If you've not heard of Redhat's licensing changes... what rock have you been under?

... on to my question: What are the major differences of these two pieces of software? Both seem to have a devout following.

From what I've gathered over the last couple of years, Redhat seems to be the predominant *nix flavor of choice, for most hosting companies. Is this (if indeed a fact) because of performance/security/ease of operation issues, or is it simply the best branded solution available.

Personally, I've only ran Redhat on my personal boxes. I do use windows a lot still for my design work and due to my limited experience with Linux as a whole.

Once I do move into a dedicated situation, it's a must that I feel somewhat comfortable with being able, to at least troubleshoot any problems that may arise. Hence my reasoning for asking of the differences between the two flavors mentioned. In an effort to keep my accounts payable (once I go with my own dedi), I will most likely be looking hard at FreeBSD as my OS of choice.

I don't expect anyone to spoon feed me this information but, I would appreciate if some of you that are experienced with one (or both) could help shed a little light on the pros and cons of the two.

Thanks in advance... !

I don't know a whole lot about differences in OS.. but what I know is RedHat is most common, and aparantly most stable for webhosting boxes, and FreeBSD is most common as well as stable in the Shell Hosting boxes.. not sure why they are better for different things, this is all I know.. hope it was helpful.

Thanks Gordon! You did give me information, not known before now.

I appreciate that.

Not a problem.. I will let you know more information as I find it out, most likely later in the day.

Redhat 'is' going corporate with the new releases and dropping support for all the open source versions. The other flavour are still the same and I know most of the folks I know are looking at either Debian or FreeBSD.

Glitch with FreeBSD is the support of common hosting scripts, but it is getting better - time to watch the news I suppose.

REDHAT! All the way. ANd the corporate doesnt matter as my datacenters will let us run the new redhat for free

Whats that other redhat called, the free one?

Still the current version 9 - the commercial/enterprise version is nicknamed Fedora (just the same one though) and any datacenter running it will have to pay when they get it released on a commercial basis so no more freebies. The older/existing versions are ok but for any support or kernal upgrades your stuffed. I know perfectly good servers still on 7.2 and happy with it.

Yea, i am running Redhat 9 on all my servers now. but in the future i may use the Fedora as i want keneral updates and such.