It took Red Hat 16 months to produce the newest version of its premium Linux product, which went on sale in February for as much as $2,499 per computer per year. It took a group of programmers less than two weeks to release a free clone. But the move could help Red Hat as much as it appears to hurt it.
Programmers bypass Red Hat Linux fees
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Isn’t the point of GPLd software (and one of the business hazards) to allow you to distribute unlimited copies without paying for it?
Just cause you CAN doesn’t mean you should.
Red Hat pays the guys that make the break throughs, look at the story from yesterday for instance with the wobble window. How many of those kinds of projects do you think the cent OS guys are going to write? Use cent OS if you must but don’t donate to them, donate to the guys who actually wrote cent OS..Red Hat.
i agree with bitterman, it might be possible not to pay for the product (aswell as legal) but redhat spend a lot of time doing it and if you want redhat to continue developing someone’s gotta pay for it and these are the users.. no users no development which means again less users because linux gets unattractive.. let’s not forget that most ppl. working fulltime on linux do a great job at it! i agree they should be payed aswell as i think that the work should be made available freely..
This has always been possible, those who want to run their own private webserver who may be tech-savvy enough to fix problems on their own, or utilise free support (community forums etc) CAN, however no big company is going to do this, and they’re going to pay top dollar to get a great product as well as great support.
Also as there are free alternatives out there, there are loads of college geeks out there learning their trade on a redhat system, these geeks go on to start and join companies that use redhat and employ people who can run redhat systems, these people pay to gain redhat qualifications and then pay to use redhat.
It’s like having windows computers in schools, people grow up used to using windows, therefore windows is used in most companies because it’s what the majority of the population knows.
Honestly I can get the same type of server using Gentoo, and with gentoo you don’t have the hassle of having to rebuild RPMs because some dink at RH forgot to include support for one thing or another.
A good example is this:
I recently installed RHEL 4 and wanted to install Postfix, So far so good, it comes with Postfix, great. But as I soon discovered the RHEL version of Postfix did not have support compiled in for Postgresql or MySQL, so I had to download the source rpm, then I discovered that the source RPM spec only had a option for for Mysql, no postfix. I really didn’t want to mess around with RPMs anymore, so I just download the source from postfix.org and compiled it myself.
The point is on Gentoo if I wanted Postgresql support I would have simply had to add postgres to the make.conf file and I would have been all set, and in about 5 minutes I would have had a custom compiled version of Postfix with the support I needed and optimized for my hardware, instead I had to monkey around with RH RPMs and then install from source anyway.
They really need to offer a version with pay as you go support or drasticly reduce the yearly subscriptions for EL.
Debian is also much better as you can easily add Postgres support with out even having to compile anything. you simply apt-get postfix, then apt-get the pgsql option and boom you have PG support for postfix.
tresko,
They make money by providing services to entities who need custom software to solve specialized problems. Free software does not spell doom for programmers. Only ignorant people think so.
People are been “smart” and end up helping “RedHat” just like they were RedHat employees. 🙂 Cool. Keep it up, smartos…
This is a trend in computing thats emerging as a result of open source. The actual development of bits, has no value, its the services one tries to deliever over the bits that are supposed to be the business model. Much like google, yahoo, etc.
Google doesn’t make money off the BSD derivative they’ve created and deployed — its basically just a computing utility for their platform. They make money off of their service, the search engine, news engine, etc.
This is basically what Red Hat is/should keep doing. The development that goes into the OS should honestly be subsidesed by the support licensing contracts. If the actual bits developed are intended to be a money maker then they’ve missed the boat entirely.
An easy way to think of it would be like the cellphone sector. The phone is the untility platform, and while developement goes into it making it better. Every company subsidised the cost so its practically free — because the money comes from the services provided on the platform.
If people want a free Linux there’s plenty of alternatives. This way they go the RedHat way and help reinforce RedHat’s standards. It also makes any future migration to RedHad easier for these users.
So … RedHat wrote MySQL, the Linux Kernel, X.org, Gnome, KDE, SELinux, OpenOffice.org, FireFox, Evolution, Mozilla, etc.
Of course they didn’t … they repackaged it from the original authors.
I don’t know what your problem is, but you obviously don’t understand open source.
RedHat charges for support, not for the OS. If you want/need their support, by all means, please use their product.
Without that product, there would be no CentOS … just like without the projects I listed in my first paragraph, there would be no RedHat.
i cant wait for the day when all software is open source and the avg programmers salary goes down to about 5000 a year because things like this start happen. [snip] how can programmers make money if everything is Open source??
I see that you are one of those people who think that Open Source means “no money”. Some Open Source programmers do work for free. Others are employees of businesses, and (much to your surprise, I take it) they even collect a salary!
Please go troll your blather somewhere else. It is one thing to try to discuss a point, and a completely different (and unacceptable) thing to try to incite flame wars by posting emotional blather. Grow up a bit before posting, please.
RedHat didn’t write CentOS silly, 90% of RHEL/CentOS is GNU software. All that is added is initscripts, some configuration tools and QA. Of course that counts for something, but saying RedHat actually wrote the OS is an overstatement IMO. GNU software should be available freely.
If people prefer to use community support and community compiled packages it is signal that Red Hat prices are high.
What is the solution ? Decrease prices until there is no financial advantage for people not use official support.
While GPL permits license fees for linux distributions I am against any “old school” market tatics of license software. Hell, if anyone is using linux is to scape from licenses by CPUs, by individual machines, etc. However I thint it is fair to charge support services, priviledged ftp servers (to make faster updates), etc.
Remember: Linux arrives to change business pratices, not to be another proprietary Unix version (which market decline proved that people don’t like this).
Those guys are sure smart, but i guess they should take windows to mess with and leave Linux distros for real things. This fact doesn’t make a good picture about Linux. Think about Linux opponents next time before you attempt to do similar, guys.
While i like open source I also very much like proprietary software and believe. Theres a place in the marketplace for both. And the way you make money off open source in large part is by having customers pay for support and consulting services.
In fact Oracle’s database software is certainly not open source but its also freely downloadable and useable. So where do they make their money??? Suport contracts. Lots of them.
Many larger companies much prefer paying a copany to provide a single expert level support rather then just doing things ad hoc. This is especially true in compaines with thousands of people.
So … RedHat wrote MySQL, the Linux Kernel, X.org, Gnome, KDE, SELinux, OpenOffice.org, FireFox, Evolution, Mozilla, etc.
Of course they didn’t … they repackaged it from the original authors.
I don’t know what your problem is, but you obviously don’t understand open source.
Actually they had a lot to do with those programs. They had/have ‘teams’ of coders working on all those projects (‘cept maybe KDE, OO and Evolution)coming up with many of X’s new features, the 2.6 kernel work Red Had did was nothing short of HUGE for linux. Mozilla before it was 1.0 had half of Red Hat pounding away on it because we needed a browser BADLY at the time. SElinux had most of its design done and hard work but RH hired a top SElinux guy and came up with the ‘targeted’ policy to protect services so again, they pull their own weight..So again, what major feature has the Cent-OS guys ‘written’ to pull their own weight.. oh, they changed a file location from /usr/bin to /usr/local/ Gee thanks guys, here is your $100
So Red Hat pulls its own weight with OSS
Ummm, its open source, they aren’t “bypassing” anything, they are doing what the GPL has allowed for 20 friggin years. Does anyone know how to make better titles?
“It’s like having windows computers in schools, people grow up used to using windows, therefore windows is used in most companies because it’s what the majority of the population knows.”
Well having a monopoly certainly didn’t hurt. Anyway Apple tried that path. It worked for a little while. Didn’t take over the world though.
The main force that’s working in Linux’s favour is FREE! Anyone with a computer can try it. No need for exposure at school or work, when you can get exposed at home. (well that doesn’t sound right
. Even LiveCDs make the process painless.
“Also as there are free alternatives out there, there are loads of college geeks out there learning their trade on a redhat system, these geeks go on to start and join companies that use redhat and employ people who can run redhat systems, these people pay to gain redhat qualifications and then pay to use redhat. ”
Still a bit of a supposition, especially considering Linux still has a new distro springing up every month, and brand “loyalty” only goes so far.
Anyway the point of people’s complaints are still valid. The GPL (by design) means that one’s work get’s shared, and there’s nothing inherent in that process that means anyone get’s compensated. A gift economy based upon the vagueness of how people feel at any given moment. As long as the number wishing to give charity balance, or outnumber those who don’t, the overall process plods along, even if there is the occasional casualty.
GPL fans go on and on about how wonderful the GPL is because it allows people to do exactly this, it is what their big “selling point” is, then when someone goes and does it, they rant on about dont support them, they are leeches, etc. Only one word is approptiate. Hypocrites.
i cant wait for the day when all software is open source and the avg programmers salary goes down to about 5000 a year because things like this start happen. Why dont OSS retards see this? how can programmers make money if everything is Open source??
Strawman argument. I doubt that any but the most myopic OSS zealot would claim that the goal is to get to a point where all computer software is open source (not realistic, nor even necessarily desirable). Leaving aside the socio-economic realities that make your scenario ridiculously unlikely, do you actually think it’s possible that we’d get to the point where E.g. military software and the software that manages hospital equipment would be OSS?
“While i like open source I also very much like proprietary software and believe. Theres a place in the marketplace for both. And the way you make money off open source in large part is by having customers pay for support and consulting services. ”
This only works for software of a sufficient complexity. I doubt cd-burning software is going to require a consultant, and it doesn’t need a whole lot of support.
Maybe the commodititizing of software will cause Linux software to become more complicated, running counter to traditional practices.
I hate when people start comparing Distros when the topic is someting else. The thing is not all distros work on all computers. For example, as much as I like freebsd it does not work on my computer. Same goes with gentoo after a day of compilation you figure out something is wrong or broken or after an upgrade some apps stop working all together “emerge -u world”. I love working with experimental distros, but at a certain point you have to get work done. I have FC4 on my laptop and every day there are 54 – 78 updates, which take possibly 20min -1 hour to finish. Man I use my laptop for 3 hours a day, how can you justify updating everyday.
I like CentOS for the fact that it is not updated frequently and any changes that I will in terms of custom settings will hold and not be lost in the the maze of updates.
And the service is excellent. Easy to manage, tech support is quick and excellent. RHN is a dream compared to what I have seen with the proprietary Unixes. I am moving as many servers as possible over.
While it may seem expensive, I get 24-7 support for a fraction of what I am paying for HP-UX on the same hardware. Still also get the source, which makes application development much easier.
“Strawman argument. I doubt that any but the most myopic OSS zealot would claim that the goal is to get to a point where all computer software is open source (not realistic, nor even necessarily desirable).”
Well it’s the squeaky wheel that get’s the complaints.
“Leaving aside the socio-economic realities that make your scenario ridiculously unlikely, do you actually think it’s possible that we’d get to the point where E.g. military software and the software that manages hospital equipment would be OSS?”
Sounds like a complaint about the development process. Anyway there’s a lot of ground between some kind of GPL utopia, and the present situation. We should be carefull assuming that it will be a painless process as F/OSS fills that space.
I’m not being hypocritical because I like the fact its OSS and people can use it. Cent OS was rebuilt by some Scientists if I remember correctly cause they couldn’t afford RH so they built it themselvs, this part is fine and great but to ask for donations when little to no work is put in? Again to clarify there is nothing wrong with USING the code thats what its all about. I personally want to FUND OSS so I PAY the ones doing a good chunk of the work. I look at it as paying them to contract an OS for me. No matter what happens I am basically guarnteed by RH that if I decide to leave them, I can take the code with me (ala cent OS).
This is just IMO but id rather pay 200 guys who work together full time as a team with a plan and a vision, than paying 1000 guys to work on weekends they feel like it who all want o do the cool stuff but ego’s prevent everyone from going in one direction instead you get 3 brilliant minds doing 3 different things.
And you don’t think that the CentOS project solves problems, or posts bugs (along with patches) to the redhat bugzilla for both RHEL and Fedora Core.
Maybe you also didn’t know about the CentOS work on making a bootable G5 Mac PPC distro (the RHEL doesn’t support) … or a 32 bit PPC for Mac users…Or several of the other things that the Centos team is involved with.
Or maybe you don’t think there is any value to the projects that are using CentOS to build other stable products, like:
http://www.openfiler.org/sponsors/
http://www.visualmediatech.com/
http://contribs.org/modules/phpwiki/index.php/SME7-Centos4
(there are others as well)
Maybe you should subscribe to the Mailing-List (or review the ML archives) … or joing the #centos channel on irc.freenode.net and do a little research before you decide that the CentOS project is not giving back to the community.
If this is so easy, I challange you to build RHEL from source … using only publically available files. Any arch of it that you choose.
I thought the main advantage of paying Redhat was the service support you get with that $2499. Who do you call if the cloned version has a problem?
Isn’t that the point?
>>Honestly I can get the same type of server using Gentoo, and with gentoo<<
1) Redhat and Novell are certified to work with Oracle.
2) Redhat and Novell are security certified
3) Redhat and Novell give management that warm fuzzy feeling of working with an established corporation, that can provide support, and will be around awhile.
Those things may not mean anything to some high-school or college geek; but they are very important to corporate users.
That said, I also thing redhat is too expensive. But, redhat’s competition will come from: sun, mandrake, novell, and msft – not debian or gentoo.
walterbyrd wrote: “But, redhat’s competition will come from: sun, mandrake, novell, and msft – not debian or gentoo.”
It depends. Large corporations usually have their own in-house IT support staff. For such corporations, deploying Gentoo or Debian may be economically prudent.
a good example of how opensource opens up opportunities not found within proprietary solutions is the linksys wrtg54g wireless router. sveasoft (http://www.sveasoft.com/) took the gpl’d kernel that linksys used, added many things (ssh,etc..) and sold it as a flashable file. linksys still makes money in selling the hardware and sveasoft makes money supporting an enhanced version.
take a look at http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040527.html for a great article how this approach offers great potential.
No you cannot. Gentoo is a full upgrade distribution. To keep your security updates you will have to perform many feature updates as well. RedHat typically only make security updates, so you don’t have nearly as many upgrades to do (I think I get about one a week). On my Arch desktop, another feature upgrader, I get more like 15-20 updates a week.
BUT, I don’t want anyone to think that because I like / support CentOS that I don’t like or support RHEL.
RHEL is great. If you need a rock solid OS in the enterprise, and you need 24/7 support, by all means, please use RHEL.
CentOS fills a niche that currently isn’t filled. A low cost / free product that is enterprise level in it’s release cycle.
RedHat is a very pro OSS company, and their policies are what make Fedora Core and CentOS possible.
I am not now, nor have I ever said, that people shouldn’t use RHEL or other RedHat products … actually, I hope more and more people use RHEL. It is a very solid product.
They make money by providing services to entities who need custom software to solve specialized problems. Free software does not spell doom for programmers. Only ignorant people think so.
I am a supporter of F/OSS. However, I can see how things will breakdown for programmers should the RMS view of ‘all software should be free’ were to become the standard. Yes, some companies, like RedHat, Mandrake, and others, will pay programmers to work on code that will be released as open source. Other programmers will run from contract job to contract job making customizations to open source software for companies that need a modification. However, the pool of available programmers will be much, much larger than the number of paying jobs available, which means that there will be a lot of unemployed programmers. I would like to see more companies embrace the open source development model. However, I need to be able to provide the necessities of life for my family. So, unless someone can point of the flaw in my logic, I am more comfortable with a mixture of F/OSS and proprietary software.
I’ve been evaluating CentOS4 at home and it actually seems to work BETTER than the RHEL 4AS trial that I got, especially when it comes to software updates.
It’s not tied into the abomination that is up2date, you can use yum or apt4rpm (via Dag and CentOS mirrors).
Apparently it’s not 100% the same as RHEL though, and certain software won’t run without some hacking (e.g. HP has some RPM’s that actually look in /etc/redhat-release).
It’s possible this is a good thing for RedHat too – people try out CentOS, then decide they want commercial support, so move to RHEL. It’s not as if you can really get a feel for RHEL from Fedora…..
which went on sale in February for as much as $2,499 per computer per year. It is the $2,500 a year that gets me.
Isn’t the point of GPLd software (and one of the business hazards) to allow you to distribute unlimited copies without paying for it?
The point of GPL has nothing to do with payment. When FSF say that the software is free, they mean you are free to modify it, and free to redistribute your modifications. Free software foundation even recommends that you chould charge for your efforts. The problem is that if the customer have the same rights to modify the software as you, the price tend to go down. This is why many Linux distros can be downloaded for free (as in bear).
Alot of software included in RHEL are software developed by people outside of redhat, should ppl pay redhat for it when they only packaged it in a distro? This is the way OSS should be, free software, pay for support.
I mean, if I’m a business, and I just want a working version of Linux, I can build one easily. The whole idea of buying RHEL is to CYA– when something goes wrong, you have a real company to call, and they’ll give you support. I’m not sure I see the point of getting a copy of RHEL if I won’t get the support to go along with it. I guess to get a slower/more stable release cycle…?
How is this any different from what Mandrake does? Mandrake has (for as long as I can remember) repackaged the latest Red Hat releases. Isn’t this a danger that any for profit company relying on Open Source software should be well aware of? Couldn’t someone just as easily do the same thing to MandrakeSoft?
“Oracle wants to prevent fragmentation in the Linux distribution space,” Monica Kumar, senior manager of Oracle’s Linux product marketing, said in a statement. “Because of the indeterminate number of possible distributions and Oracle’s desire to see customers succeed, it is necessary to confine enterprise-class support to those distributions that Oracle believes can be successfully deployed and supported in enterprise-class environments.”
All those that want Linux to be enterprise ready eventually memorize the above statement from Oracle. To those that are installing their favorite Linux distro’s in enterprise understand that you are not advancing the Linux enterprise fight your hindering it.
…not a licensing fee.
Redhat trademarked artwork simply makes it harder for others to legally redistribute their DISTRIBUTION. It is basic good business sense. Like mentioned above, Redhat doesn’t own the vast majority of the software in their product. Redhat is providing a SERVICE by packaging GNU software and the Linux kernel in a friendly way. Now they are charging an appreciable amount to SUPPORT their distribution. Who better to support the distro than the maintainer of it…that is why there is a price premium. It is really a bargain considering the amount of software that service contract supports.
Redhat accepted the fact that others are at liberty to use their work. That is the GPL which is the basis of their business. RHEL the software distribution is incidental to their true product which is service.
I am always suspect of a CNET news piece and open source. These guys typically make a big out of the smallest thing. Here is Red Hat this huge Linux company and oooo… these geeky kids create distros similiar to RHEL4…. big deal. This was the case last year with RHEL3 as well and what happened? NOTHING!
Red Hat is an open source company, they put all their source code out there in the open and in fact, Fedora Core development tree has the same RPMs already compiled for your downloading pleasure. That is the point of open source, it’s open for everyone to see and inspect, etc.
Tomorrow they will do a piece on Microsoft’s DRM being compromised by a different group of geeky kids. *shrug*
My hats off to Red Hat for being so open in the first place. They have proven that being so open and still making $$$ can be done and they are doing well.
If I was running a company with, say, 1500 desktops boxes and a batch of servers to support them, there’s no way I’d pay RedHat $2500 or even $25.00 for a boxed CD if that’s all I got.
But, if I’d determined that it would cost me $3000 per year to support each of those desktops, plus the servers cost, you bet I’d rather buy all that from RedHat for $2500 per box.
If someone offered me unlimited free CD’s of a RedHat clone, and nothing more, I’m still looking at $3000 per box per year.
If someone else can sell me a RedHat clone plus equivalent support for less than RedHat, I’ll talk to them.
Mandrake has (for as long as I can remember) repackaged the latest Red Hat releases.
Exactly wrong. A long time back Mandrake forked off of Red Hat. But that was a long time ago. Mandrake is now its own distribution and has been for quite a wile. Also Mandrake releases have typically come out ahead of Red Hat and/or Fedora releases. They’ve also tended to include more up to date software (although Fedora may be ahead of the game these days). Perhaps you’re thinking of another distro?
“My hats off to Red Hat for being so open in the first place. They have proven that being so open and still making $$$ can be done and they are doing well.”
They had to target the enterprise to do so.
[Anonymous (IP: —.gen.twtelecom.net) ]
“Like mentioned above, Redhat doesn’t own the vast majority of the software in their product. Redhat is providing a SERVICE by packaging GNU software and the Linux kernel in a friendly way.”
But they do contribute a lot. It would be an interesting question as to what Linux would be like if there was never a Red Hat?
>>Isn’t the point of GPLd software (and one of the business hazards) to allow you to distribute unlimited copies without paying for it?
No. It’s a means to an end. The end (or goal) is to prevent mega-corporations from controlling all software. Allowing free distribution is a means to an end.
So it’s not the point. Not sure the comment or my response is even relevant to article.
>>old adage, Just cause you CAN doesn’t mean you should.
I talk personally know red hat employees, and there’s no ill will towards cent or whitebox..so i have no idea what you are talking about….i guess some kind of moralistic ether whereby from your vantage point you judge your particular view relevant. whatever.
>>Use cent OS if you must but don’t donate to them, donate to the guys who actually wrote cent OS..Red Hat.
It’s not a black and white issue. You pay proportionally. I’d pay someone a little bit to download all of redhat’s SRPMS and compile them for me. It saves me time. I won’t pay much, but I’d pay a little. If I think one of my customers is a good candidate for full blown Red hat support, I have no trouble recommending that. Why do people think in such narrow minded on/off & black/white constructs..sheesh.
>>but redhat spend a lot of time doing it and if you want redhat to continue developing someone’s gotta pay for it (snip)
How much did Red Hat pay the developers/maintainers of Postfix or Tuxracer? Try nothing.
How much did Red hat pay me to “promote” and “push” their product as a viable solution? Try nothing.
I’m not saying Red Hat doesn’t have the right and earn money. I like their product. But things are not simple like you portray. Red Hat looks after it’s bottomline, I look after mine. If Red Hat can’t survive because of it’s current setup/relationship with other businesses and customers, they have to adapt or die. You can TRY AND ORDER PEOPLE TO PAY FOR IT all you want. You might as well try and spit into a headwind. But thanks for playing.
>>(greg said) this is “new”? “This has always been possible (snip)”
Finally, someone with common sense. good job greg.
>>RHEL is to expensive (by snorkel…he mentions Gentoo, so I snipped his entire post)
My comment? Why don’t you go play with your compile flags. This isn’t a gentoo thread. I’ve been using Gentoo for 3.5 years, and it’s great on my personal workstations and servers. It’s NOT going to be installed on a server sitting in the corporate data center. I’m NOT the only employee there, so I won’t subject them to Gentoo. You’re off topic anyway. Thanks for playing.
>>(IP: 144.80.184.—)
Someone else with good sense(no sarcasm, i mean it). Mod up.
That reasons like this are the reasons there’s not a whole heck of a lot of incentive for major commerical development of Linux?
OTOH, IIRC, Red Hat makes its $$$ from selling support packages.
it took 16 months for them to assemble and test packages they didnt write. selling code you didnt write for 2.5k a seat is a sweet deal, the fact someone else can turn around and redistribute it for free is overweighed by that.
not to mention that if you buy redhat stuff, you are not buying it for the actual product (although they have a *very* good brand name), you are buying it for redhat support.
redhat doesnt think they are getting screwed, people who understand how redhat makes money doesnt think they are being screwed. so maybe if you dont get how this is not a bad thing, you should educate yourself a bit more on the opensource business model.
oh, and gentoo as an RHEL replacement really got me laughing.
….it *was* a joke, right?
“But, if I’d determined that it would cost me $3000 per year to support each of those desktops, plus the servers cost, you bet I’d rather buy all that from RedHat for $2500 per box.”
Erm, what do you mean by “support”? It’s only software updates/patches (that CentOS also has) and some telephone tech support.
It’s not as if you can fire your Sysadmin because some guy from RedHat will come install that new RAID card for you, or configure your mailserver for the new marketing dept!
It’s still going to cost you $3000 per box per year to do non-software support on RHEL, just with CentOS you save the initial $2500….
first of all, rhel is certified, centos isnt. that may not seem like a big deal (especially since they are all more or less the same packages) but it is.
secondly, support entails both phone support and updates. it also means that you can push for mods/enhancements. you are right, you cant just “fire your sysadmin”, but in an enterprise environment problems need to be fixed yesterday, and redhat support does a better job at making that happen then any other linux vendor. support isnt anywhere near as big a deal for home users/small businesses.
if you dont go rhel, you will go for another enterprise workstation (like jds), you will not go for cent. something like cent can be attractive for small business or educational institutions, which are not redhats (primary anyways) target market.
You have no clue,
Gentoo is installed in corp data centers, I know this for a fact. RedHat may be easier to initially install, but that’s about it. Anyway a base gentoo install with no X server does not take that long and is not rocket science.
A base install is all you need for almost all kinds of servers, compare the services running in a RH Linux 4.0 install to a base install of gentoo, there is no comparison, and then do a netstat and see all the services that are listening on RedHat, it’s a long list.
<My comment? Why don’t you go play with your compile flags. This isn’t a gentoo thread. I’ve been using Gentoo for 3.5 years, and it’s great on my personal workstations and servers. It’s NOT going to be installed on a server sitting in the corporate data center. I’m NOT the only employee there, so I won’t subject them to Gentoo. You’re off topic anyway. Thanks for playing.>
Mandrake has (for as long as I can remember) repackaged the latest Red Hat releases.
If this were 1998, you’d be right. But since the 7.x series (I think 7, might be 6), Mandrake has been it’s own animal.
Agreed, that is very expensive. I would not pay for that out of my own money.
if you really think that, you have no idea what you are talking about. JDS is comparable to RHEL, gentoo is something completely and totally different.
You all realize that this so called support you all talk about is for people that have no clue and for managers that have employees that can’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground.
Can you make a loud popping sound!! That’s their heads comming out of their asses.
I have been working in IT for over 10 years and not once have I ever called for support on Windows or Linux.
Why.. because I can find out the information by myself.
So don’t try and tell me that debian and Gentoo are not installed in corp data centers. That is just plain garbage.
There are lots of things that RHEL does poorly and the others do much better, for instance the syslog setup on the default RHEL is just crap, all the log files go into the same dir and things like the mail log are only rotated once per week, why would a enterprise system that would be used for a high load server have it’s mail logs rotated once per week?
Give me a break….
Jaboo,
My point is that there is no correlation between free software and the rise in unemployment of professional programmers. As long as there is an information technology, computer and electronic industry, professional programmers will continue to be in demand, irrespective of the rise or fall of free software.
-“The only thing to fear is fear itself.”
Gentoo can be made into a enterprise server or a workstation.
People, the definition for enterprise is very loose, it simply means that it is industrial strength,reliable and scalable
Look it up for yourself.
From my experience Gentoo meets these requirements as does Debian.
When did i say it wasnt installed in corporate data centers?
“New versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are released approximately every 18 months, after a rigorous development and testing period. Each release is supported with updates and security enhancements for seven years, during which time Red Hat maintains the highest possible levels of stability and consistency. This ensures that applications continue to run without the need for rebuilding or recertification. It is the stable environment offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux that makes it the preferred platform for ISV and OEM product certifications, and therefore ideally suited for commercial deployments.”
(http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/fedora/)
new releases of gentoo happen whenever. testing on gentoo is ok. updates and security fixes happen as the ebuild mainter gets around to it. you are not guarenteed that packages wont be dropped, or that new incompatible versions wont be used. gentoo is not certified for anything. gentoo is possibly the most unstable environment out there. and gentoo deployments are a completely and totally inappropriate for workstations.
THEY ARE NOT EVEN REMOTELY THE SAME THING.
a better comparison would be between debian woody and rhel, but even then they are far from equivilent. woody and whitebox would be a good comparison. as is rhel and jds.
There are many large corporations that do not need support from Red Hat. They have their own internal IT support staff. Gentoo or Debian can be used by those corporations to cut costs. And I disagree that Gentoo is the most unstable environment out there. In my experience, Gentoo is more stable than some so-called enterprise distros.
Oh and with regards to your statement about security, there are only about 3 distros in linux that can successfully implement a completely hardened linux box. Guess what, Gentoo is one of them. Wake me up when RHEL implements Pax, grsecurity, intrusion detection, PIE and SSP throughout their products.
well, i was talking about stability in terms of things not changing, not things being buggy.
you are right that not every big company needs enterprise operating systems/workstations. just because they dont need them, doesnt make other operating systems equivilent, it means that they simply do not need them. to take gentoo and roll your own version with stable packages, stable versions, test the hell out of it, rebrand it as your own, get it certified, and provide your own support would take an astronomical amount of work, time, and money. if you do not need all that, then of course, gentoo may be attractive to you. but you are not using an enterprise os, you are using an os in the enterprise.
woody would take a hell of alot less work, but woody and gentoo arnt the same, gentoo is closer to sid, which would probably take about as much work.
with gentoo, you can implement virtually anything. thats probably its strongest selling point. the fact that when you say “i run gentoo” it can mean virtually anything, which why it isnt an enterprise os.
What is NOT new; supplying paid IT support. Be it support on an OS, be it support on networking related stuff, be it support on a 100 kilogram 2 MB harddisk in the 1970’s : it basically IS what IT support is all about and always has been.
What IS new is selling a OS (or, in marketing terms, selling a “solution that will give you a total out of body experience freeing up your plagued soul of Microsoft or SUN evil”) that:
1) is not invented and or developed by yourself (referring to the Minix clone kernel programmed by mr Andrew Tannenbaum rip off by mr Thorvalds)
2) not maintainted by yourself, instead maintained by the kernel persons, the Gnome idiots and last but not least
3) poor souls like me running Fedora distributions, acting like guinnea pigs for Red hat, hell, maybe even giving feed back.
4) making all shiny happy people developers for Fedora think that they are actually working for a good course. Ha, while instead they serve as gratis development persons for the Red Hat stake holders. Jeez, program for free, you must be a total nutter.
I still remember the Nazi like propaganda while installing Red Hat 9 ? or maybe 8: the BS story “when Michaels grand father dropped his red hat, instantly our great leader of the free software bla bla bla.”
Do you notice the parrallel between Red Hat and Dell: no R&D , just rip offs.
1) is not invented and or developed by yourself (referring to the Minix clone kernel programmed by mr Andrew Tannenbaum rip off by mr Thorvalds)
What on earth are you talking about? Linux is a clone of the Unix kernel, as was Minix before it. Linus did take some pointers from Minix, but the fundamental design is significantly different – read the now-famous “flamewar” betwween Linus and Andy if you don’t know what I mean.
2) not maintainted by yourself, instead maintained by the kernel persons, the Gnome idiots
I kind of agree… it should be noted that Red Hat employ a fair number of people working on thos projects and have given quite a bit of money to them.
3) poor souls like me running Fedora distributions, acting like guinnea pigs for Red hat, hell, maybe even giving feed back.
Why don’t you try something other than Fedora?
Honestly, you’re whinging away that you’re a testing ground for RHEL (not something Red Hat have tried to keep secret) but have you ever thought about moving to Ubuntu?
4) making all shiny happy people developers for Fedora think that they are actually working for a good course.
Well they’re doing exactly what they think they’re doing – making a Linux distro. What Red Hat do with it is kind of beside that point…
I still remember the Nazi like propaganda while installing Red Hat 9 ? or maybe 8: the BS story “when Michaels grand father dropped his red hat, instantly our great leader of the free software bla bla bla.”
It can’t possibly be any worse than the propaganda you get from Microsoft or Apple; “Windows XP, the most secure OS ever” or “The fastest processor in the world”.
You’re obviously quite bitter about Red Hat for some reason. Have you ever considered getting over it?
This isn’t news to the osnews crowd.
No you cannot. Gentoo is a full upgrade distribution. To keep your security updates you will have to perform many feature updates as well.
Oh here’s an intelligent and well informed post! If you don’t know anything about Gentoo sonny best you keep your mouth shut. When there’s a security issue with a package its just a matter of doing the following:
#emerge –sync
#emerge emerge –ask –oneshot –verbose “>=packagename”
Like thats real hard and updates many other features?? Sheeeesh…
You’re missing the point entirely. Even if you tell it to update just one package, that newer package may or may not have just the security fixes. It may have entirely new features. That being the case I’d argue the post is entirely intelligent and well informed. So who oughta keep their mouth shut here?
I wasn’t going to get into the Gentoo RHEL debate until I saw your uninformed post and complete disregard for the work the Gentoo community puts into the Linux coomunity. To say that Gentoo doesn’t come even close to RHEL is completely absurd. To say that Gentoo is the most unstable distro out there just proves your a monkey redhat supporter just like Bitterman (who’s payroll are you guys on?). Oh and what about the timelines for releases… RHEL is 18 months eh? wow thats cool…. Gentoo releases around three “Stable” versions each year… If you took the time time read and acquire some first hand knowledge you would then understand what the numbers in the releases stood for:
Gentoo 2004.1
Gentoo 2004.2
Gentoo 2004.3
I too know for a fact that Gentoo is starting to slip slowly into the server/enterprise market even though you continue to disbelieve this (don’t say you don’t because it’s evident in your post in the way you attack other distro’s, particularly Gentoo).
If you want to stick to RHEL and believe in all the fud you dish out, thats fine, but at least go get educated first before dishing out untrue statements. This goes to Bitterman too!
Umm you should keep your mouth shut too then. Here is an extract from Gentoo advisory for you:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Gentoo Linux Security Advisory GLSA 200503-29
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
http://security.gentoo.org/
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Severity: Low
Title: GnuPG: OpenPGP protocol attack
Date: March 24, 2005
Bugs: #85547
ID: 200503-29
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Synopsis
========
Automated systems using GnuPG may leak plaintext portions of an
encrypted message.
Background
==========
GnuPG is complete and free replacement for PGP, a tool for secure
communication and data storage.
Affected packages
=================
——————————————————————-
Package / Vulnerable / Unaffected
——————————————————————-
1 app-crypt/gnupg < 1.4.1 >= 1.4.1
Description
===========
A flaw has been identified in an integrity checking mechanism of the
OpenPGP protocol.
Impact
======
An automated system using GnuPG that allows an attacker to repeatedly
discover the outcome of an integrity check (perhaps by observing the
time required to return a response, or via overly verbose error
messages) could theoretically reveal a small portion of plaintext.
Workaround
==========
There is no known workaround at this time.
Resolution
==========
All GnuPG users should upgrade to the latest version:
# emerge –sync
# emerge –ask –oneshot –verbose “>=app-crypt/gnupg-1.4.1”
References
==========
[ 1 ] CERT VU#303094
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/303094
[ 2 ] CAN-2005-0366
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2005-0366
Availability
============
This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at
the Gentoo Security Website:
http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200503-29.xml
Concerns?
=========
Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the
confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost
importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to
[email protected] or alternatively, you may file a bug at
http://bugs.gentoo.org.
License
=======
Copyright 2005 Gentoo Foundation, Inc; referenced text
belongs to its owner(s).
The contents of this document are licensed under the
Creative Commons – Attribution / Share Alike license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
——-
Now when I upgrade a package that has a security issue I am upgrading a package that is addressing the issue (perhaps temporarlity until a fix is found). As for features please tell me exactly what you mean by that. I haven’t had occurance where this has affected my Gentoo system and if they “HAVE” been implemented it’s obviously for good reason.!… So please shut your mouth….
Jeez man, you’re so hostile and clueless this pretty much isn’t worth the effort. But here goes an example anyway.
Lets say I have a postgresql server, version 7.3 let’s say, running on Gentoo. I’m cruising along for a year or so, everything is rosy. But darn it, I find out that my postgresql server has some vulnerability and I need to update it. But in the year I’ve been running it version 8.0 has come out. So to fix the vulnerability on my Gentoo system I’ll need to upgrade to version 8.0. Problem is, when I upgrade to version 8.0 my database isn’t exactly compatible. So I need to dump my database, fix the dump file by hand, and then reload it into version 8.0, and hope and pray it works. Sounds fun right? You bet!
Now lets say I’m running roughly the same thing on Red Hat. I find out version 7.3 is vulnerable. But rather than making me upgrade to version 8.0, Red Hat backports the fixes to 7.3 and releases a 7.3.1 package. I install that, my database loads up without a hitch, and my security problems are solved.
See the difference?
In advance of taking the RHCE class and test, I wanted to learn a few of the RedHat-isms. CentOS is more like RHES than Fedora is.
The funny part is that the (mucho dinero) class included a legit copy of RHES. (This version is on commercially pressed discs, so it now travels with me in my CD case.)
Ultimately, coming from the BSD environment helped me with the RHCE. I didn’t have so many distro-isms to unlearn like some of the other folks in the class.
The fact that CentOS exists suprised most Linuxians I talked to though.
okay guy, maybe the example Mathman gave finally hits home. That’s what the big corps. look at and don’t mind support fees as they can save their bacon.
Good example, but youŕe missing one important point:
You can have 7.3.1 releases on Gentoo just as well as you could on Red Hat!
In fact, I would say Gentoo handles it better since Portage allows slots – so v8 may well install alongside v7.3, and you can test the upgraded version without having to kill the old one.
AFAIK this is fairly unique among package managers.
So you’re telling me Gentoo backports every single security fix that comes out to every single package that’s been included with the distro? Somehow I highly doubt it. It seems to me like an ’emerge sync’ makes stuff disappear from the portage tree on a regular basis. In fact, in looking at my portage tree, I don’t see any postgresql package lower than 7.3. That being the case I’d have to say my example doesn’t miss the point at all.
Now sure, I have heard rumors of a Gentoo stable distribution, but who knows whatever became of it. But even that I wouldn’t touch at my workplace. I mean, just the process of building something from source alone can introduce all sorts of problems.
Oh, and one more thing, I could certainly install more than one postgresql rpm at a time if I had a notion to. This isn’t something that’s unique to portage.
I wasn’t going to get into the Gentoo RHEL debate until I saw your uninformed post and complete disregard for the work the Gentoo community puts into the Linux coomunity. To say that Gentoo doesn’t come even close to RHEL is completely absurd.
you totally missed what i was saying. what i have been trying to illustrate is that you measure an enterprise distro by a different metric then a server or desktop. the strength of gentoo is in its DIYness, which is a Bad Thing on the enterprise distro scale. it would be like saying that openbsd sucks because it uses such old packages.
To say that Gentoo is the most unstable distro out there just proves your a monkey redhat supporter just like Bitterman (who’s payroll are you guys on?). Oh and what about the timelines for releases… RHEL is 18 months eh? wow thats cool…. Gentoo releases around three “Stable” versions each year… If you took the time time read and acquire some first hand knowledge you would then understand what the numbers in the releases stood for:
Gentoo 2004.1
Gentoo 2004.2
Gentoo 2004.3
i know i have offended you by saying gentoo is not good for every situation. im well aware of their release schedule, and as i have already said i was talking about the stability of the packages used and their versions, not application stability. ill say it one more time, i dont think gentoo sucks, but i do think that it isnt the perfect situation to all lifes problems. if it makes you feel any better, i would use gentoo *way* before i would use rhel on my desktop.
I too know for a fact that Gentoo is starting to slip slowly into the server/enterprise market even though you continue to disbelieve this (don’t say you don’t because it’s evident in your post in the way you attack other distro’s, particularly Gentoo).
the only way you could consider my comments an attack is if you are a zealot.
If you want to stick to RHEL and believe in all the fud you dish out, thats fine, but at least go get educated first before dishing out untrue statements. This goes to Bitterman too!
ok, gentoo doesnt have a strict release schedule, something totally uneeded for that kind of distro. gentoo doesnt guarentee that libraries and whatnot will alwas be there, once again something quite useless for this kind of distro. gentoo is not certified, and would take quite a bit of effort to get that and maintain it. once again, useless for gentoo.
i think thats all the fud i “dished out”.
i really thought the gentoo zealots were on the move to ubuntu. i guess i was wrong.
what happens when noone is interested in that ebuild anymore? its not a problem because gentoo is such a community process, if something is needed someone will make an ebuild, if noone needs that thing anymore the ebuild fades away. works great for a desktop distro, not for an enterprise one.
While I don’t use CentOS myself, I think it’s a great project. Having bought dozens of RHEL subscriptions for my company, I will recommend to others to support Red Hat, if you want a commercially supported Linux distribution.
The reason? Red Hat is a 100% open source company – strong supporters of the GPL. This allows community based projects such as CentOS to flurish, a good thing.
If Red Hat were to try a restrict the relase of the source RPMS in an attempt to make life difficult for projects like CentOS, I would have my company switch from RHEL to another distribution.
Red Hat benefits greatly in being a pro GPL and open source company. Linux geeks will recommend to their bosses to use RHEL instead of other less free distributions (Novell). Red Hat uses this money to employ more kernel engineers, the code goes back to the community and we all reap the rewards.
The other Anonymous pretty much took your post point by point so thankfully I don’t need to waste my time in that area.
just proves your a monkey redhat supporter just like Bitterman (who’s payroll are you guys on?)
Nobody’s payrole I’m aware of I just think RHEL is the best enterprise distro there is, And Red Hat is the best big Linux company.
but at least go get educated first before dishing out untrue statements. This goes to Bitterman too!
What statements did I make that were incorrect?
root $ less /usr/portage/media-video/nvidia-kernel/
ChangeLog nvidia-kernel-1.0.6111-r3.ebuild
Manifest nvidia-kernel-1.0.6629-r1.ebuild
files nvidia-kernel-1.0.6629-r4.ebuild
metadata.xml nvidia-kernel-1.0.7167-r1.ebuild
Well, I will tell you what, I am a Postgres developer and I don’t want to be stuck on a old redhat version for 18 months.
If 8.0 comes out and has added features that I want I am sure going to upgrade, even if I have to do a dump restore and guess what, that only takes about two minutes and before I did that on a production server i would for sure restore the production database on a test server running 8.x and make sure everything works correctly.
The postgres example is very bad.
Just face it, RHEL is Ok,and that’s about it. For gods sake it is based of of Fedora, and that is the slowest distro I have ever used.
I would take Gentoo or Debian over RH anyday.
It seems to me like an ’emerge sync’ makes stuff disappear from the portage tree on a regular basis.
root $ less /usr/portage/media-video/nvidia-kernel/
nvidia-kernel-1.0.6111-r3.ebuild
nvidia-kernel-1.0.6629-r1.ebuild
nvidia-kernel-1.0.6629-r4.ebuild
nvidia-kernel-1.0.7167-r1.ebuild
The your obviously doing something wrong. The above is just a quick example of the ebuilds I have for nvidia-kernel. The portage tree gets deleted only if you tell it to. So again please read before posting fud.
Guess what people I have been using Gentoo for corp apps since feb 2003, and the reason I did was the RedHat 8 was having extreme problems(sometimes it would just blink out).
I bet a lot of you don’t even work for a corp, but I can tell you this, that first server we installed gentoo on back in 2003 is still running strong and we went from Postgres 7.3 to 8.01 and never had any issues, there is no way in hell I would be stuck on Postgres 7.4 for 18 months and miss all the new features of 8.x. We made tested it first on another server, then simply emerged it, and restored the databases from the dumps. this was a 1/2 hour operation hardly any work at all.
Also ALOT of enterprise apps are for internal use and are behind very impressive firewalls, most of the security updates for these internal servers are just not required, we were on kernel 2.6 for a long time and just recently updated to 2.11.
I don’t care what anyone says, Gentoo fits very well into the corp data center.
Nothing about preference but do you honesty think that corporation and government will take uncertified OS such as Gentoo and Debian? We talk about large enterprise level that RH is targetting.
When you stated:
“Just face it, RHEL is Ok,and that’s about it. For gods sake it is based of of Fedora, and that is the slowest distro I have ever used”
you made a very bad assumption because RHEL is meant to be stable while Fedora Core meant to be bleeding. The fact that both Sourceforge and Wikipedia use Fedora Core nullified your statement. So who to trust?
what happens when noone is interested in that ebuild anymore? its not a problem because gentoo is such a community process, if something is needed someone will make an ebuild, if noone needs that thing anymore the ebuild fades away. works great for a desktop distro, not for an enterprise one.
Pretty much the same thing when someone isn’t interested in building an RPM for RH/Fedora (freshrpm.net is a classic example of that). I Haven’t come across important applications in Gentoo that haven’t been updated yet. Most applications that make up RHEL are considered important in most larger distributions, Gentoo being no exception. The ebuilds for those applications will always be updated for both stable and ~x86 so the “enterprise” argument here is starting to fade and get old.
Gentoo isn’t going away in a hurry and as far as I and many others are concerned it will only get better. RedHat has a lead only because it’s had a headstart, but that doesn’t make it any better.
Hi, I like gentoo http://www.gentoo.org/ because it is good. Gentoo http://www.gentoo.org/ is good because it is stable and good. Red Hat http://www.centos.org/ is not good because …<sorry program has crashed fatal exception occured>
Would you guys stop hijacking threads please? Your distro is NOT an enterprise distro you have no, I repeat no, zip, zero, nada business on this thread trying to convert the masses to running 5,000 servers on… gentoo. mmmm k?
Go have a whine you big sook…. If people want to trash another distro what do you expect…. no-one is trying to convert anyone, they are simply stating the facts which you find it hard to comprehend and accept….
here have a tissue….
Haha.. yeah, thats what this whole thread is about.. facts
“Each release is supported with updates and security enhancements for seven years, during which time Red Hat maintains the highest possible levels of stability and consistency. This ensures that applications continue to run without the need for rebuilding or recertification. It is the stable environment offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux that makes it the preferred platform for ISV and OEM product certifications, and therefore ideally suited for commercial deployment”
that is the reason you pay 2.5k for rhel. gentoo isnt that. that doesnt mean gentoo isnt awsome for what it is. it just means gentoo isnt the be all and end all of linux solutions.
And nobody said Gentoo was that either. The only reason RedHat are doing so well is because of good marketing and particularly the time it’s been around. The statement above comes from them just like Bill Gates say’s the same type of things for Windows… so what!…
Gentoo has ‘FREE’ lifetime support and one of the best community focused bunch of developers around. So again I will tell you that Gentoo is just as stable as any RHEL and hell of a lot easier to maintain.
You cherrish RHEL just like us so called ‘zealots’ cherrish Gentoo so lets just leave it at that…..
“Gentoo has ‘FREE’ lifetime support and one of the best community focused bunch of developers around.”
gentoo lifecycle is adhoc. there is no company to call for support. no isv certifications. no OEM support and they do no sponsor any developers either. so whats your point again?
If you need to contact a company for support then you have problems and should seriously look for another form of employment. Most system administrator’s should “KNOW” what they are doing. If not what the hell are they doing in that position in the first place.
As for OEM’s… I doubt very much that support for OEM’s even gets used much. Gentoo may not have these so called cert’s and over rated support lines because it doesn’t need them. I’d get a quicker response out of the Gentoo community and it costs me nothing. You people should stop believing that all these certs and support lines are the be all and end all because they aren’t. At most they are just a way to suck more money out of you and your stupid enough to part with it. And again if you require the help then look for another form of employment.
Got the point now?
“If you need to contact a company for support then you have problems and should seriously look for another form of employment. Most system administrator’s should “KNOW” what they are doing. If not what the hell are they doing in that position in the first place.
”
so you are now claiming that enterprise systems running critical operations should have complete in house expertise on all products that deploy and should not rely on commercial support?
“As for OEM’s… I doubt very much that support for OEM’s even gets used much”
in other words speculation which amounts to nothing
“Got the point now?”
just understood that you have none. meanwhile there are other benefits like RHN Aand redhat gfs which you cannot get from gentoo> btw rhn is different from up2DATE
People who don’t understand what RedHat is doing, simply do not have real life experience or work in companies that overinvests in IT staffing (1 guy / server maybe?). The thought about having to make major updates always makes me cringe. The truth is that 90% of the people don’t really need the latest, greatest new feature. They just need some security fixes or bug fixes. The old server running the old software usually is already working great. The only time it’s worth upgrading is when enough significant changes have been made to technology where it makes sense to do so. This never happens 3-4 times a year. It doesn’t even happen 2-3 years. Generally, this happens about every 5 years. Trust me on this, rather than run the upgrade mill, try upgrading your servers every 3-7 years, and you will see major enhancements in the availability of all your services.
Slash is 100% right.
Exactly.
Where I work, they use Solaris 2.8, RHEL, and Windows (everything from Win98 to Server 2003). With a diverse network like we have, upgrading all platforms to the latest and greatest is simply not possible. The dozen or so sysadmins support thousands of computers in various configurations. They have their hands full just keeping up and providing reasonably good service, but their skilled enough to actually have time to have a life.
If anything goes wrong, they get hell from managers in other parts of the company. One bad patch, expecially one the leaks confidental information or causes downtime or irreversible damage is simply not tolerated. Whenever a new patch comes in, it’s tested in a sandbox area. That stabilization testing is done, in addition to the QA of Solaris, RHEL, and Windows.
On my home computer, I run Ubuntu, and Fedora before that, but if I were the sysadmin where I worked, I’d go for RHEL also (or Novell, though I have little experience with SuSE). They provide that extra sanity test to help make responsibility of supporting all those users (in their various RHEL versions) a bit easier.
You all realize that this so called support you all talk about is for people that have no clue and for managers that have employees that can’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground.
Can you make a loud popping sound!! That’s their heads comming out of their asses.
I have been working in IT for over 10 years and not once have I ever called for support on Windows or Linux.
Why.. because I can find out the information by myself.
Its obvious from your post that you have never worked in large scale corporate IT. The model RedHat uses is one that has been in place for commercial UNIX for a long time and thats the way large corporations operate. Companies secure there investment by buying support contracts not by investing in expendable employees. People like you who create these unsupportable nightmares in data centers accross the country then leave hinder the advancement of linux. Because the clueless managers only hear linux and they can’t understand why their mail system is down becasue the new guy has to sort through the crap you built becasue its non-standard and doesn’t follow best practice so they blame linux. Redhat and the like create an accountable standard for Linux in the IT enterprise through support contracts and other means. It may not be the fastest or the best linux distro but as a long time sa i would choose a RedHat DELL solution over a Gentoo whitebox anyday.
“Its obvious from your post that you have never worked in large scale corporate IT. The model RedHat uses is one that has been in place for commercial UNIX for a long time and thats the way large corporations operate….blah blah blah”
😀
Pretty much what you have said, slash and anil wang, is exactly the point that these people aren’t understanding.
While gentoo/arch/slackware/ubuntu……are cool distro’s and all, the company i work for will NEVER buy something that is not supported by a company in the enterprise. Example if BEA WebLogic says we support RHEL 3, guess what we use RHEL 3, not gentoo. There is so much more that comes from a company like RH or Novell that means support.
That pretty much takes care of the clueless RHEL bashers, for the other I Hate RH and they do nothing for linux people.
http://sourceware.org/
grep the damn changelogs of just about anything and see if rh devel name shows up, kernel….blah blah blah, I’m not saying they do it all, but they do a lot!
anyway,
actually, i dont like redhat at all, and dont use any redhat products. and i dont “cherish” anything but my girlfriend. if you cherish an operating system, i really pity you.