CentOS vs. Fedora and their differences

[Pilot22]

What are some important differences between Fedora and CentOS? I think both are good to master if someone wants to be a Red Hat Linux administrator. Fedora has short lifecycles. So a person has to keep up with the updates and refreshes. For educational purposes and general PC needs (e.g., web-surfing) they seem comparable. Does anyone know of some key differences between these two distributions?

[Irithori]

Fedora is the testbed of RedHat Enterprise linux (rhel).
This is where new tools and concepts are tested "in the wild".
Hence the short release cycle and the project/community approach.

Rhel is intended for enterprise (server) usage.
You need to buy a subscription to get access to updates and SLAs.
Furthermore, RedHat maintains multiple services, e.g.

• hardware certification program
• security tracking
• Documentation
• Training and certificates

In short: The focus is on professional use and stability.
Hence the long release cycle and support, but "old" tool/app versions.


RedHat honours the gpl by releasing the sourcecode of their modifications and patches.
Which means: Binary compatible clones can be built.
Examples are CentOS or ScientificLinux.
These are freely available (as in both beer and speech) and share technical benefits of rhel.
Updates tend to be a bit slower than on rhel, but still acceptable.
Depending on the usecase, Centos/SL can be viable options to run a business.

[oz]

Does anyone know of some key differences between these two distributions?

The Red Hat website has a pretty good comparison page for anyone wanting to know more about the differences:

redhat vs fedora

[Lazydog]

It all depends on what you are looking to do. If you are looking for what might be incorporated into the next release of RH then Fedora is the place to be.
If you are looking for stability then Centos is where you want to be. As stated above Centos is a copy of RH with the trademarks removed.
I have been using Centos for some time and I am happy with the results.