[Gllug] Redhat 9 and moving distribution: your experience

[Grzegorz Jaskiewicz]

On Tue, 2003-04-29 at 23:04, Sunny Chan wrote:
> Hi people,
> 
> just wondering how's everybody finding the new Redhat 9 so far? I am 
> considering the move from 7.2 to 9 for my home machines and just want an 
> opinion on stability of the new Redhat? 
Well, i used redhat till 7.1 version. Then i was suprised what they done
to KDE and i just hate them for that. Anyway, i've installed redhat 9 2
weeks ago - primo becouse i was just curious, secondo - i have to teach
how to use it - and don't know why, every one want Redhat. Not mandrake,
not suse, not even debian nor slack.. redhat.
>From user/desktop point of view - it is very good, easy to use,
flexible, loads of free soft. just beautifull. But i never ever will
recomend it for servers. There is no second distro like that when it is
about security. No grsec, planty of patches in both software and kernel
that proved after years i've observed redhat that is more buggy than any
other distro. 
They are developing their own patches for software (simply changing it,
so it will fix their "look"), which is fully legal by GPL licence.
While other distro developers are cooperating with package
developers/mainteinters - redhat does not do that. Even more, they are
using very often non stable/cvs snapshoted versions. Fe, kernel in rh 9
is 2.4.21-rc3 with tons of patches (kernel it self, as i am kernel
hacker my self - looks very good). It is clear that not all hardware
works with vanilla kernel - so patching is an obvious practice.
Anyway, i have to say - most packages are not stable versions, patched
by redhat developers. They are not cooperating with program developers,
not even trying ask for advices.

Time for example, i am running this redhat 9 server and workstation -
just simply becouse i need it. And all my production servers are running
Debian stable, with self made/patched kernel so it will feet server
needs. Where is about software update, especially - security updates, i
am reciving letters from RHN once/twice a week. Most of them are
security patches. Debian gives me such alerts once a month, and ussualy
i do feel good - becouse of security patches for kernel (grsec fe.).

Second thing, i am developer. I never expierienced so many problems
customising my servers - than with redhat. 

So, i will say it is very good for desktop users - still i prefer
mandrake. But 9 is better (fe. konsole, KDEs x-terminal - works now. I
will not mention other KDE programs..). But on servers, you have to put
much more trust in security of your distro. And i will recomend Debian
for that. 
    
Please forgive me, i will not answer any comments if they are not just
simple questions. I don't want to get into any flame distro wars -
jihads.



-- 
Grzegorz Jaskiewicz <gj at pointblue.com.pl>
K4 labs



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