FOOD FOR THOUGHT I'm confused: CentOS or Ubuntu

unsichtbarre

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I follow nerdvittles.com carefully for direction with my VoIP hobby and had recently decided on (in fact I built) Incredible PBX 12 with Asterisk 12 and FreePBX on Ubuntu 14.04 as the platform of choice.

Now, the most recent post on nerdvittles.com seems to be an update of an older post detailing the installation of PIAF 3 and Incredible PBX 11 on CentOS 6.5, with much conciliatory wording regarding the folding of CentOS into Red Hat.

I realize that the comparison is not quite "apples to apples," but still, what's the best choice for a sustainable system moving forward? For a while, it seemed as if Incredible PBX was moving to a decidedly OS agnostic position, but now it seems as if RHEL/Cent might be the preferred platform after all?

I like and use CentOS and Ubuntu, so I am just seeking the opinions of the community.

Thanks,

-John
 

Jay Deal

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Having used both the Ubuntu and Centos platforms with IPBX / PIAF, the Centos version running on 6.5 is the most polished, turnkey and stable currently. I say currently because 6.5 is starting to get a little old in the tooth. At some point the 6.5 version will no longer receive updates so future security issues may not be upgraded. And updating, upgrading and loading packages in Centos is a major PITA and not very friendly to Linux noobs. Long term, investment in the Ubuntu platform may be your best bet as this appears to be the way things are heading as far as PIAF / IPBX is concerned, at least that is how I am reading it.
 

unsichtbarre

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THX! I love the LTS feature of Ubuntu. I am having trouble making the Hospitality-Management system work correctly on Ubuntu, and was considering trying the CentOS install to see if it made any difference.
 

Jay Deal

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THX! I love the LTS feature of Ubuntu. I am having trouble making the Hospitality-Management system work correctly on Ubuntu, and was considering trying the CentOS install to see if it made any difference.

I guess it's a matter of how much time you have to try. At least there are options, back a little over a year ago hardly any of the PIAF / IPBX variants that exist now, existed. Now you have installers for Centos, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone Black, Cubox, Pogoplug and Fedora. That's alot of change in a year. But still the Centos install is the most mature and IMO the most stable.
 

hecatae

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I find either Scientific Linux or Centos 6.6 the most stable, the current piaf3 install script will install 3.0.6.6 at present.

Moving forward, Centos will be producing monthly updated media, see http://ostatic.com/blog/centos-rolls-along-as-opensuse-12-3-nears-eol

I usually net install, or pxe install, both are easier to carry out on a Red Hat derivative.

Ubuntu LTS is 5 years on servers, Centos LTS is 10 years, see http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/General#head-fe8a0be91ee3e7dea812e8694491e1dde5b75e6d

CentOS-6 updates until November 30, 2020, the current Ubuntu LTS will have been end of life for 18 months by then.

CentOS-7 updates until June 30, 2024, 5 years 2 months longer than Ubuntu's current LTS.
 

Jay Deal

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Ubuntu LTS is 5 years on servers, Centos LTS is 10 years, see http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/General#head-fe8a0be91ee3e7dea812e8694491e1dde5b75e6d

CentOS-6 updates until November 30, 2020, the current Ubuntu LTS will have been end of life for 18 months by then.

CentOS-7 updates until June 30, 2024, 5 years 2 months longer than Ubuntu's current LTS.


Talk about my ignorance, I had no idea CentOS would be supported till 2020! Holy cow. Can't imagine anyone else would do that. By 2020, I would imagine Asterisk would be on like version 20 or something so I guess it would probably be used on a much more modern OS at that time. But 6 more years of support is pretty impressive. Maybe by that time we'll have a PIAF/IPBX install that supports VR or holographic phone calls. And Gigabit internet will be standard :driving:
 

jroper

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Hi


Do bear in mind that every LTS version of Ubuntu so far can be upgraded between major versions, e.g. from 10.04 to 12.04 to 14.04, this is not the case, as far as I know, with CentOS.

Upgrades of Ubuntu I have done so far have been quite painless, with a just few changes to support later versions of Apache / PHP / MySQL, but nothing serious.

One thing I do like is that you can be pretty certain as to when the next Ubuntu LTS release will be, each even year in April, e.g. 2016.04 and 2018.04, which gives time to plan.

Joe
 

hecatae

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I'm not disagreeing jroper, but if you are currently running 12.04 which has 5 years support on the server, you are repeatedly informed by it to upgrade when the next lts comes out, this is after 2 years.

any errors on 12.04, you get reminded that support for your 5 years supported release is no longer there and to upgrade, in other words it is security updates only after 2 years.

Compare that to Centos 6, you are not pestered to upgrade to Centos 7, you can run it until end of life, and it is updated and supported until end of life.
 

unsichtbarre

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Thanks for all the great replies. I use both Ubuntu and CentOS (along with actual RHEL and SUSE Enterprise Linux).

I was disappointed when RHEL gobbled-up CentOS without a whisper of advance warning in the various communities. That kind of action lends to thoughts like: "I know what I am doing today is fully supported and encouraged by GPL principals, but will I be in violation of intellectual property law if RHEL retroactively changes the license for CentOS."

I plan on building a CentOS Incredible PBX according to the most recent post on Nerdvittles.com and playing with it for a week or two. Whichever one works best, I plan on keeping and configuring a PBX for by friend's small Inn.

-John
 
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