What is the risk to switching from RedHat to CentOS?

[2verb]

The company where I work is thinking of switching from RedHat to CentOS. As an afterthought they decided to ask me about the LabVIEW software that runs on the Linux system.

The very obvious answer which I have already passed along is that NI only supports RH, open SUSE and Scientific Linux, but I want to educate myself so that I understand the risk.

There is no NI hardware on our Linux server. We use LabVIEW so we can have the same codebase on the cRIO, Windows, and Linux targets we support. The cRIO version obvioulsy talks to NI hardware, but does so through target specific plugins.

I understand that CentOS is a derivative of Red Hat, but how close is it? Should I just be able to put in the LabVIEW install disk and go? Or should I expect trouble?

Thanks!

[Randy_H]

From everything that I know, LabVIEW should run just fine on CentOS. CentOS is a very close derivative of RHEL with only a couple of packages functionally different (ignoring the documentation, logos, and such). There are some kernel differences, but if you are not dealing with HW directly, then you should probably be fine.

Of course, you could always suggest back to them about switching to Scientific Linux instead. It is also a direct RHEL derivative and is fully supported by NI.

[mariogiov]

+1 for Scientific Linux. It's extremely similar and has a really great user community and the backing of some really big groups (e.g. CERN). I'm equally happy with CentOS or SL but if one's supported and the other's not I'd say it's an easy choice.