[Tfug] /.: Red Hat Linux is ending

[craig at daters.net]

Hello All,

We run Red Hat at work. I'm not worried. I run Red Hat at home, I'm
not worried about that either, except that I may be looking at Gentoo
and maybe even the Linux From Scratch project. I want to build Linux
from the ground up. Certainly, I want a little more control of how
things are compiled, where they get put, etc. But I'll still be using
my Red Hat, and maybe Fedora too.

The only thing that is changing, really, is their support. Once the
RH9 channel shuts down, I'll just have to patch everything myself is
all. Red Hat users had to do that before 'up2date' came about. And for
those with specific requirements...the default rpms that were
available weren't suitable anyway, and had to be tweaked before we
could use them, or we just downloaded and installed our own config.

'up2date' just let us rely on Red Hat to take the time to test and
secure things before we got our hands on 'it' so we wouldn't have to
take time out of our precious schedule to do it ourselves. But there
were sacrifices by doing it this way. Red Hat decided where to put
everything. Decided what distro of service we would use, etc. Oh we
got choices...sure, we got 1000's of rpms to decide from during
installation. Why else would the retail package of Red Hat Linux 9
Professional come with 9 CD's and a DVD? But Red Hat still determined
where everything went. I'm still figuring out how they have all of
Apache deployed on my server. I upgraded from 7.3, and oh what a
difference as far as what is where, etc. But I'm getting there. We
persevere as Linux users/admins. Thats the fun in using Linux right?

What bothers me is that everyone on the RedHat RHN list suddenly is
crying that an 'era' is ending. Are they scared to look into Fedora
because it doesn't say 'Red Hat Linux'. Red Hat has stated that they
will continue to support this 'Project' as it is the test bed for
their Enterprise level product. They have more people working on
Fedora than there were working on Red Hat Linux, this is a good thing
folks. But because Fedora is their test bed, not everything at will
ultimately make it into Red Hat Enterprise Linux, because they are
developing a platform with less updates, while certainly
maintaining stability and security. Not every IT department has the
time to update their servers on a constant basis. Red Hat's service is
that they take the time to back port/patch everything so you don't
have to. Is there no value in this? Not for a home/hobbiest user maybe.
They have always maintained that for the user wanting to be 'on the
edge' of a developing technology. Certainly download the iso and go!
This is available still, only now it's called Fedora! But for those
users concerned with security and stability, they provide the
Enterprise level of Linux. And for the $ amount your comfortable with,
you can subscribe to their 'up2date' service as well as have access to
phone or web support.

In my mind, the people who are all up in arms should just let it
happen, and move into Fedora. Updates will still be provided as
vulnerabilities are found. Download them and install them just like
you always have. You still want to be on the cutting edge of
technology anyway right? So why worry about RHEL, which will probably
be a couple kernel versions behind anyway?

I probably opened myself up to a whole lot of jabs, but there is my
two cents anyway.

Friday, November 7, 2003, 10:07:02 AM, you wrote:


JR> Ahh... Thank you.  I suspected something along those lines, but not being a redhatter, I didn't have the motivation to look into it.  But it just makes sense that Redhat -> Fedora shouldn't be
JR> the end of the world for all "hat" people.


JR> -----Original Message-----
JR> From:   tfug-bounces at tfug.org on behalf of johngalt
JR> Sent:   Wed 11/5/2003 9:23 PM
JR> To:     Tucson Free Unix Group
JR> Cc:     
JR> Subject:        Re: [Tfug] /.: Red Hat Linux is ending
JR> Dang! People are really overreacting to this. That Orbital Sander guy who
JR> posted this to /. was way too negative, err abrasive.

JR> After looking past the FUD and whining, I think this is a good thing.

JR> What this means to me:
JR> Old name: Red Hat
JR> New Name: Fedora Core - OMG!
JR> Old way for errata and security updates: up2date
JR> New way for errata and security updates: up2date, apt, yum
JR> Old lifecycle:12-24 months
JR> New Lifecycle: 6 months (read-new packages sooner)

JR> Uh, what this guy said....
JR> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=84550&cid=7387059

JR> Johnny


JR> Angus Scott-Fleming wrote:

-- 
Best regards,
 craig (mailto:craig at daters.net)
 http://www.daters.net