I think there's an exageration as well, today the trend seems to be "use nothing by the distro"
Ok, sure, MongoDB still changes a lot between versions, in this case you should use the latest version.
But stop there. Especially if you're paying for support (like RHEL)
There should be a good reason for you to compile Apache / MySQL / PostgreSQL / Python. Otherwise, use the distro version. One (common) exception would be "we need Python 2.7 but this ships only 2.6"
Most of the "just download and compile" have no idea of the work that goes behind Linux distributions to ship these packages.
Yes, I'm sure you're going to read all security advisories and recompile all your stack every X days instead of running apt/yum upgrade
Yes you should, but if you have them: do it. That’s what the article says. ;) Please don’t push it in a wrong direction.
What I actually wrote is: because we’re a LAMP web hoster, we compile MySQL+PHP+Apache ourself. And because we’re a Python shop, we don’t let Ubuntu/Red Hat dictate which Python version we use.
Ok, sure, MongoDB still changes a lot between versions, in this case you should use the latest version.
But stop there. Especially if you're paying for support (like RHEL)
There should be a good reason for you to compile Apache / MySQL / PostgreSQL / Python. Otherwise, use the distro version. One (common) exception would be "we need Python 2.7 but this ships only 2.6"
Most of the "just download and compile" have no idea of the work that goes behind Linux distributions to ship these packages.
Yes, I'm sure you're going to read all security advisories and recompile all your stack every X days instead of running apt/yum upgrade