Enterprise distributions and free software

Personally, I'm responding from Chrome 11.0.686.3 dev, running libc 2.11.2 (ok, not the latest&greatest), compiling with gcc 4.5.2 with 4.3.5, 4.4.5, and a 4.6 snapshot available for testing... All of these come with bug reporting and fixing so I don't have to go it alone.

With Debian (and Fedora, and...), you can pull newer versions of tools if you need them. You can at least see how the version chance affects the system even if you decide not to use the Debian version. I don't get why people insist that the named "stable" release is the only thing available. I know apt lets you set defaults to pick and choose easily, and I assume the other distributions' tools do.

I suppose it's another thing I don't get about "enterprise" distributions. You tie your timeline tightly to the producer's decisions. I'd rather be able to tie our cluster upgrade and testing timelines to our calendar.

But, again, I'm talking about systems used for development of some flavor. I suppose shipping a word processing box is different, but you definitely don't want the latest & greatest there, either. Retraining is a major cost.