Free Enterprise
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
REVIEWS CentOS CentOS GNU/ Linux and the enterprise difference FREE ENTERPRISE The stability and longevity of an enterprise Linux distribution costs big vest in custom software and develop business practices without having to money – or does it? BY JOHNNY HUGHES worry about those items becoming obso- lete. Enterprise OSes normally come at a he Community ENTerprise Oper- cles and support cycles. Enterprise OSes price, and the monetary cost can be ating System, also known as are designed for longevity and stability. quite significant. Most of these enter- TCentOS [1], is a free alternative Most of these enterprise systems have prise OSes, with a year of updates and to the high cost enterprise systems pro- release cycles of between 12-18 months phone support, cost between US$ 300 vided by companies like Red Hat, Suse, and support cycles that range between and US$ 2,500 per year and server. The and Mandriva. We asked a CentOS lead 5-7 years. higher cost plans offer advantages such developer to tell us what makes CentOS Before enterprise OSes, users of GNU/ as shorter response times and more different. Linux systems had to upgrade their ma- hours of phone support. chines about every year or risk losing The appearance of the enterprise OS What is an Enterprise their ability to incorporate security up- gave customers another option. Users Operating System? dates. Custom scripts and programs could settle for either: An enterprise operating system is not de- would often fail to run or compile upon signed for people looking for the “latest upgrade as newer versions of Bash, GCC, CentOS Derivatives and greatest” software with bleeding and python were released. Many projects are now based on the edge graphics, the newest kernels, lots of Several GNU/ Linux providers came up CentOS project, including: games, and other new bells and whis- with the enterprise OS as a response to • OpenFiler http:// www. openfiler. org/ tles. Plenty of GNU/ Linux distributions this dilemma. An enterprise OS system • SME Server http:// smeserver. fit the bill of “latest and greatest.” These does not change the versions of the sourceforge. net/ HomePage distributions are released about every 6 major software components during its • RocksClusters http:// www. months and normally require a constant lifetime, thereby creating a longterm sta- rocksclusters. org/ state of upgrade because support gradu- ble product for users who want to build • Asterisk@Home http:// ally disappears when a new version is their business processes and keep them asteriskathome. sourceforge. net/ released. These “latest and greatest” dis- stable for several years. • Boston University’s BU Linux 4.5 tributions generally have a release cycle Enterprise OSes still need security up- Server Edition (Zodiac) http:// linux. bu. of 6 months and a support-cycle of 12-18 dates when problems are found, but edu/ content/ view/ 64/ 36/ months. they do not break things like Apache • NewOnce Networks CentOS / Blue Quartz Installation CD http:// www. An enterprise distribution, on the module APIs or switch C compilers. This nuonce. net/ bq-cd. php other hand, has much longer release cy- longevity and stability allows users to in- 40 ISSUE 65 APRIL 2006 WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM CentOS REVIEWS 1. A free (or low cost) conventional CentOS comes in three GNU/ Linux distribution, with a short major distributions: release cycle and short support cycle. CentOS-2, CentOS-3, and 2. A higher priced enterprise OS with a CentOS-4. CentOS has long release cycle and long support support for the x86, x86_ cycle. 64, S390, S390x, IA64, sparc, ppc, ppc64, and Rebuild Projects alpha architectures. (Most Many in the GNU/ Linux community of the other rebuilds have started wondering if it would be possible only x86 and x86_64 to have the best of both worlds: a stable versions.) system with a long support cycle at no This extensive invest- cost. Amazingly enough, GNU/ Linux ment from developers does provide this option. Most of the around the world means GNU/ Linux distributions are licensed that CentOS is a real work- under the GPLv2 [2], which states that ing operating system with Figure 1: Manage CentOS updates with up2date. source code must be given to people a significant place in the who ask for it. Nowhere does it say that Linux landscape. The latest survey by Lifetimes” for more on the schedule for the compiled software, must be given netcraft.com estimates that CentOS is CentOS support. away for free, but the availability of the running on close to 100,000 web servers. CentOS updates can occur in either of source code is a fundemental principal This puts CentOS in the top 8 GNU/ two ways. The simplest method is with a of the GPL. It is therefore possible to Linux distributions with deployed web new version of a package as released by take the source code provided by the en- servers [7]. CentOS is the only free en- the package maintainer. A second form terprise OS and turn it into a fully func- terprise OS in the survey. of update occurs through a concept tioning operating system. This insight CentOS is rated in the top 20 GNU/ called backporting. Backporting [13] is a gave rise to a new form of GNU/ Linux Linux and BSD distributions at Dis- process where a security update is ap- distribution: the rebuild project. troWatch.com – the highest rank for an plied to an existing package instead of A rebuild project is a distro that re- enterprise rebuild project. moving to a new package. Backporting builds the source code provided by an can be used to correct a security prob- enterprise OS and distributes it for free. What to do with CentOS? lem where the new package could break CentOS is a rebuild project based on a You can use CentOS for any of the tasks existing content. ■ prominent North American Linux distri- you would otherwise asign to a vendor- bution. Some other famous rebuild proj- based enterprise system. CentOS can be INFO ects are Scientific Linux [3], Tao Linux a replacement for Server Message Block [1] CentOS.org: http:// www. centos. org/ [4], and White Box Enterprise Linux [5]. (SMB) domains using Samba (samba- [2] GPLv2: 3.0.10-1.4E.2). With support for Micro- http:// www. gnu. org/ copyleft/ gpl. html Enterprise Ambitions soft Windows NT no longer available [3] Scientific Linux: CentOS is a larger and more elaborate [8], CentOS and Samba can be used as a https:// www. scientificlinux. org operation than many of the other rebuild secure Primary or Secondary SMB Do- [4] Tao Linux: http:// www. taolinux. org projects. The CentOS team has ll devel- main Controller, SMB File Server, or SMB [5] White Box Linux: opers and their work is available from Print Server. This solution is especially http:// www. whiteboxlinux. org/ more than 70 mirror sites around the promising as an SMB replacement while [6] CentOS mirrors: world [6]. using the included OpenLDAP (open- http:// www. centos. org/ mirrors/ ldap-2.2.13-4) and the smbldap-tools [7] Distribution rankings: http:// news. Support Lifetimes from IDEALX S.A.S [9]. netcraft. com/ archives/ 2005/ 12/ 05/ strong_growth_for_debian. html CentOS provides the following support Users also put CentOS to work as an [8] Retiring NT: http:// www. microsoft. lifetime schedule: enterprise-ready mail server, name server, com/ ntserver/ productinfo/ availability/ • Centos-2: Full Updates (including web server, file server, and database sys- retiring. asp hardware updates): This period ended tem, as well as a desktop client system. [9] IDEALX: http:// www. idealx. org/ prj/ on May 31, 2005. Maintenance Up- CentOS is also often employed as an ISP index. en. html dates: June 1, 2005 to May 31, 2009. server using 3rd party ISP software like [10] Managing Software with Yum: • CentOS-3: Full Updates (including cPanel, Ensim, Plesk and Virtuozzo. http:// mirror. centos. org/ centos/ 4/ hardware updates): Currently to Oct docs/ html/ yum/ 31, 2006. Maintenance Updates: Nov CentOS Updates [11] CentOS Documentation: http:// mirror. 1, 2006 to Oct 31, 2010. Users can obtain updates from the Cen- centos. org/ centos/ 4/ docs/ • CentOS-4: Full Updates (including tOS Network with either Up2date (Figure [12] CentOS Repositories: http:// mirror. hardware updates): Currently to Feb 1) or Yum. For more details, see the doc- centos. org/ centos/ 4/ Readme. txt 29, 2008. Maintenance Updates: Mar ument called “Managing Software with [13] Backporting: http:// www. redhat. com/ 1, 2008 to Feb 29, 2012. advice/ speaks_backport. html Yum” [10]. See the box titled “Support WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 65 APRIL 2006 41.