Re: Re: RedHat support changes

• To: ldm-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: Re: Re: RedHat support changes
• From: "Stonie R. Cooper" <stonie.cooper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 20:24:28 -0600

As a former Caldera (SCO-bastages) partner, I guess maybe we've been ahead of 
the curve on trying other distributions.  We've tried Mandrake, Slackware, 
SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, as well as have spun up our own . . . 

Personally, I like Gentoo the best - even over our own GalileoLinux . . . but 
you really have to be into Linux to not get frustrated.  Donald Giuliano from 
OU has done a great job of putting together an ebuild for nawips . . . and if I 
can get free for a minute, I'll make one for LDM.

SuSE 8.2 uses gcc 3.3 which has a broken g77 compiler . . . LDM will work fine, 
but gempak will not.  Debian is a good distro . . . but it's not any easier to 
install than Slackware or gentoo.  Mandrake is way to bleeding edge . . . and 
their business model seems to suffer - up one day, almost out of business the 
next.

Like others . . . I'd like to see what Novell is going to do with their second 
Linux purchase . . . they also have Ximian, which is a great desktop Linux.

Stonie Cooper
Planetary Data, Inc.


> On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 16:19, Arthur A. Person wrote:
> > Hi...
> > 
> > It was brought to my attention today that RedHat is apparently dropping
> > support for it's free versions of Linux.  This leaves us (and I'm sure
> > many of you) in a quandary as to what to do.  The options appear to be
> > either to buy support (which apparently will be $150 per desktop, more for
> > servers) or switch to another vendor.
> > 
> > We will probably be forced to switch to another vendor, at least for 
> > many of our desktops, because of the costs involved.  I'd be interested in 
> > any opinions anyone has as to preferences for other Linux distributions 
> > and why.  Also, are there any gotcha's with the other distro's as far as 
> > running the LDM and gempak are concerned?
> 
> This does concern me in terms of the direction Red Hat is going. 
> According to the email I got, Red Hat 9 is the last version Red Hat is
> going to release and support for it will end on April 30, 2004.
> 
> It looks like Red Hat is trying to get everyone to move to Red Hat
> Enterprise.  The new equivalent looks to be Enterprise Linux WS which
> will cost $179 for basic (no CD, download only, no support, 1 year of
> updates) or $299 for standard edition (CD at no charge, web support,
> etc).  My only problem with Enterprise is that it will be more like
> Solaris.  In other words, major updates will occur, not every 6 month,
> but more like every 2 years with intermediate bug and security fixes. 
> Enterprise 3.0 is essentially Red Hat 9 and probably will be for a
> couple of years.  Also, WS will only have Apache, Samba and NFS on the
> server side.  If you want server programs like FTP, IMAP, DHCP, YP, etc
> you will have to move to Enterprise Linux ES which will cost $349 for
> Basic (no CD, no support) or $799 for Standard.  
> 
> I'm also not quite sure where Fedora is going.  It looks like this will
> be a download only with very limited support and documentation.  Since
> Fedora seems to be a Red Hat light (limited Red Hat financial backing
> but mostly community developed, tested and supported), it might be more
> difficult to use it in a operational environment.
> 
> I guess as long as RH 9 continues to run here, I'll stick with it.  I
> wonder how Novell buying out Suse is going to change that product?? 
> Also, it might not be a bad idea to try out other Linux releases such as
> Slackware.
> 
> -- 
> Dan Vietor <devo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Unisys
> 
>