[Gloucs] As if I needed more reasons not to use Windows....

[William Roe]

Hi,
On Sunday, Apr 27, 2003, at 22:47 Europe/London, Iain Calder wrote:

> Paul Broadhead wrote:
>
>> Hi folks, here's a story for you.
>>
> <snip good story>
>
> Much as I hate to even remotely support Microsoft, I think Paul's tale 
> raises some interesting issues.
>
> It's worth pointing out that Windows 95 and 98 are very old now, I 
> guess equivalent to the Redhat 4/5 era?  I wonder whether a Redhat 4/5 
> install would work on a modern system, with say a new Athlon chipset 
> or P4, USB, etc., and in fact there would be no point trying to 
> install such an old Linux distro as it would be extremely insecure and 
> updates are not available unless you roll them yourself.

Mmm. I have RedHat 5.2 on the shelf, I wonder how it would cope. I 
expect it wouldn't bat an eyelid. Well...except for not supporting the 
graphics card, and using generic IDE drivers most likely etc etc

As you say at the bottom of this email, you could install Debian (4/5 
years old), then connect to the internet with a BIG pipe, run `apt-get 
update; apt-get upgrade; apt-get dist-upgrade` and go make some meals ;)

Also, when Gentoo gets to be 4/5 years old ;) all you'd need to do 
would be `emerge sync; emerge -u world` and not worry about stable, 
testing, unstable, insane, certifiable...

> Of course, the point is you could roll them yourself or you could just 
> upgrade to a modern Linux release, however I guess Microsoft deserve 
> some credit for reasonably long support periods for their products.  
> These days rapid availablity of security patches is *vital* for any OS 
> on any machine apart from maybe a single-user non internet-connected 
> PC.

Mmm, yes they do quote big numbers for their support time, but you have 
to ask - how good is this so called 'support', if what I hear is 
correct, not worth the meta-information its written in.

> Contrast this with the current state of desktop Redhat, which now has 
> only a year-long support period.  Of course, the solution for 
> businesses is to buy one of Redhat's enterprise versions, but then one 
> of the cost advantages of Linux immediately disappears.

Ah ha! But Linux's _real_ cost advantage is in the ability to decide 
where/who that money goes - i.e. if a company want to run Linux and 
sort out their IT systems, they make a plan (with pretty little graphs 
and such, I understand). Said company may well have some pretty smoking 
computing guys/girls who they are already paying to keep the companies 
servers alive and happy. So, they don't have to pay (or license) some 
scheme someone else designed to satisfy themselves that their 
servers/computers and safe.

Mmm. That didn't make much sense when I read it back... I suppose your 
point is valid since if a company wants lots of after sales support, 
they go to those who sell it - RedHat, and if they have techs on 
campus, they get a distro that techs like - such as Debian.

> There are other distributions around of course, but the only other one 
> I'd rely on for consistent and timely errata fixes over a long period 
> is Debian.

True. True. I've had too many fascinating problems with Gentoo recently 
to stick my head out here ;)

William Roe

Email   : will@wjlr.org.uk
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