Tech Choices - Why we use Centos instead of Debian / Ubuntu

For the couple years I've been doing this, I can't think of any downtime that wasn't caused by something other than the OS.

Heck, even my desktop hasn't had OS caused downtime.

I would bet my experience would be the same if I was using CentOS.

Also, there are so many different ways you can automate your server and app deployments, that your choice of OS should really depend on what app you are running. A cutting edge app might need the latest Ubuntu release to get the latest packages. Another app might need the stability of an LTS release. And another might only work with an RPM based OS and specific versions of dependencies that are only found on CentOS.

Anyway, that's my opinion and experience. I am curious if there's statistical/scientific evidence supporting the idea that CentOS/RHEL is more stable than Debian/Ubuntu.

You can sort through tens of thousands of existing PKGBUILDs on the AUR [1], which typically makes it quick and easy to start packaging software for Arch. You can even sync a flat text file database of all official Arch packages with abs [2]. The ability to reverse engineer every PKGBUILD for a wide variety of software is a major plus in my book.

Writing a PKGBUILD takes roughly the same effort as compiling software from source with a bash script. PKGBUILDs are simple to write, and there's just enough "magic" in Pacman to keep things sane.

Nine times out of ten, the PKGBUILD writing process boils down to copy/pasting directions from README or INSTALL files. It's like a bash script, except more 'done-for-you'. Finding exact dependencies is typically a cinch with the AUR and tools like packer.

Maintaining a rolling distro can be a labor of love, but if you love the system, you'll find it may significantly increase your overall sanity. It's another way of doing things, but I consider choice of distro to be one of the more important decisions to make, and IME, Arch has been such a significant departure from other distros that not trying it in a serious capacity is roughly equivalent to not trying Vim / Emacs ever in your career. Which is to say, I think it's a mistake not to at least see what it may offer you, especially if you're in any doubt.

I hope my positivity is only seen as that: positivity, and not overzealous dedication to one specific toolset. Arch probably isn't a panacea, nor will I claim that it's a perfect fit for your way of doing things. But I have never found something as pleasant as Pacman to work with. In addition, I never would've even tried Arch if I hadn't been slightly flustered by the seemingly irrational exuberance random sysadmins displayed for the system.

1: https://aur.archlinux.org

2: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Abs

No, because many people have experience which contradicts theirs, and they don't provide any support for their claim: no information on what the stability issues or troubles they encountered were, no information on the causes and how they were specific to the OS in question as opposed to e.g. user error, no information about how CentOS would do better on that issue, etc.

All the indications are that they're making a very typical sort of claim that people make when trying to defend a decision that they're not qualified to defend. They provide no reasons to take it seriously. As I said, it's content-free.