In the past I’ve been asked a lot about what the difference is between RHEL and Fedora – a lot of people think that Fedora is just a ‘free’ version of RHEL with pretty much the same features with the only difference being that you have to pay for support with RHEL whereas Fedora is only community supported. Unfortunately there are more differences between Fedora and RHEL than just support. The best way I can describe it is a comparison between a Formula 1 car (Fedora) and a well-cared-for Mercedes road car (RHEL). The F1 car has all the latest gadgets and technology and is on the bleeding edge of design, but unfortunately things can go wrong, and things like the tires wear down and sometimes the car flies off the track after a corner (update). If there’s a design flaw (bug) the chances are they won’t re-design a new car mid-season just to fix it – they’ll rather fix it in the next design.
The F1 car design gets a new release each season with a new paint job and better performing spoilers etc and unfortunately accidents still happen. After a year or so, the old car design is scrapped completely and parts aren’t made specially for it any more (it’s reached End-Of-Life and is no longer supported).

On the other hand however we have the Mercedes road car which has drawn all of the experience of building the engines and parts for the F1 car, but have had the time to mature the technology used in F1, make it extremely resilient and safe and put it all into a stable car. You can be confident driving the road car that nothing will break unexpectedly and that even if it does, you can take it to the garage and they’ll figure out what’s wrong and make it right again (bug fixes). You get air bags (RHCE’s ). You also get the peace of mind knowing that the car has a warranty and will last for a long time to come, and that parts will always be available for it, and that the tyres won’t wear down quickly etc. All because you know the car has been safety tested and engineered to withstand a crash and a break-down.

I think that’s about as far as I can take the analogy – but I’m sure you get the drift