Re: Best suiting OS

On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Jon Nelson wrote:

> I personally prefer openSUSE (or SLES/SLED if you want their
> commerical offering). I find it faster, more up-to-date (but no
> "churn"), and in general higher quality - "it just works". I find
> postgresql *substantially* faster on openSUSE than CentOS, but that's
> purely anecdotal and I don't have any raw numbers to compare.
> openSUSE 11.1 has 8.3.8 and 11.2 (not out yet - a few months) will have 8.4.X.

As I was saying upthread, statements like this all need to be disclaimed
with the relative default kernel versions involved.

openSUSE 11.1=Kernel 2.6.27
RHEL5=Kernel 2.6.18

You don't need to provide numbers; that kernel sure is faster. And I can
grab 2.6.27 or later for my CentOS systems, too, if I'm willing to live
outside of the supported envelope.

SUSE SLED also uses the 2.6.27 kernel, which wasn't too bleeding edge in
March 2008 when SLED 11 came out. RHEL5 came out in March 2007. If RHEL6
comes out before SUSE 12, they'll leapfrog ahead for a while. With
versions aimed to live 5 years, you have to be aware of where in that
cycle you are at any time, and right now RHEL5 is halfway through its
lifetime already--and accordingly a bit behind something that came out a
year later as far as performance goes.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD