[cumbria_lug] Red Hat^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFedora - opinions...

[Schwuk]

Well, as no one else is going to post on it, I will...

After the dust has settled, what does everyone think of Red Hat's move
to 'ditch' their 'prosumer' market and focus on the enterprise (to boldy
go...).

OK, kudos to them for 'freeing' RHL under the guise of Fedora. IMO
Fedora should evolve (quickly) into a damn good desktop distro, but I
feel there will be a gaping hole left in the SME markets where people
who would happily pay for RHN support - but not for the OS - will be
visibly less confident in what will be seen as an enthusiast's distro.
Would you want to put an OS that only has a guaranteed lifespan of 6-9
months on your server? I wouldn't.

My current employer has only recently (~6 months) certified RHL 7.3 -
they are currently evaluating Red Hat 8.0/9, SuSE and Debian, and I'm
pretty sure Red Hat will come off that list soon. We already have
commercial *nix offerings and won't be backing RHEL. RH has lost their
attractive initial price now, so why go with them at all.

I can understand Red Hat's financial reasons for doing what they've done
(hunting fewer, bigger fish than many small fish) but I fear it cause
significant distruption to the linux market for the near future.

Cheers,
-- 
Schwuk