[NTLUG:Discuss] Red Hat 9.0 End of Life 04/30/2004

[Chris Cox]

Rick Matthews wrote:
...
> 
> 
> I agree with your description of the current/previous Red Hat
> offerings.  But it appears that the new "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" 
> idea is more than a fancy box with printed documentation and support
> bundled in. 

Uh... you'll just have to believe me.  I'm a long time RHAS user.
There is very little difference between RH9 and RHAS3.0.  Apart
from NPTL, the biggest RH thing in 3.0 is support for more than
4GB of memory... something the home version of SUSE has been doing
for many years now.

> 
> Look at this clip from the RH site:
> ------------------------
> Red Hat's Enterprise Linux family of operating systems is available 
> on a per-system, annual subscription basis. The subscriptions are 
> offered in three editions: Basic, Standard, and Premium -- each with 
> varying support levels and delivery options -- so you can choose 
> the subscription combination that best meets the needs of your 
> business.
> ------------------------
> 
> Subscription?  The workstation version is $179.... per year.?!?

Subscription I'm sure is with regards to support.  You can pay
RH extra for support.  Though you get (I think) one year with the
high end package.  Support meaning ignored emails and ignored web
support requests (my experience with the paid support).
RH doesn't do phone AT ALL.

I'm tempted to send out my contract number to the universe
just so I can get in trouble with RH and maybe, just maybe,
they'll reply to our requests.  Shoot with RH, getting
a subpoena from them is probably impossible.  I'm sorry... but
you just have experience it.  They just don't want to
be bothered.

> 
> 
>>If you're a big RH fan... I'd give Fedora a try.
> 
> 
> Red Hat is the only distribution that I've ever "managed" (from 
> ver 5.2 to 8.0), which is just a tad bit different from just having
> a user account. :)

I do think you might want to look at the others.  The most
advanced thing RH has done is rpm... and well... you know
what many think about that.

> 
> 
>> See if a community support dist works out well for you.  
> 
> 
> Got to catch up on my reading!
> 
> 
>>I think you'd be much happier with Debian though... but hey...
>>I could be wrong.
> 
> 
> Does O'Reilly have a "Linux Distributions in a Nutshell"?  I'll see 
> I can find a comparison of the "mainstream" distributions somewhere.

I think the best way is to evaluate each one on your own.
That's why I recommeded looking at RH's future, Fedora... if that's
what RH says is their future direction (future RHEL release will
be based off of what the Fedora community assembles and tests for
RH... in fact RH directly compares what they are doing with RHEL with
Sun's Star Office product), then you gotta try it out... if you're a RH
shop.

RH says that every box they sold was a money loser... let's see
if RH's new strategy pulls them out (makes you wonder about that
last quarterly report though... do you smell something cookin??).