[NTLUG:Discuss] Redhat Offerings

[Justin M. Forbes]

On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 08:04:41AM -0500, Dave Augustus wrote:
> Yes, the blessed GPL. I do know that they have taken some of the 2.6
> kernel features and backported them to the 2.4 kernel. That seems really
> wierd to me.
> 
It is not an uncommon practice, most vendors backport the bits that are
important to them, or they feel are stable enough.

> They tout *stability* as one of thier reasons for doing this.
> 
Yes, there are several of the patches that improve kernel stability and
performance.  Most have been in the 2.5 development cycle for a good while,
and are well tested.

> I have been using Redhat since 6.1 and I am well acquainted with their
> products upto and including Redhat 9. But now, it seems that what was
> free, is no more, at least from the standpoint of support (i.e. RPM
> updates). This really comes into play when trying to *sell* a linux

Actually this is incorrect, what was Red Hat Linux 9 is basically Fedora
Core 1, and updates are even more free (via yum).  With RH9 you had to
download updates from an FTP server, or use up2date on a free trial account
which had a 1 per household limitation.  Additional accounts were $60 per
year.  With Fedora, the updates through yum offer much of the same
flexibility of up2date, but with no fee from anyone.  Fedora Core 1 is
rather stable and has been shipping for a while now, Fedora Core 2 is
excellent from a performance standpoint.  We hit code freeze today, and
release on May 17th, so keep an eye out.  Still, if people want support
where they can pick up a phone and call someone, or want proprietary
software vendors to support their products on the Linux distribution
running, RHEL or SuSE Enterprise server are pretty much the only options.

More info on Fedora can be found at http://fedora.redhat.com

> solution- companies want assurances ( support contracts ) to mitigate
> the (percieved in some cases, acutally true in most) risk of using
> Linux. 
> 
RH 9 and below did not offer this either, support contracts were limited to
30 day installation support only.  Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 was their
first offering with a real support contract.  
 
> I just find myself asking lots of new questions when building a server:
> the answer used to be Redhat, now I can't say that anymore and I am
> searching for new answers.
> 
> Ideas?

While I am partial to Red Hat myself, SuSE enterprise is a strong distro as
well.  Outside of that, you will be hard pressed to find a distro with a
real support contract.  If you can live without the support contract,
Fedora is excellent, SuSE Pro is fairly nice, and I have heard good things
about gentoo, though with their shift up top, I am curious as to how things
are going to continue.  Mandrake gets good feedback for desktop, and debian
has a strong following, but their recent policy change might shake things
up a bit.  All in all, there are several good options available to you.

Justin