OZ

Organizational Battle Ubuntu vs Gentoo vs RHEL & Fedora

July 29th, 2008

Part 3                                                                                                                        (Read from Part-1)

Red hat Enterprise & Fedora :

Red Hat was created by Marc Ewing in 1994 , he then partnered with Bob Young to form the Red Hat Software. The Red Hat has received several security certifications that make quite popular among the govt. Organizations.

Red Hat Enterprise Edition is Priced It has Web and Phone Support.

Red Hat has an Open Source version named Fedora , it’s community supported.

Red hat– Red Hat ’simple guess ‘, Fedora– A soft felt hat with a crown creased lengthwise

Security :

Red Hat Enterprise Edition has received The Labeled Security Protection Profile(LSPP) and Role Based Access Control Protection making it one one the most demanding secure versions of Linux out there ,but at a cost.They research and implement several Security Tools. Red hat encloses SELinux by default as discussed earlier it is highly efficient but time consuming to set on apps but mostly it comes pre-configured along with the apps in Red Hat Enterprise. Fedora Also embeds some of the security packages that are available in Red Hat like , Exec-Shield which aids in preventing worm or automated remote attacks also Compile Time Buffer Checks(Fortify_Source) are done with it to prevent any abuse of existing source code available online which could be modified , (Executable and Linkable Format) Data Hardening,Restricted Kernel Memory Access which restricts as to of how the kernel memory is overwritten.

Red Hat Security : 4.7/5

Fedora Security Rating :4.2

Technology & Support :

Red Hat and Fedora includes support for visualization XEN where several OS can be run simultaneously with optimum mutilation of resources , Red hat also includes Conga that aids in online access and control of apps and data in cluster environment. Fedora Runs on i386, ppc, x86_64, SPARC and alpha. Red Hat supports several Server Environments and the supported architectures include Intel and AMD x86/x86-64 Intel Itanium2 IBM POWER IBM System z and S/390.

Red Hat has the best support Of all being an Enterprise Edition it is quite obvious. It is quite expensive so if money is not the main concern then Red Hat is a safe bet. Fedora being open-source does have forum support but not an official technical support like Red Hat has. Red Hat does not implement the latest packages available without testing throughly on their parameters hence some of the latest 3^rd party packages are released to Fedora.

RHEL Technology Rating : 4/5

RHEL Support Rating : 5/5

Fedora Technology Rating : 4/5

Fedora Support Rating : 3/5

Installation And Troubleshooting :

Installation is done with Anaconda which is the installation program. Anaconda is a flexible installer , it also can upgrade the existing system. It also does remote installation via NFS , HTTP , FTP. The best characteristic is the Kick-Start Installation wherein a installation script is set and multiple automatic installation can be done with no attention. This makes the setting up of systems easier.

For new softwares released they are usually put under test by Red Hat and it takes a while to get in Current trend this makes it safer but loses out on the edge of new packages whereas in Fedora they are implemented as they are released. This keeps fedora more to the Casual Desktop users and developers who seek the latest. So it is a viable candidate for the front end systems.

In Red Hat and Fedora , the package manager used is YUM (Yellow Dog Updater). This is a command line utility supported by many GUI front ends like YUM -Extender ,’pup’ &’pirut’. With YUM the required packaged can be easily retrieved from the source and installed with the required dependencies making installation of packages a pleasure. Red-Hat also includes the rpm(Red Hat package manager).Trouble shooting in RHEL is easy as you have support for it whereas in fedora it will involve some ground work before it is resolved the other distros you post and get the bug fixes in the site.

Installation Rating : 4.7/5

Red Hat Troubleshooting : 4/5

Fedora Troubleshooting :3.5/5

Performance And Reliability :
Red Hat is probably one of the most Reliable as it has been tested and tried and then released. Fedora might be unstable sometime due to certain new apps but crashes are rare. Performance of red Hat server machines are not usually great for the price one pays. But it can be tweaked for greater performance , after all the world’s fastest super computer built by IBM – Road Runner runs on Linux software developed by Red Hat.

RHEL Performance Rating : 4/5

RHEL Reliability Rating : 4.7/5

Fedora Performance Rating : 3.9/5

Fedora Reliability Rating : 3.5/5

Backup And Recovery :

Red Hat has several Backup applications and solutions offered. Net Vault : Backup provides complete control over the data backup. It comes with several Application Plugin Modules to provide continuous availability of critical apps. The other tools include Arkeia Network Backup which works on several Server architectures for backup of data. Arkeia has also developed Disaster Recovery so a complete data retrieval is possible in case of damage. Fedora has several open source tools for backup and recovery.

Red Hat Backup and Recovery : 4.5/5

Fedora Backup and Recovery : 4/5

Investment And Management :

The investment one put in For RHEL will be higher than the other this is an important consideration if the company plans to invest minimal on systems. If cost is the major factor then RHEL is not a viable option. A Workstation will cost 300$ with phone support for a year , Server OS will cost 1300$ with phone support a year. Fedora can be chosen if open source is preferred to cut down the costs , but will require a technical expertise for management.

Red Hat Investment Rating : 2/5

Red Hat Management Rating : 4.5/5

Fedora Investment Rating : 4/5

Fedora Management Rating : 3.5/5

————————————————————————————————————————

Rating Table :

O.S
Security	3.5	4.2	4.7	4.2
Technology	3	4.5	4	4
Support	3.5	3	5	3
Performance	3.5	4.7	4	3.5
Reliability	3.5	4	4.7	3.5
Investment	4	4.5	2	4
Management	3.9	3	4.5	3.5
Installation	3.5	2.5	4.7	4
Troubleshooting	3.5	3.5	4	3.5
Backup & Recovery	4	4	4.5	4

Tags: Fedora, Gentoo, linux, OS comparison, Red Hat, Ubuntu
Posted in Techie ozzie blogs, Uncategorized | Comments (2)

2 Responses to “Organizational Battle Ubuntu vs Gentoo vs RHEL & Fedora”

1. cnu Says:
   July 31st, 2008 at 5:39 am

   Great review. But when it comes to organisations, we have had problems previously when there were two groups - Fedora and Ubuntu. Due to version mismatch, missing packages in one distro, we had to switch over to one distro for all. And when it came to selecting that one distro - we had usability in mind. I still think that Ubuntu has made linux more usable and accessible to common people.
   Maybe my views might be biased as I have been using Debian based systems for many years.

2. skype, Buscador de Numeros Celulares Says:
   March 23rd, 2009 at 4:31 am

   [...] OZ » Blog Archive » Organizational Battle Ubuntu vs Gentoo vs RHEL … [...]

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