I still say it was a mistake to kill off RHL. It made the name "Red Hat" synonymous with Linux, at least to the casual observer. And people like to stick with what they know.

I disagree, fedora is a better brand name. It disassociates the brand, ie "Windows" from the company, ie "Microsoft". Imagine if Microsoft had named its OS "Microsoft". Then it would be called Microsoft Microsoft 2004. Almost as confusing as the .NET fiasco.

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And people like to stick with what they know.

Exactly the reason Windows on the desktop is such an entrenched force. Just Saturday I was getting my hair cut. The woman said something about viruses her husband downloaded. "Oh, you're using Windows I guess." I said a bit bluntly. "Yeah, it's all we know and we can't afford a Mac." So right there that told me A) inertia will keep them using Windows until they die and B) many people think the Mac is the only alternative (and are too expensive)

The RedHat name is still branded on their Enterprise products. Brand recognizition if VERY important, as you've stated; especially when convincing management to switch to a new platform. If you're convincing management to buy a product, you're probably going to want a product from the RedHat Enterprise Line, and not Fedora. Fedora is, in my opinion, aimed more at the slightly more Linux-savvy crowd who don't need name recognition and care more about the use of Free Software and up to date software than the name of the distribution.

Some people think Red Hat is Linux. Someone yesterday informed me with a straight face that "Linux hasn't been free since version 10".

I agree. I always thought Fedora was a bone thrown to those who had used RHL. They were actually making money on RHL which means they dropped it for focus, not profit. I think it's hurt them, no matter what they say. I think they are doing okay, don't get me wrong, but the community as a whole thinks less of them for it. I refuse to try Fedora for the reasons you stated. Red Hat doesn't want my business unless I buy enterprise versions which means unless I have a user base. Caldera got a bad rep for much of the same type behavior, back in the day. Hey, it works for them. Red Hat really has no interest in you and me until we code something, put it back into the community, and they incorperate it into their workstation distro.

Wait a minute. You criticize Redhat for charging for support, but then you claim that "Debian really needs a 'grown up' large company to provide commercial support, that will quiet the fears of managers."

Am I missing something?!

B) many people think the Mac is the only alternative (and are too expensive)

Well, for most people Mac's are the only alternative. What else is there? And before anyone even mentions Linux, show me one place a "normal" person can buy a Linux machine like Dell, Gateway, or HP. No, Linspire or Lindows at Walmart does not count either.

Now with Mac's being too expensive, thats just ignorance. You _may_ write a smaller check the 1st time you buy a Windows box, but after you buy all the extra stuff you need like a virus scanner, and you take into account that there is basically no resale value for a used PC, you will probably end up paying more for WIndows in the long haul. Not to mention your cost of time putting up with various "features" in Windows.

I read here once that somebody that works at CompUSA or whatnot once said. When people buy a Mac, they go home and we never see them again. When people buy a PC, they keep coming back and buy more stuff for it.

So because they stopped supporting the Free Iso's you went to distro where there isn't any support? Where you will face the same problem of the products eventually being dropped from support as well? How do you benefit? Either way you don't have support. Your not making much sense especially running Gentoo which for all of its merits isnt' a business oriented distro. This is expecially laugable if indeed your business is as large as your claiming. Somehow I dont' see many Fortune 500 companies running Gentoo as their desktop.

"Suse looks like its moving in the opposite direction of redhat so that might be an option for a good option down the road."

How? Suse is mirroring Red Hat as closely as possible on the business side with their licensing schemes.

I swear I really question the judgement of anti-redhat users sometimes. They bitch about Red hat and then run right into the arms of another for profit Distro maker and somehow expect everything to change. I'm not saying Red Hat is some sort of angel for trying to transition their customers from ubber cheap Servers to their Enterprise brand but there are way too many "Red Hat is evil and distro X is my savior" posts here from people who are not well informed and just want to spite Red Hat.

Although I wish RH lots of luck with Fedora I can't say that I'm interested in what they offer.

Their commercial offerings are a pain in the butt, the kernel they use is patched all over the place and they don't even offer support for normal Linux kernels. For all intents and purposes they are *not* a Linux distribution but a clever new way to achieve another vendor lock-in scenario.

My *proffessional* experience with their products have been nothing short of disappointing, all the advantages that Linux has, like flexibility and standardisation, RH has eliminated them one by one with their stringent support policies and nothing less then time consuming and awkward ways of keeping machines updated. They don't even guarantee API compatibility within major releases so I can't even update machines without testing the updates first. I don't want to start a "my distro is better than yours" argument but why would I go through all the aformentioned trouble when there a distro like Debian does guarentee API compatibility within major releases, can do security updates automatically without any worries, and is commercially supported by multiple companies as well? In every way I can think of it their commercial server products feel antiquated and awkward to administer.

IMNSHO The products RH sells have nothing in common with Linux and the reason why it got so popular in the first place.

Exactly the reason Windows on the desktop is such an entrenched force.

No, its because:

1) Windows isn't fragmented like Linux. There's 2-5 current versions at a time, not 300 distros. For frig sake even package management is different on different distros. You don't know how to install under Linux. You know a distro and its installer (rpm, apt/dselect, upmdi etc. blah blah).
2) _Most_ of the time Windows installs out of the box with a GUI installer that requires no command line tweaking required. Even Mandrake required some command line tweaking. /. readers can continue to bury their heads in the sand if they wish but this whole "Linux is ready for the desktop" line is crapola spouted by the same fools that call anyone who can't configure Linux by hand an idiot, and spout RTFM at anyone who cares. They've never bothered to deal with end users because end users are beneath them.

STOP saying Linux is ready for the desktop. It's not. It wouldn't take too much to get it ready for the desktop.

Not enough packages? You obviosuly haven't used it. In previous posts people were complaining that too many packages were installed with it. The thing with Fedora is it goes through extensive Q&A relatvie to the other distros so not every package you may find in gentoo will be in a defualt install of Fedora. This is why you can easily use outside reopsitories like DAG, Freshrpms, Fedora.us, Livna.org etc.. etc.. Fedorafaq.org is your friend. Fedora is really an amzing distro, especially Core 3. And more importantly, its community is gigantic and if you need help, the people at #fedora are almsot always willing to help and are very nice. If you try going to #debian, you'll get laughed at and ridiculed out of there. We've actually had people come to #fedora saying that they don't run fedora but the debian channel refused to help them so they came here for help, and sure enough they were helped. Fedora is also the only distro that works on my laptop, I can't stand Suse and that god forsaken YaST, but Mandrake is nice and I wouldn't mind dual booting with it, but it refuses to play nice with my laptop. So for the past year or so I've run Fedora and its the best decision I've made. I still do run debian on some older servers, but FC2 is stable enough that I'm phasing out the Debian with Fedora. If you haven't given it a shot recently, you should.
Regards,
Steve

If 'A' and 'B' then 'Chair'? They want a Mac, they can't afford a Mac, so they stick with Windows. This is finance, not inertia. They stick with something they know to be unsatisfactory because the alternatives are beyond their means. Tip better!

Since you (and 30 others) feel its your duty to spit at redhat while holding up your Debian flag I think its about time you guys answer some questions. Red Hat did SMP, NPTL, clustering, O(1) scheduler, O(1) VM layer Starting and stopping 100,000 threads used to take 15 minutes, now it literally takes one second.
Had major contributions to or wrote outright Mozilla, Open Office, Kernel, GTK2, GCC, Glibc, metacity, wrote Java compiler, Xorg(xfree), stateless linux, SElinux, exec-shild, RPM, Anaconda. It bought out 3 company's turning previous closed source software the company's owned into OSS software like netscape directory and GFS, sistina's VM. RedHat promises to spend 1/5th of their income on R&D of free software.
Now... What has Debian done for us? Thanks for apt-get.
Which side is "just packaging free software" again?
Some of us BUY RH because they take our money and INVENT software that is OSS, they don't just patch security flaws.