RHEL 6 No Longer Supported By Google Chrome 231
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samzenpus
from the too-old dept.
from the too-old dept.
sfcrazy writes "Google has declared Red Hat's RHEL 6 obsolete, showing a notification which says, 'Google Chrome us no longer updating because your operating system is obsolete.' Red Hat evangelist Jan Wilderboer says: 'We release new stable versions of RHEL every 2-3 years. The API/ABI stability is what sets it apart from community distros. Customers need long term stability. Google knows (and uses) that itself internally. By cutting the support of enterprise distributions they simply tell me to move elsewhere. That's not a very encouraging thing.'"
RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:5, Insightful)
What the heck are they thinking?
Also, RHEL versions are supported for a very long time. You can have systems running one version of RHEL, with security and bugfix updates for many years at a time. The whole point of the distro is stability; you don't have to worry about upgrading every six months.
What is Google thinking?
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After re-iterating the summary, is there a point you are making?
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Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't browse the web on my critical servers. I do browse it on my RHEL 6 Workstation (full disclosure: I don't use Chrome), Why do I have a RHEL 6 Workstation? So that my management workstation uses the same OS as my servers and I don't have to think about the differences in OS versions, especially if I need to test something...
Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:4, Insightful)
To put this into a stupid slashdot car analogy, what this guy is saying is that he drives a left hand drive stick shift at work, may even have a left hand drive stick shift at work for testing, and when he gets home, he uses a left hand drive stick shift too so that his work life is easier.
Now, if he drove an automatic at work but a stick at home, he mind find himself accidentally slamming on the brakes when coming to a stop (muscle memory clutch foot coupled with an oddly wide brake pedal (that's breaks and petals if you want to troll a spelling nazi)). Or, if he drove a right hand drive MG at home, he might end up making a crazy turn into oncoming traffic at work with their left hand drive cars.
Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:5, Interesting)
What the heck are they thinking?
Maybe they meant to drop support for Red Hat Linux 6, not Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6?
- Red Hat Linux 6.0 (Hedwig), April 26, 1999 (Linux 2.2.5-15)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (Santiago), November 10, 2010 (Linux 2.6.32-71)
Yes, their naming scheme could use some work.....
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I am running RHEL6 x64 right now on my work machine. Since the only version of Flash that works on my system is hopelessly outdated, Chrome is the only way that I can actually catch the occasional Youtube video...
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You're doing something wrong.
I have this on my Centos 6 desktops (including the computer that I'm typing on right now): flash-plugin-11.2.202.262-release.x86_64
It was downloaded from the adobe repository via yum, and it works fine with youtube videos. And other stuff.
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What the heck are they thinking?
Also, RHEL versions are supported for a very long time. You can have systems running one version of RHEL, with security and bugfix updates for many years at a time. The whole point of the distro is stability; you don't have to worry about upgrading every six months.
What is Google thinking?
Well, I can kind of understand Google on this one actually. I use CentOS (free as in beer RHEL clone) on most of my desktops. I use it because it's a very stable environment. An always-updating web browser is not exactly suitable if you want stability. Since Chrome is not open source there's not much we can do about it. I guess Red Hat could maintain a fork of Chromium if they wanted; they basically do that with Firefox right now. I haven't checked but I'm pretty sure Firefox ESR 17 runs on RHEL 6 (and prob
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Did anybody actually even see this, apart from mr. Wildeboer? I'm running an up-to-date 64-bit CentOS 6 and an up-to-date Chrome beta on CentOS 6, and I have not seen this.
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That they make their money off of ads and RHEL users probably have ABP? Lets face it the way Google datamines it can probably tell you to the cent how much each particular OS makes them and I bet RHEL doesn't even make a blip on the big board.
But why does anybody even care? I thought the whole point of FOSS is not being beholden to the corps for support, right? so why hasn't somebody just compiled Chromium from source and slapped it out there as a replacement, or does the phone home add ons Google sticks in
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RHEL is FREE but not Free.
Updates cost money. Also Chrome is built from Chromium which is FREE and Free.
Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:5, Informative)
RHEL 6 came out in late 2010, while Windows 7 came out in mid 2009.
Their respective latest major patches were mid 2012 (6.3) and early 2011 (SP1).
Short version: RHEL 6 is newer than Windows 7 by more than a year by any metric.
There is no excuse for Chrome dropping support for RHEL 6 and keeping it for Windows 7 (let alone XP). Linux may be more of a moving target, but it's not so bad that something can't run on the latest release and one from a couple years ago. This is almost certainly the result of wanting some latest-and-greatest feature and not really caring that some people might want to have stable OSes.
Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't get to TFA at work, so just guessing: if Google Chrome is like most other cross-platform software, it comes packaged with many of its own libraries on Windows, but on Linux it relies on shared libraries. RHEL tends to contain older versions of libraries with the implication that older means more stable, so maybe some non-essential feature in the latest Chrome had to be disabled and it popped up that warning. I know I had a lot of fun messing around trying to build chromium on RHEL5, which came with gcc 4.1.4 when the build required 4.2+.
Unless it's just detecting the version string or something, in which case this is indeed quite lame.
Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm of the firm opinion that most Linux server should package its own shared libraries. Especially when those libraries differ between distros or are updated often with non-backwards compatible changes.
It's frustrating that you often can't use older software on newer Linux systems due to API compatibility issues. Meanwhile, you can run Windows software going all the way back to the 90s.
Macs also suffer from this lack of being able to run really ancient software, but for a more understandable reason: Multiple major system architecture changes over the years.
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Damnit, I need to proofread my comments before hitting submit. I meant "Linux software" not "Linux server". What is wrong with me.
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My experiences with api changes aren't that bad. You can have several versions of the same library installed, no problem. Your programs will use the version that they need. Maybe some less flexible programs will just use the highest version and choke on the api changes? Linux games don't have this problem because they usually ship static linked with the version they were developed on.
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RHEL is a bit unusual in that it tends to be used as a basis for installing unpackaged software. On most distros the distro itself would build/distribute a browser, in which case the supported browsers are whatever the distro decides to support.
Certainly you wouldn't find a browser on Debian saying that Debian isn't supported, since if nothing else Debian would just patch out the warning.
Chrome on Debian? (Score:2)
Re:Chrome on Debian? (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure, but I doubt that Debian would distribute it - that would need to be purely on Google's part.
Chromium might get shipped by Debian, but not Chrome. The latter is closed-source, trademarked, etc. They don't even ship Firefox under that name, so the chances of them shipping Chrome are VERY low.
I run Gentoo and they've dropped Chrome. Being closed source it is just a pain to support in general. It packages everything under the sun internally, etc. Chromium is nearly the same and while it takes work it is possible to strip out most of the 3rd-party stuff so that you're linking against system libraries (Gentoo has been one of the leaders in that). For kicks try downloading the source tarball and run du -s * and you'll see just how much junk it bundles.
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Gentoo has removed Chrome? They must have just done that, since I saw it update on my system in the last couple of weeks.
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Chrome works on Windows XP, which was initially released in 2001. I suspect it requires SP3, but even that was released in 2008.
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Chrome is a desktop application too which means that it needs to keep up with the latest Linux Desktop distros. Its hard to maintain backward compat with something as old as Fedora 12 when software has change so much in 4 years.
Windows 7 on the other hand has not changed from Windows Vista in terms of Win32 application development. What works on one
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Windows 7 on the other hand has not changed from Windows Vista in terms of Win32 application development. What works on one more than likely will work on the other.
Most of the C++ library for Windows is version-independent and distributed separately from the OS.
For instance, here's the Visual Studio 2012 runtime library update 1 [microsoft.com].
Since Windows XP is still supported by MS, the VS2k12 C++ runtime library still supports it.
Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is almost certainly the result of wanting some latest-and-greatest feature
That's the supposition, but let's hear it - what this feature that's in linux right now that wasn't there a couple years ago that Chrome needs? I guess the next Chromium build will make this clear (and I suspect an easy workaround will be had).
It seems more likely that somebody on the Chrome team got a hair across his ass about Redhat and with the frenetic pace of Chrome releases he was able to convince the whole team that they needed to drop support.
Happy to be proven wrong.
Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:4, Informative)
Google Chrome is not free software, it is proprietary freeware. There are many differences between Chrome and Chromium apart from the bundled Flash plugin.
What Components? (Score:2)
What "proprietary components"?
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There are a lot of proprietary stuff on red hat, such as the update manager (up2date) which is replaced with yum by fedora/centos.
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RHEL has been using yum since version 5. And up2date is GPL, at least if this is the source: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/redhat/linux/enterprise/4/en/os/x86_64/SRPMS/up2date-4.4.5-1.src.rpm [redhat.com]
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Well, seems they got rid of it on version 6. Up to version 5 they used up2date, and it was proprietary.
Regardless, the whole RHEL attitude is proprietary, they comply with the GPL because they have to, but do everything in their power to close the system as much as possible, and make it seem privative. If this weren't the case, CentOS wouldn't exist.
Not that it matters, red hat sucks.
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Well, seems they got rid of it on version 6. Up to version 5 they used up2date, and it was proprietary.
I could be wrong, but I've found a source RPM from RHEL 4 where it says it's GPL. If it ever was proprietary I guess that was many years ago now.
Regardless, the whole RHEL attitude is proprietary, they comply with the GPL because they have to, but do everything in their power to close the system as much as possible, and make it seem privative. If this weren't the case, CentOS wouldn't exist.
Not that it matters, red hat sucks.
They comply with the GPL because they are doing a lot of the development. They employ a ton of developers that are working on many important open source projects, work that everyone benefits from.
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Well there is no doubt that Google doesn't care about the enterprise or the needs of users who want long-term stability. Does Google mark IE 10, the latest internet explorer as outdated?
But in fairness, the javacsript engine in Firefox ESR 10 is frozen, featuers-wise, and Google has moved on to rely on the capabilities of newer javascript engines and HTML5 rendering systems.
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Ret Hat is likely to ship ESR 17 once Mozilla makes ESR 10 end of life. Should be any day now.
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I run RHEL6 on my desktop... I am part of an ASIC design team. Tool vendors are picky about which versions of Linux they support, so we cannot exactly switch to Ubuntu or anything like that. So, at work, RHEL6 is my every-day desktop.
Go where? (Score:2)
By cutting the support of enterprise distributions they simply tell me to move elsewhere
So Google wants us to go back to Firefox? ;-)
SCNR
Re:Go where? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you be running RHEL on something that you use to browse the web?
Either it is a server and does not have X installed or it is a desktop and RHEL would be a PITA since it has so little software in the repos.
Re:Go where? (Score:5, Informative)
RHEL is used for hardened unix workstations, too. RHEL5 is the only enterprise linux distro I know of worth using with FIPS 140-2 and DoD APL certification, meaning that it's the only option for military workstations other than Windows.
So, take that arrogant "enterprise distro is only for servers" attitude elsewhere, please.
Re:Go where? (Score:4, Insightful)
RHEL is used for hardened unix workstations, too. RHEL5 is the only enterprise linux distro I know of worth using with FIPS 140-2 and DoD APL certification, meaning that it's the only option for military workstations other than Windows.
And you're allowed to install third-party software in that situation?
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So, take that arrogant "enterprise distro is only for servers" attitude elsewhere, please.
Speaking of "arrogant attitudes" ...
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Also, the Xilinx FPGA design tools are only officially supported on RHEL. While I run Xilinx tools (and Impact JTAG programmer) with patched drivers, if I ever run into a problem they would look at the log file and refuse to help if they see that I am not running the supported RHEL.
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Because it's a server, but I need to google the web for help or a man page occasionally.
IT experts don't know all the answers, they just know where to find them.
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If you are doing that from a server you should be fired or at the very least a written reprimand should be issued.
Use google from your workstation not the server.
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Everything you do is a risk, sometimes the trade off is worth it sometimes it is not. When you have a workstation available no need to risk the server.
Joe Sixpack has malware on his PC all the damn time.
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RHEL works fine on my media centre with EPEL and nux-desktop. It gives me everything I want and more, and I don't have to worry about the OS falling out of support after a couple of years...
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Actually there is a ton of software available in repos for RHEL. Almost as much as Fedora, actually. The main recommended third-party repo is EPEL, and if you can't find something in there you can dip into a widely-trusted third-party repo called rpmforge. Between those two I've not found very much lacking except the latest bleeding edge stuff like Gnome 3.
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Why would you be running RHEL on something that you use to browse the web?
Web browsers are not just used to browse the web.
Most of the ancillary hardware in our racks these days has a web management interface which is not accessible through the firewall; some still has ssh or telnet, but that's becoming increasingly rare. So to manage it, I can either log into one of the servers and run a web browser from there, or port forward it through SSH and run one locally.
Wrong About RHEL Desktop (Score:2)
You can run RHEL/CentOS with current Chome, Chromium, Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, the usual multimedia apps, etc., etc., These programs are not in the official RHEL/CentOS repositories but they are available in reliable independent repos. I know because I've done it.
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I use that a lot, but why would I ever want it for a web browser?
Re:Go where? (Score:4, Funny)
why would you xforward a browser to a computer that already has a browser?
Because, uh, you want to browse from the other computer?
That said, I'm pretty sure the last time I tried to start a remote copy of Firefox, it helpfully started one on the local machine instead. Because, after all, why would you xforward a browser to a computer that already has a browser?
Thats funny because... (Score:2, Informative)
I think RHEL 6 will be supported until 2020.
WTF.
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I think RHEL 6 will be supported until 2020.
WTF.
True, but Chrome is not supported by Red Hat. It's not in their repositories. You have to install it manually if you want it, and Google has no responsibility to support it everywhere.
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I think RHEL 6 will be supported until 2020.
WTF.
True, but Chrome is not supported by Red Hat. It's not in their repositories. You have to install it manually if you want it, and Google has no responsibility to support it everywhere.
Google's loss, then.
Okay, I'll say it... fragmentation (Score:2)
There's an obvious reason why Google's doing this. They target the most popular desktop distros and can't be maintaining releases for old distros without a lot of desktop users. Now, if there were a 'standard' Linux API (lumping all the various API's together as something Google could target and all distros could support), this wouldn't be an issue. The same Chrome release for Windows can be used on XP->Win8 (desktop mode). That's why 3rd party dev's target WIN32. That's also why 3rd parties won't (
Re:Okay, I'll say it... fragmentation (Score:5, Informative)
Red Hat - or anybody else, for that matter - is free to take the pure open source Chromium and port it to RHEL
There is a reason Chromium has not made it into Fedora's repositories (and by extension, RHEL):
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chromium [fedoraproject.org]
Basically, the problem is this: Chromium depends on extensions to libraries that have not been merged with the main releases of those libraries, and so having Chromium on Fedora would require either static linking (giant packages) or maintain separate sets of libraries just for Chromium. Neither of those options is something that Fedora will do, and if Fedora is unwilling to include a package in its repositories the package as almost no chance of being included in RHEL. Years have passed since the problem was first discussed with Google (see the link), and there has not really been much progress, mostly for the same reasons that RHEL6 is not supported by Chrome: Google does things their way and is not going to change that for someone else (regardless of that other person's reasoning).
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Neither of those options is something that Fedora will do
Google does things their way and is not going to change that for someone else
Looks like Google's not the only one.
Well, at least I'm using ... (Score:3, Funny)
... CentOS 6.3. Google will support CentOS, right?
They're just pushing costs onto their customers (Score:5, Insightful)
Vendors don't want to the cost of supporting your platform, so they drop you. To avoid any responsibility, they simply add an error message blaming the user: "Your platform is obsolete." (I guess it's my problem now!) Many users are uniformed or credulous enough to believe it.
Many 'cloud' vendors are going this way; they've simply ignored their commitment to support their users and make the users do the work of supporting vendors (via upgrades and installations). I suspect it's because many users are consumers, aren't aware the vendors have this obligation, and take the 'error' messages at face value.
Worse, I see it in business situations. For example, cloud vendors we pay say that the current Firefox ESR is obsolete, or that we need to deploy browser upgrades office-wide every 5 weeks -- it does nothing for our bottom line, we'd just be doing it to please them.
There needs to be some push-back. We have no reason to absorb these costs.
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There needs to be some push-back. We have no reason to absorb these costs.
Those costs need to be absorbed somewhere. Most cloud products operate with a business model of "flog it cheap, keep costs down to a minimum and make the money up on volume"; they work because so many businesses don't see beyond the "cheap" bit.
You want your provider to accommodate every little browser quirk that Firefox has had in the last 3 years? Fine, but don't expect any support from a business that has taken the conscious decision to avoid dealing with this.
RHEL is for servers not desktops (Score:3)
I don't think I've ever installed RHEL or CentOS with X Windows. Frankly it annoys me that there are no desktop distros that are maintained for longer than a year or two. Are we really expected to reinstall Linux on a workstation ever year? That scares me because it makes me think the people who are using Linux are just screwing around and not doing real work. Anyone doing real work doesn't have time to reinstall Linux every year.
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Ubuntu LTE.
Re:RHEL is for servers not desktops (Score:4, Informative)
Red Hat has a desktop version of RHEL, with the same support cycle.
Re:RHEL is for servers not desktops (Score:5, Informative)
Frankly it annoys me that there are no desktop distros that are maintained for longer than a year or two
Allow me to rid you of your annoyance:
https://www.redhat.com/products/enterprise-linux/desktop/ [redhat.com]
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Last I checked a RedHat subscription was not priced for the non-corporate user.
And I have tried those "long term support" distros more than once (although not RH) and my experience was that a) nobody actually uses them so the support isn't that great (you can't find a lot of answers in forums, blogs and such) and bugs take a long time to get fixed and more likely b) they only support new hardware for a little while so they don't really work unless you buy a laptop at the same time the distro was released. A
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If you are looking to spend money RedHat is probably best you can get, if you can get a subscription with support. The reason you cannot find good answers in forums and such for RedHat, CentOS, and the like is because the paid knowledge base for RedHat is fantastic. In addition to having answers to almost any problem, there are no "wrong" or overly inefficient answers mixed in there to confuse you. Also, in the event your problem is too weird for the knowledge base, you can make a ticket in exactly a sim
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I hate to reply to my own post but I hit submit instead of continue editing.
Anyway you can get a RedHat self-support Desktop subscription for $50 (access to Knowledge Base) or a full service Workstation one for $300 (can make tickets). Not exactly cheap like windows but not requiring a corporate level of income either.
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And why exactly is it not for desktops. I run it my desktops, even my laptops. Runs just fine.
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Any Ubuntu Release marked LTS is supported for 3 years.. they come out every 18 months with new ones, but the old will be supported for 3 years..
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I've been using Fedora for years. It is annoying to have to update every 18 months, especially when it causes severe breakage. (Kmail2 was an unmitigated disaster)
Typically, though, updates cost me a morning.
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No, it would be saying the opposite.
The headline, while someone oddly phrased, says that Google Chrome will no longer be built with concern running on RHEL 6.
The other way around would imply that RHEL 6 would have some change to it or it's update/patch cycle to remove concern for the continued operation of Google Chrome.
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>The headline, while someone oddly phrased, says that Google Chrome will no longer be built with concern running on RHEL 6.
Google Chrome has never been built with concern running on RHEL 6.
Download chrome for linux, it says "For Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE)" , fact which was told in the original googleplus discussion and that the RH evangelist failed to address.
So basically, the headline should be "Due to Red Hat choice to maintain old librairies for long time, chrome now fails to compil
Re:Why would you need a web browser on a server? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why would you need a web browser on a server? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then use Debian. Solves both problems.
Re:Why would you need a web browser on a server? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I have trouble understanding is why you are so dismissive of the idea that someone would run RHEL on a workstation. I see a lot of researchers do it, and they all say essentially the same thing I said: they lack the time needed to upgrade frequently and new features are less important than stability. Debian stable may deliver that, but so does RHEL; what exactly do you think makes Debian better for workstations than RHEL?
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That the repos have more than a couple packages in it. I use RHEL for servers, getting lots of common linux packages on them is a huge PITA. I get that Redhat wants to limit what they have to support, but it still sucks.
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I'm using CentOS (free RHEL clone) on my laptop without any third party repositories. I'm interested in having a stable desktop environment, not every package in existence. Works great for me, but I can understand that it's not for everyone.
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Above you talked about 6-12 months, now it suddenly changed to 7 years... Do you seriously use that old disk images carried over to new HW, or do you perhaps re-install the OS from scratch to new HW a bit more often than that, after all?
I'm fairly happy with Ubuntu LTS (with a sane DE of your choice), and doing OS upgrade every two years (and I mean upgrade, not re-install), about half a year after each LTS has come out and most bugs have been weeded out.
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If it is at least a semi-normal PC workstation, one where user might want to use Chrome, then fact of life is, Internet moves, standards change, compilers and associated core libraries change, utility and framework libraries target the new core etc etc.
All in all, even that Ubuntu LTS 2 year upgrade cycle is pushing it and often requires either compromising or tinkering to get some software to work. Going longer than that with same OS core just isn't compatible with the real world. If both are needed, then
Re:Why would you need a web browser on a server? (Score:4, Interesting)
Above you talked about 6-12 months, now it suddenly changed to 7 years...
Read a little more closely. Fedora releases stop being supported after 12 months, and new releases come out every 6 months. RHEL releases lose support after 7 years, with new releases every 3 years or so.
Do you seriously use that old disk images carried over to new HW, or do you perhaps re-install the OS from scratch to new HW a bit more often than that, after all?
This is exactly the point: the support cycle is long enough that I will generally have to reinstall at some point before the 7 years are up, and I can do so at my discretion, when I have time available. I do not buy a new machine every 6-12 months; were I to stick with Fedora, I would be reinstalling (or praying that the upgrade option will work) on the same hardware year after year, and then having to take a few days away from work to rewrite configuration files, find workarounds for deleted features (or worse yet, added "features"), get my machine to connect to the network, etc.
I'm glad to here Ubuntu LTS works for you and lets you get your work done. I'll be over in here RHEL land getting my work done, and I'll be ignoring Google and their efforts to get me to do something else.
Re:Why would you need a web browser on a server? (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually 10 years; 13 if you pay extra.
https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/ [redhat.com]
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The thing is, Internet changes, world moves, and things (such as libraries) are interdependent. If you want both ultra-stable OS and recent software, you need two OSes. Which of course is just fine, just run Fedora or whatever in a VM, and reap benefits of up-to-date software where it matters, while having stable host OS for the "real work" (or whatever). No OS install needed even, just download pre-made VM image and you're set.
Re:Why would you need a web browser on a server? (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need a web browser on something that won't even have X installed.
RHEL is for servers, you could use it on a workstation , but fedora is better suited to that task.
Disagree.
Developers and Linux desktop users often need the stability of a commercially supported desktop/workstation distribution. RHEL, although not as bleeding edge as Fedora, is great on a PC.
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Really? Go to redhat.com and click on 'products'. First thing displayed is 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux - DESKTOP'.
My company has deployed thousands of laptops with RHEL desktop on them.
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So do you have your own repos or use DAG or what?
How do you solve the Redhat repos are depressingly small problem?
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Aside from our own applications, and the stuff provided on EPEL (which is permitted), what is missing from the Red Hat repos that would be required in a corporate environment?
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Google earth and stuff like that. It does not seem very corporate, but we have a couple hundred folks using it.
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I can't imagine how I have been getting my work done for all these years without using Google Earth. I guess if you are in a job where Google Earth is required then you would not be running the same desktop I am.
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Fedora is not better suited at all. In the enterprise no one is interested in an OS that won't be supported in 18 months. If I was to setup Linux in a business it would be between Debian, RHEL/CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS fedora would not make the cut at all.
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All our servers are RHEL. All our desktops are also RHEL (well, mostly CentOS actually).
We build on desktops, and roll out to the servers.We have minor compatibility issues rolling out from point release differences of RHEL - say, code compiled on RHEL5.6 desktops didn't work on 5.5 servers. I can't imagine how many issues we'd have if we used Fedora, or worse yet (for compatibility) a completely different distro.
"Yeah, but you can compile on compile servers." Why would we have nice Linux desktops that all
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I agree with you in principle, but there are a ghastly number of users of RHEL that are developers, or who'd like to use a GUI instead of CLI when they do admin on a server-- for whatever reasons.
A GUI takes less CPU cycles than you might think. If you've got a quad-socket, 4/core/socket machine, you have strokes to burn because even the vaunted, hallowed Linux kernel can't use them THAT efficiently. So, you want to open gnome or kde or x-something and do your surfs? Gotta use a different browser now. Seems
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Uh, no. You're half right, in that there is no need for X on a server. However, as a Linux Admin maintaining a few thousand of those servers, my workstation also runs RHEL, and for damn good reason.
Firstly, I have work to do, that doesn't involve updating my kernel every twenty seconds as Fedora is wont to do. I also have no need for the latest greatest version of GIMP or mediaplayeroftheday, or want to be forced to format and start all over again every 13 months, while still trying to get work done.
RHEL an
Re: (Score:2)
I use RHEL on the desktop as well. I'm a developer of Sysadmin software, and an admin of a large number of RHEL servers. No I don't run a desktop on the servers, but I do on my development machine which matches the servers, and need to test things against various browsers. Yes I have testers to do a lot of things, but I like being able to hit Chrome and Firefox right out of the box before I waste my Q/A folks time. Another example is trying to develop custom SELinux policies w/o enough GUI to run the tool
Re: (Score:2)
Chromium is open source, Chrome is not.
The two are similar but not identical.
Re: (Score:2)
A likely explanation is that the user's running an older update of RHEL 6 (it's currently on update 3) that RH isn't providing updates for anymore. I could make a case for ceasing to support older updates, because they aren't getting security patches anymore and users really should be applying the regular updates from RH which, if they were, would've transitioned their systems to update 3 long before this (it came out in June 2012).
Re:Does this apply to Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I dare say it's simple mathematics. If the number of users of an OS, multiplied by the Chrome browser share of that OS, multiplied by the revenue per Chrome user on that OS, is less than the cost of continued support, then it's a simple decision to discontinue support.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure Google's services runs just fine in Firefox.
Re: (Score:2)
So all you would have to do is build a separate copy of GTK+, put it somewhere make chrome us it; using LD_LIBRARY_PATH or similar.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure that's the Red Hat repositories, and not third party Google repositories?
As fas as I understood the current version will remain forever, but you won't get any updated.