 (making up numbers). What is the likelihood that a random bug fix to PHP 7 will really apply to PHP 2? So yes, a good maintainer will do what they can to track fixes, but eventually that becomes rather difficult to do and you will start lagging unless the developers provide backwards support in addition to your maintainer. Of course, the advantage is that you're not getting all the bugs that come with the new features, so it's a trade-off really.
I thought it went without saying that fixes for problems that don't apply to previous versions of software packages wouldn't (couldn't) be backported. 
And RHEL has quite a bit more than just "good maintainers doing what they can to track fixes." I don't think you quite understand what an enterprise level OS is if you think this is the case. Indeed, Red Hat actually has dozens of employees whose sole purpose in life is to find and fix problems with packaged software (and a lot of the times they do so even before the software developers are aware of the problems themselves).
Anyway, I just wanted to clarify it in case someone was reading this thread and thought to themselves "oh man, CentOS/RHEL must be a horrible OS if they don't even keep their packages up-to-date," because that's obviously not the case.
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Any sufficiently advanced magic will run circles around technology.
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David Haley
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#22 id:43236 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 12:22 pm
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Hmm, I wasn't trying to say something so simplistic as fixes for problems that were created for new features wouldn't apply. Rather, it was that some fixes can eventually become intertwined with new features to the extent that it's difficult to extract the fix from the feature.
And no, I'm well aware of what "enterprise-level OSs" are, however in my experience they haven't been quite as nice as you say.
Regardless the point remains that you will be using software that is very likely to be several versions out of date, which sometimes is a far larger problem than having what are likely to be relatively obscure bugs fixed. Security is a different question, of course.
But the simple fact of the matter is that if your application requires Python 2.6, for instance (or Ruby 1.9 or Lua 5.1 or whatever), and the fancy-pants enterprise OS only has Python 2.1 (or Ruby 1.4 or Lua 4.0 or whatever), well, you're basically up a creek without a paddle unless you're willing to maintain a local installation.
For this reason, understanding that "enterprise-level OSs" don't have new versions of software can actually be very important, and I would in turn say that saying that they actually do keep things up to date is in fact misleading itself.
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Deimos
Conjurer
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#23 id:43260 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 3:26 pm
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David Haley said:
[...]well, you're basically up a creek without a paddle unless you're willing to maintain a local installation.
If you want the latest Python/Ruby/whatever, and you don't want to maintain a source-compiled installation, you simply find the repository that has the version of the package you're looking for and use it. You can even configure your system to use it during auto-updates, if keeping it "up-to-date" floats your boat. I see no reason why you would think you'd be "up a creek without a paddle." I've never found myself in such a position since I began using Linux in general. 
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Any sufficiently advanced magic will run circles around technology.
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David Haley
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#24 id:43264 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 3:59 pm
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Well, sure, if you start allowing arbitrary third-party repository sources -- assuming that such things exist for your particular combination of software and enterprise OS, which isn't at all a given -- then you can get the software provided by those sources. But the whole point of using an enterprise OS is to not do things like that, really, because you want the stability etc. So if you're going to start getting new versions of all kinds of things, you eventually might as well get a non-enterprise OS.
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Tyche
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#25 id:43268 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 4:19 pm
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Blinx said:Anyone using the more exotic stuff? Like Solaris, Darwin, Pure Darwin, Free BSD, Firefly?
I use Windows, although I try to maintain backward compatibility with unices.
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For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
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Deimos
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#28 id:43276 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 5:08 pm
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I already gave a prime example for CentOS/RHEL up a few posts. There's also EPEL. I can't speak for non-RH platforms, because I don't use them and don't know anything about their package management systems or subsequent resources. I'd still blindly bet on them having equivalents, though.
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Any sufficiently advanced magic will run circles around technology.
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David Haley
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#29 id:43280 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 5:44 pm
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I'm somewhat surprised that you think that it's ok to want to use something for rock-solid stability etc. etc. and then at the same time use something maintained by some dude who does it for apparently a hobby. I maintain that if you get to the point where all your production software is running from sources other than your enterprise OS provider, well, it's unclear how much you're really getting from them anyhow for anything other than the kernel.
In other words, the only way to get recent software is to rely on people who are essentially doing it as amateurs. You've lost all advantages for that software that you were supposed to get by paying for your enterprise OS. :shrug:
Also, you mention EPEL but even cursory investigation reveals that EPEL won't replace packages but only provides add-ons.
Also, more cursory investigation reveals that neither Remi's repository nor EPEL provide Python 2.6, and it's not the available version in RHEL5. And it's been out since October 2008. So... yeah. :shrug:
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Deimos
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#30 id:43291 Posted Mar 10, 2010, 7:03 pm
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David Haley said:
I'm somewhat surprised that you think that it's ok to want to use something for rock-solid stability etc. etc. and then at the same time use something maintained by some dude who does it for apparently a hobby.
Remi Collet currently works on the Fedora project.
David Haley said:
In other words, the only way to get recent software is to rely on people who are essentially doing it as amateurs.
No, it isn't. Most of the people running and contributing to these repositories contribute to the OS and software projects found within it. You're going to trust them to make the software, but not deliver it? Shrug. If that's the case, then you should just get comfortable building from source. It's not rocket science, after all.
David Haley said:
Also, you mention EPEL but even cursory investigation reveals that EPEL won't replace packages but only provides add-ons.
It serves packages like lua, git, clamav, wine, etc. If you don't need what it has, use another repo.
David Haley said:
Also, more cursory investigation reveals that neither Remi's repository nor EPEL provide Python 2.6, and it's not the available version in RHEL5. And it's been out since October 2008. So... yeah. :shrug:
Python is a special case, because yum itself requires 2.4, so there's no way around having to manually install it in parallel unless you're some kind of wizard ninja.
Anyway, my intention was merely to educate people on backporting so that they didn't get the wrong impression about a great OS. I think I've done that as well as I can possibly do it, so I'll leave it at that.
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Any sufficiently advanced magic will run circles around technology.
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