Brent Frère wrote: I believe that there are enough differences between SLES and SuSE Pro which could make commercial software fail. OTOH, CentOS is 100% identical to RHEL on the source code level, giving it a much better chance to run the targeted software without problems. Also, CentOS users do test just that, so the risk is really limited and feeback would be given to the project. Of course, vendors will not certify their product for CentOS, but who cares? If you chose to use CentOS, you don't want the RHEL support. But CentOS will allow a company to save money Another even more important point is that CentOS will allow you and me to exercise your skills and prepare RHCE / RHCT exams without expenses. That second point is IMO the most interesting one for non-commercial Linux people. There's no perfect alternative for SLES here. This way, RHEL is a real product on my server through CentOS, but there's no way I could get a SLES, either genuine or cloned, to play with without paying some serious money. That's a commercial disadvantage for SuSE, and might be the reason why RH does "support" CentOS is some indirect way. -pu

SuSE Linux Professional is an updated super-set of SLES, so what works on SLES should work also on SuSE Linux Professional. As a copy of the DVDs is around 50 € (update) and is usable on as much as wished computers, I think there is no need for a recompilation of SLES, as the use of such a recompilation should make official support for big softwares (Oracle, ...) void anyway...