[Dovecot] OT Re: Dovecot 1.1.x and 1.2.x differencies

[Ed W]

On 16/06/2010 13:07, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> Noel Butler put forth on 6/16/2010 6:49 AM:
>
>    
>> I will never use debian or its derivatives for its outdated crud, and I
>> would rather not use RHEL because of its old but patched methods, gentoo
>> and slackware are the only two serious "Linux" OS's that should ever be
>> in a serious data centre, IMHO.
>>      
> That's an interesting position/observation given that RHEL, SLES, and CentOS
> (RHEL derivative) have the largest datacenter footprint in the US by far.
> Across both oceans, mainly Europe and South America, SuSE rules pretty much
> everything, from what I've read.
>
> All the numbers I've seen show Slackware and Gentoo at the very bottom of the
> charts, almost zero penetration.  Debian has far more datacenter penetration
> than either of these.
>    

Agreed - I'm a Gentoo user exclusively and would argue in favour of it's 
use under certain circumstances, but definitely it's for a niche 
market.  If you want a product which competes headon with the OSX and 
Windows products then it's not gentoo, instead the RHEL/SLES (Ubuntu?) 
type systems are what suit best

I think I can make a case for either being "best", but to summarise the 
key features:

Gentoo
- Rolling "stable" version.
- Packages updated on an ad-hoc basis
- Small regular updates vs massive OS updates
- Tendency to push new versions of packages to fix bugs rather than 
backports of bug fixes to older packages
- Has a "stable" slice which is well tested and evolves more slowly.  
Its unusual for the stable package set to be internally inconsistent, ie 
two packages in stable having some serious bugs versus one another
- Tracking "unstable" involves using less well tested packages.  But 
note that there is still a *high* level of Q&A on the unstable 
packages... In fact it's a bone of contention that there is a second 
level of "unstable" which exists as a mess of repos just like with 
Debian/Redhat, where packages that don't yet meet core Q&A standards 
tend to hang out.
- Suits administrators with a strong linux skillset who want the option 
to build a customised infrastructure around a core packaging system and 
a fairly stable well tested set of packages

RHEL/SLES, etc
- Favour picking a slice of packages and labelling them stable until the 
next OS release
- Favour backporting bug fixes to old packages rather than bumping 
package versions
- Tends to prefer functionality and APIs to remain stable between OS 
releases
- Often semi-official backport repos available to offer new versions of 
software, but this author's opinion is that if you are looking to 
install some fairly recent software package it frequently descends into 
a case of adding unsupported ad-hoc repos, and/or building your own 
packages or source installs...  For this author at least it's very easy 
to get stuck in "package hell" where bumping one package seems to 
require bumping many other packages to meet dependency requirements...
- Basically it's a big bang upgrade cycle which favours avoiding 
changing APIs and "stability" over offering the latest and greatest
- Binary updates often have a speed advantage over source packages
- One source of binaries should mean that systems all over the world 
look the same! Important if you are distributing some third party 
software binary!


So I think the package based approach of RHEL/SLES will dominate the 
distros in mainstream services, mainly because whilst it doesn't 
preclude administrators being skilled, it does seem to lower the bar and 
allow less skilled users to admin systems.  Also the consistency of 
infrastructure is something which is easier to sign-off on than a source 
based architecture.

However, at least when I last looked, the Engine Yard (engineyard.com) 
was using Gentoo to deploy their fairly substantial hosting service 
machines...  So at least one "larger" user is using a source based 
distro in the field.

If you are a fairly skilled Unix admin then I would definitely suggest 
you check-out a source based distro such as Gentoo - it really offers a 
lot of benefits and for those who can master it it actually has the 
potential to reduce the complexity of maintaining your systems...  For 
everyone else stick with an RPM/DEB system - gentoo will just drive you 
nuts...

Cheers

Ed W