[Wolves] Red Hat Enterprise Server

[Andy Wootton]

Simon Burke wrote:

>On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 01:11:21 +0000, James Turner <james at turnersoft.co.uk> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Friday 19 Nov 2004 19:41, Simon Burke wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>If someone wants a play then by
>>>all means my copy (and it is a copy) is available as i'm not going to
>>>use it.
>>>      
>>>
>>I'm certainly interested in taking you up on this. Are you going to the next
>>LUG meeting?
>>    
>>
>I usually dont manage to be able to show up, but i can pop it in no
>problem. Also i must say that with the copy you wont be able to
>update, as it requires either a subscription or 'serial number' of
>sorts, which i have neither
>  
>
I feel I have to say something in defence of Red Hat. I've been 
interested in Linux since before it existed as a way of learning Unix. I 
tried several distros in the early days. The improvement in the 
experience of installing Red Hat was spectacular. Later their huge 
growth led to a couple of releases that were distinct down-grades in 
reliability. To their credit they always made it very easy to find and 
download the free version of the distro.

 From my experience of working in large 'corporates' there was 
definately a problem of trust and complete lack of understanding of how 
'the same product' could be available free or for a charge. I think this 
was assumed to be a trap.

Red Hat's brave decision to seperate all-free Fedora Core from Red Hat 
Enterprise was a logical step. Free software purists had a community 
project unpolluted by commercial software that they could contribute to 
and capitalist 'decison makers' had a comfortingly expensive product 
with commercial software included in the price and finally someone to 
sue if it all went wrong.

Where I think they went wrong was in the statement that accompanied the 
Fedora launch which asserted that no Linux users were entitled to a free 
ride. They either had to contribute effort to the Fedora project or 
money to Red Hat. I was never sure why the Fedora contributors would 
prefer the fruits of their labour to go to Red Hat shareholders rather 
than charities and schools who might previously have benefitted from 
free software. I moved from Rad Hat Linux to Ferora Core 1 on a laptop 
that I use nearly every day. It has never crashed. The only thing that 
is encouraging me to upgrade is the availability of software that will 
only run on Core 2 plus.

It isn't fair to compare the resource use of Debian with RHE. The 
comparison should be with Fedora Core.

According to this comparison:
http://www.redhat.com/software/rhelorfedora/

there are "300 supported applications, including BEA, CA, IBM, Oracle, 
VERITAS" along with Red Hat's own enterprise level management utilities 
for clustering, software distribution etc. This will tend to make it 
bigger. I believe it also makes it something you shouldn't copy. Red Hat 
have always added to bloat by providing 3 pieces of software to do 
everything and leaving you to decide what to delete. This encourages 
diversity but wastes an awful lot of time when you are new to a system 
and in no position to make the decisions.

Woo