Re: Problems with Redhat 9

I don't believe that Debian is the enterprise solution to Linux. It is built
for the maintainers by the maintainers. It is a hacker OS, and it differs from
what people are used to enough to be a struggle for admins, engineers, and
users to grasp easily. It is a GREAT OS, but I just don't have faith that it
fits the general public.

RedHat may now be promoted to the enterprise (with the advanced server), but 
as a result of the EOL policy I am not sure it still fits the low to mid range 
solutions. Most other distribution companies are in financial trouble (I 
pulled this from the grape vine) or relatively obscure.

Fedura may have a great solution, but it would be nice to see a choice for a
base line OS. I would like to see a community supported OS as one of the
options. If it is done right, I think it would be very successful. Hopefully it
will also pool resources from the community, and have a scheme that will allow
community developers to maintain their own code (or teams code) in the
distribution itself. This will give the maintainers the path to develop code,
distribute the code, and even be responsible for implementation inside the
distribution.

I should also mention that at this point we are still in the brainstorming
phases. I believe that without community support, this will not thrive or even
survive.

As usual, your thoughts are very much appreciated!
Greg

On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 08:18:38PM -0400, Jef Spaleta told me:
> Yeah..i've been meaning to ask around pppl about how they are going to
> handle the Redhat EOL problem...since the cluster here is redhat based.
> I can't see them jumping to debian. 1 year EOL sucks for a lot of middle
> ground users like academics and research..no question about it...but
> didn't debian give a whole 2 weeks notice before they dropped support of
> the stable branch before the current stable? One year support cycles
> suck...but it still beats debian's one stable release at a time model,
> where when stable changes...it changes and support is dropped for the
> old one with little notice.
> 
> I'm glad im not in a position of authority at the lab. For my personal
> use needs...this EOL thing doesn't phase me...but I know its has to be
> effecting pppl in the same way its affecting you, but just not to the
> same magitude.
>   
> 
> 
> Isn't this debian all over again..but with rpms. I would have thought
> that a community effort to extend EOL for redhat releases would fill the
> niche much better than an rpm based debian idea. If there is enough
> interest in building up a distro from the ground up...is there enough
> intrest in providing the community based security support past EOL for
> rh7.3?  I think post EOL community support is something the community
> could be very good at....if debian-like machinery is there to support
> the community effort.  But the real question is...will such a community
> driven distro be accepted in situations like the one you are in?
> 
> 
> I don't know all the specifics im still trying to catch up on all the
> discussions. My sense of the situation is that they are still figuring
> out how to build up the machinery to bring community repositories up to
> a workable state with some automation. But at this point I'm more of a
> lurker than anything else, for a change of pace...a hopeful lurker. As
> it stands, i think the idea of community based support built around Red
> Hat releases as a base is probably worth exploring...and is important
> enough for me to keep my mouth shut in the fedora lists until I actually
> know a little more on packaging. But you've built packages...and a
> package manager even! I imagine your perspective would probably be more
> important than my own in any current discussion about how fedora will
> look and more importantly how it will taste as a replacement for the
> bitter chalky taste of the 1 year support cycle Red Hat has now.  This
> EOL thing is a real challenge, and I imagine a lot of consultants will
> be getting some nice juicy support contracts to fill the gap created by
> the EOL policy. The open question is, can the community step up and
> provide an organized solution to fill in that gap, on a volunteer basis?
> A solution focused on a security first approach instead of a feature
> creep approach? I'm hopeful fedora might come together and be one such
> solution by the time the EOL date for 7.3. I don't know of another
> project idea that has the potential of filling the support gap via
> community effort. Sure I imagine individuals will provide their own post
> EOL package collections...but fedora is the only idea I've seen that is
> looking to pool development effort for Red Hat based package
> collections. 
> 
> -jef



-- 
/* Greg Kurtzer, Open Source Developer
 * http://runlevelzero.net/greg/
 * 
 * RunLevelZero.net         Warewulf                     GRAB
 * [email protected]    [email protected]    [email protected]
 * http://runlevelzero.net/ http://warewulf-cluster.org/ http://rpm-grab.org/
 * 
 * Do not add my E-mail or contact info to ANY M$ Outlook addressbook! Do not 
 * send me ANY M$ Office documents or it will be deleted upon arrival (plain 
 * text, OpenOffice.org format, and RTF welcomed).
 */