Re: Problems with Redhat 9

On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 01:11:38PM -0500, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom told me:
> I disagree. I think that in many cases (identical desktop/shell
> environments) most end users can't tell the difference between different
> unices; let alone different linux distros.

Oh, I did not realize that Gnome2 is working under Debian testing/stable yet
without the use of a third party repository. :)

Also, there are lots of third party apps that require a RedHat type system.
Certain compilers, backup systems, and various other vertical vendor products
are just unsupported under anything except RPM based systems.

> the differences that matter are mostly apparent to the admins. There are a
> limited number of ways to do things right; and both RH and Debian both make
> some pretty sensible choices in things like their filesystem layout. (I'd
> posit that Debian makes better choices, but that's my opinion).

Most differences will affect the admins, and some the users. But both will
determine what I will recommend to a user.

I agree about the differences in the filesystem locations, and I am not making
claims to which one is better. I do however understand that most admins are
already comfortable with RedHat. Learning where everything is all over again,
not to mention the packaging system can be more then they wish to deal with.
Also, aside from software versions, this is required for RedHat support vendor
apps to work. They may not be supported, but they should still work.

> yes, debian is a 'hacker OS'; and it sometimes lacks the nice balance
> between stability and up-to-dateness than RH usually has; but isn't that
> nice RH balance what's causing these problems now? (they can't afford to
> support the old balance points because things change too much).

I agree that RedHat can not afford to continue to support dists for more then
1 year. But not only because of the labor charges, but also the missed
opportunity of people utilizing their free product instead of the Enterprise
"Pay" release.

I see this as a way to almost force people to purchase the product. Now that
they have the market share lead in the Linux arena they do this because they
can. I don't blame them. They want to be paid for their distribution. I would
still buy it for the upper end servers that I would maintain. Low to mid range
need another solution IMHO.

> I would also posit that by the time Debian Stable is obsoleted by the newer
> release of it; it's usually time to upgrade anyway because the software is
> so much improved since then. (since it takes 2 years for a debian stable
> release to come out; and the software developers aren't making patches to
> their old versions anyway).

I agree, but I would like to see two stable trees. This way when you are first
installing a server you can go with stable-current, and you can still have
several years of support before you ever have to worry about the EOL.

I realize that this is a pain, but I see it as a main stream requirement for 
an OS. I would like to see that someone can install a system and have at least
3 years (the general life of a computer) before they have to worry about an 
EOL.

Greg
-- 
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