> is there evidence that rhel is more stable than debian?
Well, yes Debian versions are supported for 3 years, RHEL for 10+.
"Stability" means changes, not crashes (although they can be caused by changes). A piece of software compiled 10 years ago will still run today and the systems can continue to get security updates, without needing to change the rug.
> Well, yes Debian versions are supported for 3 years, RHEL for 10+.
if upgrade path is easy and stable, it is obviously more sustainable to upgrade versions every N years, compared to situation when you got 10yo EOL infra far behind mainline with no clear way to support it in the future.
> it is obviously more sustainable to upgrade versions every N years
I've heard this kind of thing before, but it's worth considering that utility, government, and infrastructure software may be under different kinds of constraints than what you're used to.
Testing field upgrades takes years and the rollout often takes a year or more. There are hundreds of different teams involved and every one of them wants to ensure they don't miss the thing that bricks a submarine, satellite, transmission line, or IRS portal. If you can do this half or a quarter as often you can save taxpayers tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
And in a surprising number of cases the software is never upgraded for the ~25 year or so lifetime of the hardware because the cost of the upgrade is comparable to the cost of buying new hardware. Sometimes that means some poor development team backports security patches for antique versions of DOS or Unix, but in more cases than you'd think they just airgap the computers and hope for the best.
> worth considering that utility, government, and infrastructure software may be under different kinds of constraints than what you're used to.
I worked on a government project where new software was being built on COBOL because they had those devs available. No commercial company in their right mind would build any new applications in COBOL, but government is a different animal.
But given the number of COBOL platforms available that have dwindling numbers of maintainers, someone with that skillset can demand a very decent chunk now, I'm told.
It's not that simple. Sometimes you care less about the OS than you care about the app. If your app vendor built against a specific version of an OS, you can't just upgrade the OS. You have to stick with the original OS to keep the support contract from your app vendor.
Well, yes Debian versions are supported for 3 years, RHEL for 10+.
"Stability" means changes, not crashes (although they can be caused by changes). A piece of software compiled 10 years ago will still run today and the systems can continue to get security updates, without needing to change the rug.