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Comment by CoffeeDregs | Hacker News Reader

There's a middle ground that's kind of lost in this argument: create a 'rolling' distribution and cut-and-stabilize LTS releases from it. This is kind of how I treat 'testing' in Debian and I've only seen a problem once in 5 years. If you want stability and consistency, use an LTS release. If you want more recent software, use the 'rolling' release. While this is mentioned in TFA ("edge"), it's glossed over.

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Just to echo this, I do much the same with Slackware. I use -current on some machines. Every time a release is pending, work on -current slows down (or does it ramp up?) and it is stablised.

It's essentially a development release rather than being explicitly labelled "rolling" (and, in fact, its use as a day-to-day distribution is generally considered A Bad Thing if you're not a Slackware developer/tester). It just happens to have the bonus of also being a pretty bleeding-edge, yet stable rolling release.

So, it's possible to achieve both a rolling release and "stable", versioned releases.

Slackware-current is basically as stable as Fedora is at any given time so it's hard to really discourage its use.

Honestly, Slackware is almost a RHEL/Fedora type ecosystem when just taking about official packages. Slackware-current gets new stuff, Slackware releases only get bug fixes, and not too many of them at that.

I'm not sure I agree with that comparison. Slackware-current will become the next stable release once all of the kinks have been worked out. Is RHEL ever really a snapshot of Fedora?

> Is RHEL ever really a snapshot of Fedora?

Basically yes, Fedora is Red Hat getting free testing of features and when it's time to create a new RHEL release, they grab a Fedora release, set it in stone and work from that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux

Red Hat Linux 6.2 → Red Hat Linux 6.2E

Red Hat Linux 7.2 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1

Red Hat Linux 10 beta 1 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3

Fedora Core 3 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

Fedora Core 6 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Fedora 12, 13 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

From the same article:

RHEL trees are forked off the Fedora repository, and released after a substantial stabilization and quality assurance effort.

Which adds a quote from the Fedora Project:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a commercial enterprise operating system and has its own set of test phases including alpha and beta releases which are separate and distinct from Fedora development.

And on that page[1] it states that RHEL6 is based on a "Mix of Fedora 12 Fedora 13 and several modifications".

Sorry to be pedantic, but that's significantly different than the Slackware model. Maybe it's just PTSD; I fled from RH in the old days onto the path that led to Slackware, so any comparison makes me touchy.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux?rd=R...

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