Nacho-BSD

[Steve Bergman]

Brian K. White wrote:

> I have to use what will work the best.
> I'm still not a Linux lover. I see it as the least evil. I really wish 
> SCO hadn't turned into a Dali painting. If I love any OS it's that.
>
I don't really miss open server.  I think someone pointed out the Digi 
drivers are easier under SCO.  (By the way, whoever said that, I think 
you will find that their drivers actually work with more versions of 
Linux than those listed in the docs.)  I find that is true of many 
things serial.  SCO was born into an rs-232 world.  Linux was born into 
a networking world.  Much of Linux's rs232/422 stuff seems bolted on.  
Then again, SCO's tcp/ip seems bolted on.

At any rate, and the real reason for this post, is to suggest CentOS to 
you.  As you probably already know, it is the premier community 
supported version of RHEL.  It is very well maintained.  Security 
patches are prompt.  The support mailing list is excellent.  It comes 
with over 7 years of support from the time of release.  The current 
release is CentOS 4.3, based on RHEL4, which was in turn based on FC3 
and was released a year and a half ago.

Other options would be CentOS 3 based on RHEL3 based on RH9 ( I think).  
Or CentOS 2, based on RHEL 2.1, based on RH 7.2.  Even with the ancient 
CentOS 2, 3 years of support are left on the clock.

RHEL/CentOS only makes releases every 18-24 months.  So it's not the 
ever-moving target that some other distros are.

I've been quite pleased with it.

As to the BSDs.  Even though I don't happen to use them myself at this 
time, I'm a big believer in the idea that all the POSIX-like OS users 
are "family".   If FreeBSD is adjusting its development style, best of 
luck to them.  We're all still suffering from the damage done by the 
UNIX Wars.  This is probably gonna come off sounding pretty corny, but 
open-source OSes could really benefit from more people applying the 
Vulcan concept of IDIC:  Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

-Steve