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Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Aug 02, 2006 07:25 AM
from the straight-from-the-tea-leaves dept.
from the straight-from-the-tea-leaves dept.
Tony Mobily has written a thought-provoking editorial for Free Software Magazine that makes the bold prediction of Red Hat's eventual demise at the hands of Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu. Calling on memories of Red Hat alienating their desktop user base to focus on their corporate customers and making money, Mobily states that many of those alienated desktop users are also system administrators who now feel more comfortable with Ubuntu and will make the choice to use Ubuntu Server over Red Hat now and in the future.
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Interviews: What's Fedora Up To? Ask the Project Leader 295 comments
Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack offered himself up for this interview because, he said, "I look at stories like [your] posting Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise and many of the comments about Red Hat and Fedora seem very rooted in the world of several years ago, when the RHEL/Fedora split took place." This is a chance to clear the air, and get an up-to-date look at what Fedora is up to these days. So ask away; we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Max and (hopefully) publish his answers later this week.
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Bologna! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bologna! (Score:5, Interesting)
Subsequently i have changed most the servers i take care of to Debian, and on the desktop I use Ubuntu.
That being said I have no reason to look from Debian to ubuntu in the server space but newer Linux admins may find it appropriate.
Parent
Re:Bologna! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm in a similar situation as you, typically using Debian on servers and Ubuntu on the desktop, and a reason for switching to Ubuntu on the server did recently occur to me: if Debian continues this breakneck release pace (less than two years between releases? Egad!) then Ubuntu LTS might actually force less frequent upgrades.
Parent
Re:Bologna! (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't happen in the long term either. Yes, Ubuntu is becoming ever more popular, but this is an expanding market. There are new users arriving on the 'Linux' scene every second. Red Hat may not grow at the same pace as Ubuntu in the short, medium, or long term, but it will grow.
All Ubuntu has done has made the competition for new desktop customers more intense. Red Hat will continue to specialise in the server market where it will continue to grow due to providing valued sevice.
Market trends determine the prospects of a company as much as (if not more than) the competition.
Parent
Re:Bologna! (Score:5, Insightful)
It also has to do with enterprise deployment. When Debian / Ubunto gets to similar levels as RedHat in the enterprise, we will start to see support for it.
Parent
Re:Bologna! (Score:5, Interesting)
So I was a redhat user. I didn't like when the fedora was launched, but keep with. FC1 was launched and then FC2 and FC3, by the time FC4 was out I was hearing all those background noises, "ubuntu is cool", "ubunto this", "ubuntu that", so I gave it a try. I downloaded the instalation and gave it a try.
I spended most of the FC4 time using ubuntu, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't that much better. It did came with some drivers that redhat refuses to bundle, but on the other hand it did not have "mp3" and other MM in the same way that redhat din't. But the worst part was to develop with Ubuntu...
First I had to install the compilers that did not installed in the first round, ok compilers are a specific need and should not be installed in the generic desktop instalation, fedora also do not install those by default. But ubuntu did not gave me a choice to install them. The second head ache was with compiling gnome stuff, I had to install every gnome library 'dev' package by hand, a never ending task since there is aways another one that you forgot...
But I had it when I installed the motif, first I had the same problem that I had with the gnome devel. But until now I was patient and thought "sure this is a one time thing". But then I discovered that the package that had the Xt* development had not bundled the man pages, so I didn't have the man pages a 100% necessary tool. So I go to ubuntu's bug site and search the DB, I find a bug filled with this problem and the solution is "fixed for the next version". So a packeger did a mistake, ok fine everyone does them. But not updating the packaging until the next version, is an abuse. This fix would not step on anyother package toe, it should have been updated as soon as it was found. So I had to live without those man pages, the package didn't even showed up in the backports.
So what happened? I am now using FC5. I was not pleased with ubuntu, it was a nice desktop and all and I see why many people love it and may even try it again in the future, but for now I will keep going with my fedora experience.
Parent
Distro de jour (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh huh (Score:5, Interesting)
One reason that Ubuntu will never be accepted: they don't offer the things that make beancounters sleep well at night. They don't have an "enterprise edition." They give it away for free - it can't be any good, right?
Ultimately, Red Hat targets corporate clients. Ubuntu doesn't. And it's not like that's bad!
Re:Uh huh (Score:4, Insightful)
They would have no idea if the OS cost money or not in my case. I expect there are other places much the same.
Parent
Re:Uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
He called me to his office (I was the "Open Source evangelist") and asked me what was the good thing in Open Source (specifically Linux at that time). After I tried to explain him, trying to supress my "enthusiastic bachellors" spirit, about the benefit of using an open source solution to do what they were doing (a "service based" buisness, instead of a "software" based company), he told me (something I will always remember) that free things are not good for companies, because it is the total oposite of an economy and, for there to be an economy there assets/services must be traded for money. In the absense of this (e.g. with "free lunch") a company can not be inside the "economic circle". [sorry, rough english translation of what I remember].
If I were to tell him now, something like 5 years later, I would tell him that, in reality Open Source (at least GPL/Linux) is not a "payless" or "gratis" asset. Because, when any company uses the software they have to (a) contribute to the community (pay, in terms of intellectual property) and (b) pay for support/integration, because the advantage of the closed source solutions is the cohesion they achieve in their software (something really nice about Microsoft products is that they work happy togheter, although for some people this is something bad because they "tie" the client), unlike open source software for which there exist thousands of possible combinations which, if the company is lucky, would be able find a half assed script to make two make 2 programs poorly interact with each other.
Parent
Re:Uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, where can I find him, I've got a whole lot of air he can buy or cease using if he feels it doesnt cost enough.
"because it is the total oposite of an economy"
He should probably go back and read a few books on economy again. The ultimate goal of free market capitalism is to encourage the most effective production of 'wealth' possible, with the endgame being the end of scarcity, when more or less everything the average person needs or wants costs close to nothing.
Of course, that is the total opposite of protectionism, where the legal system protects inefficient production from competition.
The economies of opensource are the economies of the free market. As components are perfected and reused and shared, they decrease redundant work and leads to far lower costs for the companies involved; mass-used and distributed code approaches lack of scarcity. At the same time, the costs are shifted into areas that actually do cost; support and other currently labour intensive and not easily automated tasks. The incentive becomes to provide faster better more cost effective support and customization, thus driving along the economic cycle.
Parent
Re:Uh huh (Score:5, Informative)
But there is a company behind Ubuntu - Canonical [canonical.com]. They offer professional support for those who want it. Of course, Red Hat is much larger, more entrenched and more experienced, but I think that outside of the US the situation isn't as clear cut.
Parent
Funny thing about bean counters.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder when the last time was that any company got Microsoft to fix *any* bug they found in a released version of software?
It seems like even giants of industry can't get them to fix holes any faster than peons.
Parent
Ubuntu *has* paid enterprise support, people! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid [ubuntu.com]
Alternatively, has anyone ever actually used RedHat support? *I* wasn't impressed...
Parent
OMFG! Redhat needs to make money! :) (Score:5, Insightful)
I was one of those disaffected desktop users, but I still use RHEL (er...actually CentOS) for server machines that do real work. If you don't need bleeding edge desktop gadgets, it's still OK for desktop use as well. Ragging on RedHat because they had the temerity to focus on the part of their business that generated profit for them seems a bit harsh. There's plenty of other distros to choose from, including Ubuntu, if you want to live in the fast lane.
Cheers,
Ummm ... noooo (Score:5, Insightful)
The article itself is a joke, and does not actually detail any valid reasons about why Ubuntu will displace Redhat in the market. The 5th and 6th paragraphs are nothing more than "I want to brown-nose Mark Shuttleworth" crap that also does not feed the main argument of the commentary^H^H^H^H rant. THe last two paragraphs which barely have any meat on them are nothing more than rants not backed by any citations, evidence, deep analytical thought, etc. The crux of the article revolves around Redhat alienating their desktop "not paying a penny freeloaders", which is retarded because a) redhat's revenue shotup when they mandated fees and b) umm, whats Fedora again ?
While I commend Ubuntu and everyone else for their efforts on the desktop front I think it is very important to note that beating Redhat is going to require quite the effort, skill and resources. Redhat still commands other distros in the areas of Income, Innovations, and the holy-grail-of-almost-everything: Marketing. SUSE has been trying to beat Redhat for how hard and how long ?
(Maybe this company is trying for the "Dvorak-angle", which is to write something dumb and generate lots of attention to a whole lot of nothin')
A very odd line of reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
And to say that Ubuntu's server must be excellent because its desktop-focused distros are is like saying that Ford's trucks must be great because their cars are cool. Outwardly, it would appear that could be the case, but in reality market forces are completely different in cars and truck markets, just like they are in server and desktop distribution.
Ubuntu has done a rational job (and still incomplete) of making a viable desktop-focused OS. Yes, admins use it. Yes, they tend to use in one place (desktop) what they know for another application-- the server. Yet Ubuntu isn't that far away from RH. And the number of admins using strictly Linux is still very small, although growing a bit each day.
Summary: the lines don't join together in the logic. Yes, Ubuntu is cool, but it in no way spells the end of RH and it's juvenile to think so.
Why I can't switch yet (Score:5, Informative)
I guess I could be saved by utility that analysis the entire set of packages I'd need in order to install a given package on my computer. If I had a utility like that, I could walk over to an Internet-connected computer, download those packages onto a CD-R, and then install them on the computer that can't connect to the Internet. Or.... Ubuntu could start putting together CD/DVD sets that contained a larger fraction of popular packages than they can fit on one CD. Either development would let me kick Fedora out of the picture.
Wrong Target (Score:5, Insightful)
Much more vulnerable are Novell/SuSE and their rather hamfisted "me too" strategies and lesser distros like Mandriva. Those are the ones Ubuntu is likely to take market share from. SuSE could be especially vulnerable since their OpenSuSE "community" distro is arguably just a corporate sham with very little of a true community about it.
I'm still looking for a defense of his thesis (Score:5, Insightful)
1) RedHat is a large Linux vendor and gives business people someone to deal with reliably.
2) RedHat has an entrenched userbase.
3) RedHat Enterprise Linux is a good distribution in its own right.
4) RedHat has great support from "enterprise vendors" such as Oracle.
RedHat is threatened, but it's manageable. It's the sort of competition that will make them better, not threaten their ability to survive and thrive.
Redhat and Fedora are good (Score:5, Insightful)
Friendly rivalries should stay friendly, especially when core foundations of the free software development model are under attack from government mandated and enforced DRM in hardware, extortion threats to the north american internet infrastructure, and increasing attempts to tie popular hardware APIs to closed platforms.
Who says... (Score:5, Interesting)
For me ubuntu is no more than a buzz word, which uses Debian as a source of fame.
Until more vendor products are certified (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, IBM DB2, is certified to run on Ubuntu and IBM will support it. Same thing for MySQL but until something like Tivoli Storage Manager or WebSphere Application Server or BEA or any other host of products are certified and are listed as "supported configurations" by vendors, Ubuntu will only be for non-commerical applications in the corporate world.
Our model is RedHat for stuff that requires a support contract (WebSphere, TSM) and CentOS for development boxes or things like our Apache servers, CUPS servers and what not. It provides the same interface and knowledge as the RHEL stuff so there's no need to document something different.
I honestly think what's going to eat RHAT's lunch in the smaller markets is CentOS.
Not gonna happen (Score:5, Informative)