[Tfug] /.: Red Hat Linux is ending

Fri Nov 7 17:50:15 MST 2003

Craig,

Exactly what I was thinking.  I run RH9 on my laptop at home, and quite 
frankly I'm excited, not worried about moving over to Fedora when the time 
comes.  In Red Hat's world, tho, one must admit that Red Hat Linux was in a 
way, "fish nor fowl".  It was a freely available distro from the Red Hat 
site, and included a lot of cool Red Hat stuff (the redhat-config-<blank> 
programs are nice to have), but what was finally decided to go into that 
distro was determined by a rather closed process, hence, no mp3 support in 
ximms (license worries).  The free demo RHN account is really cool, but it 
doesn't automatically update non-essential stuff.  For example, I had to 
download and install the latest GAIM rpm on my own.  Meanwhile, Red Hat is 
switching it's focus to its enterprise offers, which of course requires a 
much different focus in the distro than the Red Hat Linux desktop.

I, for one, applaud what Red Hat is doing (although the move to Fedora maybe 
a pain in neck), they have managed to both concentrate on kicking some 
serious propietary UNIX and M$ butt with it's higher end stuff, while 
supporting the community with a free home/hobbyist distro whose development 
and content are aligned much more with the philosophy of Debian.  My hat 
(excuse the pun) is off to them.  It's the same basic distro, but could keep 
RMS happy and provide you with the freshest stuff.  Long live Fedora!!!

Darrenn

>From: craig at daters.net
>Reply-To: craig at daters.net, Tucson Free Unix Group <tfug at tfug.org>
>To: Tucson Free Unix Group <tfug at tfug.org>
>Subject: Re[2]: [Tfug] /.: Red Hat Linux is ending
>Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 15:36:44 -0700
>
>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
>
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