Re: My next computer and its support

On Mon, 21 Nov 2016 07:47:59 -0800
[email protected] wrote:

> 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.
> 
>         The paid support varies from really terrible, to mediocre,
> and very occasionally good.
> 
>         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.
> 
> I'm thinking of switching from Red Hat to Ubuntu, but have no idea
> how much of an improvement, if any it would be. So I would like to
> know:
> 
>      Can the latest versions of Chrome and Chromium be easily
> installed on Ubuntu?

I don't know. Chromium is on almost every distro. Chrome, not so much.
You might like Palemoon too, and it has its own installer so a package
isn't necessary.

> 
>      Does Ubuntu use systemd?

Yes. Unless you go all the way back to version 14.04.

> 
>      What kind of paid support is available for Ubuntu?

I've never heard of any, but I imagine you can find it. I think Ubuntu
is the most used distro in the world.

> 
> I would much appreciate any advice.

I'd ask yourself why you need paid support. Paid support is rare in the
non-corporate Linux world because Linux is (still) modular enough to
admin and troubleshoot yourself.

You mentioned that your computer is used for "mostly Java but some C
and a little Perl, Bash, Python etc), for entertaintmenrt, and for 
managing my life." Except for entertainment, those are all very easy
and simple activities on Linux. Activities that probably wouldn't
break, and would probably be easy for you to fix with 10 minutes of
Google and a couple questions to SVLUG.

If you really need paid support, well, Red Hat is the Cadillac of the
industry. I wouldn't use Red Hat if it were the last distro on earth,
but if my priorities were such that paid support was a must, I'd very
likely get Red Hat.

If you can get by without paid support, why don't you try Void Linux or
Alpine Linux in a Virtual Machine to get the idea of how they work,
before making a decision on Ubuntu, Redhat and the like?
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
November 2016 featured book: Quit Joblessness: Start Your Own Business
http://www.troubleshooters.com/startbiz