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

[Michael Saunders]

On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, Schwuk wrote:

> Admittedly there is the Fedora Legacy project, but that is way too
> up in the air ATM to really comment on.

Yeah -- it'd be great if they could support distros like RH 7.3, which
still appears to be in wide use. Sadly, right now there's three
competing projects trying to sort out support for older releases. A
few folks on the mailing lists want to merge them, but this is the
kinda thing RH intended to sort out anyway...

> Yes, but SUSE still have a major stumbling block - they're not free.
> I can give a copy of RHL/Fedora/Mandrake/Knoppix etc. to anyone, and
> that is a (large) part of the reason for linux's popularity growth.

I _think_ you might be able to give a copy of SUSE to a friend. The
last SUSE release I tested was 8.0, and I can't remember the exact
licensing specifics but... AFAIK, YaST cannot be distributed for
profit, and the CD-ROM layout is (C) SUSE. So it's not totally clear.  
Also, you _can_ get SUSE for free if you do an FTP install.

> Given a choice between having Windows for free (via the Microsoft
> tax), getting $distro for free or paying for SUSE, SUSE will lose
> almost every time (so will linux in general for that matter, but
> that's a different discussion).

True, although SUSE's hardcopy manuals are still some of the best
around. In the early days (well, late 1990s) SUSE was a solid choice
for a newcomer as it packed 6 discs into the box (whereas RH had just
one and 'Powertools'). That's changed now.

> Not too sure about this - Red Hat/Fedora & Mandrake have already got
> the lions share of the (consumer) desktop

Yep, they have, but that's the messy short-term consumer Linux
desktop, with no long-term support. Mandrake and Fedora don't and
won't offer three years of support for their distro, certified
drivers, major desktop upgrades etc.

The Linux desktop now is fantastic for us, and approachable for total
newcomers, but as with Win98 people will want something that lasts for
ages with long-term fixes. When they get their new webcam in three
years, they don't want to upgrade their entire distro or recompile
kernels etc. They want to have a floppy/CD containing a driver. This
is what RH could offer with Personal Desktop, and what Fedora,
Mandrake and SuSE don't have now.

Lindows seems to be going this way, although they have some issues...

> Fine for you and me, but try selling that one to your IT director...

Heh, true. But you could knock together a makeshift system -- have a
fast box that builds SRPM errata, throws the resulting binaries on a
server and then the production systems grab 'em with up3date[1].

> This may become a common trend - all the systems that where
> predominantly RHL before will migrate to the likes of
> slackware/debian etc.

Yeah. I think the main thing Debian has going for it in terms of
corporate use is lifetime -- until recently, Potato was still seeing
fixes! That's very reassuring.

Anyone else going to join in this discussion? RH's moves are hugely 
significant to the community!

Mike

[1] http://warmcat.com/up3date/

-- 
Michael Saunders
www.aster.fsnet.co.uk