Re: My next computer and its support

Quoting [email protected] ([email protected]):

> I am a very old man, 84 years old.
> 
> I have been using RedHat systems and paying for RedHat support for nearly 20
> years now. I am currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation release
> 6.8, on a very high-end workstation. I use if for program development (mostly
> Java but some C and a little Perl, Bash, Python etc), for entertaintmenrt,
> and for managing my life.
> 
> For me, Redhat problems are that:
> 
>         I haven't been able to get the latest versions of Chrome and Chromium
>         to work under it.

Often, the key to such problems is to find someone else on the Internet
who's solved the problem and provided a canned solution.  Web-searching
on 

   "rhel 6" chrome

...immediately finds this page:
http://www.tecmint.com/install-google-chrome-on-redhat-centos-fedora-linux/

Essentially, recent versions of Chrome require support libs omitted from RHEL
6.x (thus conventionally requiring RHEL 7.x).  The solution is a script
developed by Richard Lloyd that retrofits the required support libs into
/opt/google/chrome/lib, which in turn permits Chrome RPMs fetched from
Google's yum repo to function on RHEL 6.x.

Maybe that repo also has RPMs of Chromium; I haven't looked but you
could do so.  Or here's a similar page about getting Chromium to run on
RHEL 6.7, using packages from a different third-party repo:
https://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2013/install-chromium-on-centos-red-hat-rhel/

>         The paid support varies from really terrible, to mediocre, and very
>         occasionally good.

You know, you really should consider what you want from a Linux
distribution.  Although RHEL or CentOS can certainly be extended past
the limits of the bundled and commercially support software contents in
the distro itself, i.e., via third-party repos like thos mentioned, plus
EPEL, and other notable examples, doing so is _somewhat_ at odds with
the ditribution's mission to users -- which is to be a coherent set of 
commercially supported software with a vendor-supported upgrade path.
Obviously, going outside that software regime means the vendor cannot
and will not support that, and, from the vendor point of view, you're
messing with its work, more or less.

So, are you sure you want a distro with full commercial support, given
that you're going out of your way to add in unsupported third-party
applications?  Nothing wrong with your answer being 'yes'.  I'm merely
raising it sa a apoint to ponder.

Some people like commercially supported Ubuntu variants, and some people
like SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.  All of those (plus RHEL
Workstation) are corporate desktopware with paid support entitlements.


>         And the next version of it, RHEL 7, will use systemd instead of init.
> 
>               I know almost nothing about systemd except that using it will
>               mean I will have to learn a lot of new stuff and that one of
>               its authors is the author of the RHEL 6 sound system, which has
>               given me endless grief. For those two reasons, I would like,
>               all other things being equal, to avoid it.

As you prefer.  FWIW, _nothing_ about systemd would suggest particular
problems supporting Chrome or Chromium.

>      Can the latest versions of Chrome and Chromium be easily installed on
>      Ubuntu?

Same Web-searching.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/510056/how-to-install-google-chrome
That's using Google's third-party .deb repo.

Chromium is available from Ubuntu itself as package chromium-browser.

>      Does Ubuntu use systemd?

Starting with the Ubuntu 15.04 (April 2015) release, systemd is default,
replacing the 'upstart' init system.  Both remain fully supported on
Ubuntu, for now.  (I suspect other DE flavours, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.
are the same story.)

>      What kind of paid support is available for Ubuntu?

Probable minimum of 50 machines.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/234145/does-canonical-provide-paid-support-for-individuals