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Comment by kureikain | Hacker News Reader

I always scare of CentOS/Fedora. Whenever I updated something, it will be very old packages. Leading to use 3rd repo, and without any kind of document, the next sysadmin will be in trouble. I used to install Gearman on Centos 5.9 and it was a nightmare: the original 3rd repo didn't have gearman and I have to use other repo which is complain about PHP-Common conflicting. Remi and webtactic did help at the end.

It's hard to keep Centos Update to date with latest software IMHO.

I'm not an SysAdmin but I think the idea of APT and YUM is same but why it's so hard/trouble to use YUM?

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The issue is not the package manager, the issue is the repositories you're enabling. See https://iuscommunity.org/pages/TheSafeRepoInitiative.html for details.

Fedora is the RedHat "testbed" and has regular updates similar to the debian/ubuntu universes.

One of the core features of CentOS/RedHat/Scientific Linux/etc is their longterm support and package freeze (excluding critical security updates). If you are reliant on a different version of software from the default repositories (both newer or older) then you are encouraged to build and package them yourself. Additionally in the RedHat-derivative universe there is the EPEL package repository which contains a wider range of software and is kept more readily updated in addition to being maintained by the Fedora Project (essentially RedHat).

Besides using third party repos, you can also use Red Hat Software Collections for the official Red Hat offering of more recent packages (requires RHN, not available for CentOS).

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Softwa...

As another approach to mitigating dependency hell, you might consider using Docker containers for your services.

Software Collections are available for CentOS.

http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/SCL

Very nice, thank you.

Huh? Fedora is probably the closest you get to a bleeding edge distro without going rolling release.

Only if you upgrade regularly. Support is very short and you'll get stuck without updates.

Perhaps it's what you're familiar with and the intended use case. I personally can't stand the way APT won't let you override certain behavior. RHEL / CentOS have always favored stability over being bleeding-edge, and in my experience EPEL provides enough newer software to make the system usable for most cases, although if you're wanting the latest frameworks, etc.. I can see that being incompatible with your needs. I have very rarely had any problems with broken dependencies in Red Hat repositories except for the occasional 15-minute hiccup. SUSE seems to have more problems, but still has never been enough of a problem to make me question using it in production.

I think the third-party frameworks issue can be solved with LXC / Docker. If app x requires library y and supporting utility z, this can all be put into a container without having to update the OS's versions of y and z.

Although personally I've had more instances of running into an incompatibility with the older CentOS 5 kernel than with any of the libraries in the distribution - which LXC wouldn't be able to help with.

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