CentOS, on the other hand, has a long slow development cycle. CentOS 5 is still in beta but should have its stable release out at any moment. CentOS 5 is for all intents and purposes a cleaned-up version of Fedora Core 6 so the migration for you would be much easier. And you can continue on with the same distribution for years.

Another good option would be Ubuntu “dapper” 6.06 LTS. Though honestly, I have some doubts about the Ubuntu project’s claims that they will maintain this distribution for years. Still, I find it to be a very easy environment to work in and some of my boxes do run Ubuntu. Other releases of Ubuntu are under a rapid development cycle, much as Fedora Core, and would be less appropriate for long term hosting.

Yes, we have heard of Centos, but there is one major problm for us in changing OS. Fasthosts, our hosting company provide a complete package based on fedora, and all their support is fedora based. I know that voming to centos, ubuntu, or any other distro will include pretty signifiacnt downtime and additional support costs. I’d rather explore the upgrade routes first before deciding what to do. Our contract with fasthosts is up in August, so by then we may have decied to setup a new dedicated webserver on centos, or ubuntu, and migrate then.

at this stage, all options are open!

thanks for the input

Thanks for your kind words regarding the help our team at OpenAdvantage, have provided.

I thought you might like to know of the new venture we have launched and in particular the areas of debate considered in the first tranche of topics.

Please see http://www.nationalopencentre.org.uk/activities/subject-panels.
OS for SME’s is one of the first and important areas that needs addressing.
Open Standards and Public Procurement also.
We welcome you and everyone to get involved.
Take a look at the rest of the site also - some valuable information.