[Klug-general] Shiny New Laptop

[Stuart Buckland]

On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 16:21 +0100, Karl Lattimer wrote:

<snip>
> > 
> > On the flip side you also have to accept FC and more specifically RH
> > have their flaws.  Unfortunately all the testing, packaging and
> > bastardisation that makes RH a sensible choice for servers also leads to
> > incompatibilities with non-RH supplied software.
> 
> This is true, but to go away from software which has been built and
> tested through the process is to introduce instability into the system
> which cannot always be replicated by others. Thus breaking the model. 

Call me picky but I'd add "potential" in front of "instability" :)
Sometimes it is required though.  The majority of the time RH does
provide the package I need but there have been several occasions where
it isn't the version required or it has been compiled without certain
features or (far less often) with features that cause problems.

> Of course, with fedora extras and rpmforge I doubt there is anything
> which hasn't been built already, or at least anything useful that hasn't
> been built!

In these situations there is also the management cost to consider.
Using packages sourced from anywhere other than RH, that haven't gone
through the RH QA processes for EL introduces an additional cost for
continued maintenance.  In these situations (depending on the impact of
the cost in the specific environment) I usually begin considering other
distributions or Operating Systems.

Then there is the majority of situations in which every package you need
is provided by RH and there is no need to source anything externally.
While that is great for stability and management you will eventually
find you have become victim to vendor lock-in.

The whole concept of vendor lock-in with Open Source software always
amuses me but there you have it.

Gentoo, like all other distributions have exactly the same issues just
to differing degrees.

With that said, whatever you think of Gentoo personally or whatever I
think of RH personally both have a place in the market.  


> 
> > 
> > > The fact that it is more server orientated than say SuSE or ubuntu means
> > > that fewer desktop users use it, but it still has a solid base, the
> > > oldest linux distribution!
> > 
> > Wow! I didn't realise RH was the oldest distro.  I honestly didn't know
> > what was but if I had to guess I would have said slack.  I started using
> > Linux with Slackware '96 which I think was around the RH4 days but my
> > memory isn't that good anymore :)
> 
> To my knowledge it was, shortly followed by slack because of people
> complaining about the first issue you mentioned. Then came SuSE,
> mandrake, and turbo... I think in that order (can't be sure), the final
> one of the original distribution debacle was caldera I believe, which
> was bought out by SCO (EVIL EVIL SCO).
> 
> 

Ahh, Caldera, I remember that.  I think I still have caldera, slack '96
and RH4 on several CDs somewhere in the loft.  Think I'll leave them
there :)

Stu

-- 
Stuart Buckland <stuart at nightime.org.uk>