On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 7:33 AM, Billy Crook billycrook@gmail.com wrote:
Michael,
Fedora is published by RedHat, and developed and controlled by a mix of RedHat employees, and external community. It is Free Software, and gratis. Fedora strives to include all the latest technologies and software. It also has a strong focus on only officially supporting Free Software. Things like DVDs, MP3's, and proprietary drivers are intentionally excluded from inclusion in official Fedora releases because those technologies are encumbered by restrictive patents or licenses. Fedora is released often (every 6 months), and "supported" for a relatively short period of time (eleven months from the initial release date). Fedora often retires technologies that didn't get used much or weren't as useful as originally hoped, and each release is an opportunity to make sweeping changes.
Just a note about Fedora from a proud Fedora user: If a cool piece of software comes out that is known to eat children and kittens, and it's FOSS, and finds a maintainer, Fedora will include it. Somethings in Fedora can be extremely bleeding edge: often working with things long before they get picked up by Ubuntu and others.
Contrastingly however, core parts of the distro such as Python and Gnome are often a lot more conservative.
I will also add though, maintaining your own intermediate repo (which is essential for a large deployment anyways) will take most/all the unwanted edge off of Fedora.
I personally suggest using CentOS on the server, and maintain a budget to hire a consultant/contractor any time something goes above the heads of your team.
---- Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin ( www.pembo13.com )