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Red Hat Software Businesses

Red Hat 7.0 Coming On Monday 270

the_quark writes: "According to this ZDNet story, RedHat will be rolling out a subscription update service with 7.0, which will be available by FTP on Monday." They're also announcing the "Red Hat Network" which essentially adds something like Debian's apt-get function that I've been using for a couple years now *grin*. BTW, has anyone played with gnome-apt? Not bad.
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Red Hat 7.0 Coming on Monday

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  • Now, the cost, of course to this is that with Debian, unless you run bleeding edge Debian with it's bugs and inproprieties is that you get about four to six month old software. That sucks. Sorry, Debian, but you need package pools BADLY.

    M
  • by Anonymous Coward
    It is a lot easier to shut off services now -- chkconfig will affect (x)inetd-based services now, so it's as simple as 'chkconfig rsh off'. FWIW.
  • Funny... It seems to me Debian releases a new version (.1 or 1. increment) each and every year, almost faithfully throughout their history.

    But once you get used to apt, it's almost impossible to go back to RPM (and it's almost impossible to convert those RPMs into .debs), although I have to admit that dselect takes a good amount of getting used to. Then again, RedHat doesn't have a text-based package management UI, so it's hard to compare it to anything else. Gnome-apt is getting really good, though.

  • Maybe it's just me, but parent should'nt be a troll. FreeBSD is, in alot of ways, nicer then RedHat. Better install (no X), more utils, and a faster boot. Then again, on Slashdot, if it not Linux, it's a Bad Thing(TM).

    Life is a disease, sexually transmitted and fatal.
  • I've read /. for a while now and if your the leader (no matter what) you'll get bashed. You can be the best (RH may or not be the best) and you'll still get bashed, especially by the people that like #2.
  • by buysse ( 5473 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @07:01PM (#765152) Homepage

    At least the temporary ATAPI drivers for the Win2000 install have DMA enabled; Linux always uses PIO mode during the install (unless you hack the install disk with the IDE driver module for your chipset, maybe).

    There are some damned good reasons for this -- some drives with some IDE controllers, mostly older controllers, will destroy data if you enable DMA. There are very good reasons to not enable DMA. I've learned about them through experience, with a hacked-up slackware install long ago, but some of those buggy controllers are still around.

    OK, now I'll just anticipate your next response: don't enable it on those controllers. OK, what about buggy drives (I believe that Maxtor has a few around). How about bugs that only occur with one combination of a controller and drive? Or a specific controller, a specific master drive, and a specific slave? All of these conditions do exist.

    </rant>


  • When /. announced 6.9beta, bero@redhat.com was down in the trenches, answering a lot about this question, among others. I would search for that article in the /. archive, then do a search on bero.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    It appears as though you have not been an active participant in the the LSB process. It is very much alive and moving steadily. LSB 1.0 finalization is curretnly under way. The LSB has active participants from all major distributions as well as several large non-linux companies (who's main business focus is not Linux).

    Redhat is not responsible for anything in regards to the LSB except the parts which they contribute. What I mentioned (and you eluded to) was that RH does not have the intrest in making it a success. The LSB will continue to go on with or without RH's full support. The reason for their weak-at-best LSB track record is purely self serving and short sighted. As I mentioned before, there are companies which are larger than all the Linux companies combined which have a very strong intrest in the success of the LSB.

    You were probibly not in attendance at a certain Linux HA confrence where several participants heard the Redhat representative say that RH had no intrest in participating in anything which would lower their edge. The arrogance was thick and heavy. It dripped slowly and dangled off his chin like red jelly filling hanging from the doughnut filled mouth of officer friendly at the local crispy cream.

    Redhat is very aware that the LSB makes it so that third party software companies will only have to port once to "LSB" and their app will run on _any_ LSB compliant distribution. However, what they want is to have these companies port to Redhat - they want to be the de facto standard

    No one company will ever own linux. However, RH is, in many ways, acting like they do and it's very upsetting to many people.

  • Let's not forget that the great people and companies and institutions that offer this luxury, free to the users. If it weren't for the bandwidth and server donations, Debian couldn't justify offering the service at the cost it is now.
  • by jfunk ( 33224 ) <jfunk@roadrunner.nf.net> on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @07:04PM (#765156) Homepage
    I will never ever pay any penny for Linux software. PERIOD!
    Wow, now that's a way to support Linux developers and those companies that work very hard to deliver a nice set of packages to you. Download it, and never pay for it. I use SuSE, which is delightfully easy to install over ftp for free, with tons of packages, etc. I buy the boxed versions. A cheap-ass such as yourself may scream "WHY?" I simply want SuSE to exist and think they deserve the money I give them. The manual rocks, too. Cheap != Intelligent I was never "fooled" by Red Hat and I doubt other Slashdotters were. Don't wave around the fact that's it's free as if you're uncovering a great conspiracy. We're totally aware, we just think you're cheap.

  • I was appalled to find that the RedHat 6.1 installer wasn't able to do a non-destructive repartition, nor did it play well with Windows after I did so by hand.

    I took an NT machine, used partition magic to move NT over and installed 6.2 without incident. Trivial. Both boot flawlessly. This was a scsi system too.

    KidSock

  • by timster ( 32400 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:45PM (#765158)
    I once saw a download page for some open-source app criticizing RedHat with the usual cry of "doing nonstandard stuff!". The complaint? That RedHat had used a separate font server (XFS) instead of having the XFree server handle the fonts itself.
    Of course, anyone who took the time to do any research would note that this was the configuration that was RECOMMENDED by the XFree people, because it is more easily extensible and prevents the entire server from hanging when rescaling a font. But this guy had just jumped on the chance to dis Red Hat.
    I even remember similar complaints when RH moved to Xwrapper, never mind that it was the STANDARD way to do things. People complain about RH moving KDE out of /opt, never mind that /opt is NOT compatible with the Linux Filesystem Standard, which RH follows pretty closely.
    I've gotten sick of hearing it. If we want to talk about evil Linux distros and commercialization, let's talk about the Mickey Mouse Logo people (Caldera).
  • Who says you have to buy it? You can go and download updates like everyone else does, or go and the CD installer and run the update. With everyone getting high speed access these days, ISOs shouldn't be that bad.
  • by buysse ( 5473 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @07:05PM (#765160) Homepage

    The compiler is gcc 2.96 (which will become gcc 3.0). The kernel will be compiled with an older compiler (kgcc). At least, that's how Pinstripe (the beta) was.


  • The Bold new concept is having people pay for updates. Should have figured they'd try to milk their user base like a cash cow sooner or later...
  • RedHat's not saying this, RedHat's marketing is. And since I know about 2 cents worth about marketing even though my company does it, I know enough to see it, apreciate the work it takes to differentiate my company using it, and relalize that my company needs it to be able to pay my wage, I keep my stupid opinions to myself...except for here at slashmouth
  • I know that a 2.4.0-test(something) was included in the beta, as a "preview" technology. Stuff like iptables & friends were there, and it looked like glibc was compiled against 2.4 kernel-headers. Happy?


  • Bah, they're just trying to catch up to slackware.

    Anways, what is it with RedHat? 4.0, 4.1, 4.2- and here's 5.0! 5.0, 5.1, 5.2- and here's 6.0! 6.0, 6.1, 6.2 -> 7.0? Are they scared of minor revision numbers, or are they only useful for correcting the egregrious flaws that are always present in RH's .0 shipments?
  • by buysse ( 5473 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @07:18PM (#765165) Homepage

    I will never ever pay any penny for Linux software. PERIOD! Certainly as i know enough about linux to build my own systems/network.

    Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not Richard Stallman!

    OK. Time for two quick lessons. Number one: Redhat pays many excellent developers money so they can make the cool "free" software you like and still pay rent and for their kids health insurance. Redhat then must get money, so they must have something to sell. Number two: this is for priority access, not for any access. It's a service to make it easier for lusers to update their systems, and gives them access to priority servers that have sufficient bandwidth (which again costs money, see lesson one).


  • Posted by polar_bear:

    I dunno - charging for it when Debian and Mandrake are already doing it for free is pretty damn bold, right? Heh. Never did like Red Hat anyway...I own five Linux boxen - Slack, Debian, Suse and Mandrake - not a Red Hat amongst them.
  • pointy haired bosses need some illisoin of continuity when they invest their infrastructure to a operating system. It gives them a warm and fuzzy and brings Linux places where it couldn't go on it's own, except through the back door. When in Rome, you gotta wear a toga.
  • More bloatware. Just what the linux community needs.
  • This release DOES include XFree4, and is fully compatable with the 2.4 kernel (correct glibc, compiler, etc.). The only reason that it isn't being shipped with 2.4 is that 2.4 is not released yet. If you want to (I wouldn't recommend it) you can download a prerelease 2.4 from the RedHat Rawhide directories and run it.

  • IPO is not a fucking verb.
  • The kernel compiles fine with 2.95.x. Mine is, anyway. There were some old issues with 2.0.x that involved the old 2.7.x compiler underoptimizing and allowing some code that should have been optimized away exist anyway. 2.2.x and 2.4.x do not suffer from this problem, and patches exist against 2.0.x to solve the problem with that version.
  • Would be nice... Took an entire summer to figure out how to get RH to boot to my 3rd ide controller. (Abit BP-6 MB w/ udma66 HD) Of course slackware did it straight out of the box. What really drove me nuts was that the RH boot disk I actually created during install would boot to the 3rd ide controller. Granted, no udma66, but at least it booted. Slackware ships with 2.2.16, RH with 2.2.14. Maybe difference in the kernel? -No, slackwre is smart enough to includee the udma kernel. Any questions on how to get linux ingeneral to see a drive on the 3rd or 4th controller, let me know...
  • Hey there :) Just to clear something up - I was bitching about ZD Net's lack of reporting skills and their relance on overly strong words to make things sound better/worse than they really are :) I hope Red Hat does well in this new venture of theirs - I use Red Hat pretty much exclusively, myself. :)

    Dave
    'Round the firewall,
    Out the modem,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
  • Actually, I think their technical concept is quite old, going way back to the original ideas of the internet (but stagnated by MS misinnovation :p ). The business model is new, however.

    I think Red Hat will be moving away from "versions" altogether, and simply offer the "Red Hat Linux Operating System" as a subscription. That's where the money is. For $10/mo I'd be more than content with a forever-super-fast evolving OS like GNU/Linux. That's why I use Debian' unstable branch at home - apt-get and *poof* latest of the latest. (for better or worse ...)

    Sure, the technical concepts are as old as the internet, and have previously been successifully implemented by both Debian and commercial entities (IBM & MS for example), but the subscription service as a business model is brand new, and it's what Microsoft.net is all about, and it's what MMOG's are all about (massively multiplayer online games), and it's what Red Hat should be looking at. The days of shelf-software profits are drawing to an end, and they need to be providing a proactive-payment services, like Debian's apt-get, but to the corporations and others who seem to be more confident in "commercial software", for some semblance of security.

  • better question: will the install be secure by default??? Or can we expect piranah again? :p But seriously, anonymous ftp, web server, rpc, etc,etc,etc, have no real use on a desktop, to which I'm sure Red Hat has some market goals!
  • by EvlG ( 24576 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @05:03PM (#765190)
    Does RedHat 7 include SSH by default, now that the RSA patent expired?
  • by po_boy ( 69692 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @05:05PM (#765195)
    So why pay redhat for that?

    Because they provide me with relatively stable, cheap, extensible operating system that I understand and enjoy using. I think somewhere the movement against a sub-standard, expensive, closed-source OS turned into a movement agains any operating system that you have to pay for.

    Redhat provides a good product, and (perhaps now) a useful service, so wny not return the effort with a few dollars. To some people, it's worth that to make use of their service, even if they can find the same thing for free elsewhere with a little work.

    Do you pay for running water, or do you collect rainwater in your cistern?

  • by Chuck Chunder ( 21021 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @05:13PM (#765202) Journal
    Come on people, show some intelligence. Windows update isn't free, it's just paid for in a different way.
  • With Red Hat subscription they will have people serving up to demand. What's that mean? That means security, pretty themes, new email clients and bulletins about all the stuff that people find interesting, all in one package. If I want to find stuff on Debian, I have to KNOW what I'm looking for, by name pretty much. With the Red Hat update service, I suspect they will have recommendations of themes and of email clients and all that crap. And that's pretty cool when you don't know what you're doing. When you're a techie, that's not something you need or want, when you get towards "expert" or "pro" classification, your view of the field becomes somewhat ascew to that of the average-joe.
  • RH7.0 will have the latest stable 2.2 kernel, although it will be "2.4 ready", so you'll be able to upgrade to kernel 2.4 once it's ready (and it won't be ready in a long time).

    As for KDE2, no it won't have it. KDE2 isn't even out, even though it's due in early October.

    I'm really not sure if Mdk7.2 will ship with 2.4 -- it will have an optional pre-test-kernel, but it certainly won't be default. 7.2 beta2 is already out, so the final version shoudln't be that far away. I think they're basically waiting for KDE2 final. Mdk7.2 will also have new features like a graphical boot process.
    --
  • Wall Street folks also love the subscription model because it's a way for RedHat to show predictable income stream from the "service" that they state to be their business model. 7.0 is definitely a business decision--all of us in the know can see it's not a technical one.

    Let's stop criticizing them for the wrong reasons, and start praising them for continuing to prove that the open source method of software development can work on both fronts.

  • pointy haired bosses need some illisoin of continuity...

    That is a good point. If I had any kind of authority figure that I were trying to convince that we should use linux, I'm sure they would ask for some kind of "maintenance plan" or "upgrade policy report" or something.

    This would be powerful ammo for that kind of argument. Saying something like "...following the regularly published updates as reccommended and installed by RedHat Network...." would sound a lot better than "I'll watch out for new updates to all the software we run and go find them and install them when they come out."

  • RedHat 7 will include OpenSSH by default, according to this article [nwfusion.com] that I found linked from deadly.org [deadly.org]
  • Yeah I'm a little disappointed with the stuff that isn't in 7.0. Looking through the Beta Announcement article posted on /. at the end of July, I read some comments by Bero on why things weren't included. It makes sense, but mostly from a business perspective. I guess the product shipment just can't wait indefinitely for kernel 2.4 and gcc 3.0, etc... to be ready.

    Still, I'll upgrade. I like RedHat's product and their commitment to support it is solid.
  • Please read this [yahoo.com] from their sec filing.

    I will excerpt.

    Our business may not succeed because open source software business models are unproven

    We have not demonstrated the success of our open source business model, which gives our customers the right to freely copy and distribute our software. No other company has built a successful open source business. Few open source software products have gained widespread commercial acceptance partly due to the lack of viable open source industry participants to offer adequate service and support on a long term basis. In addition, open source vendors are not able to provide industry standard warranties and indemnities for their products, since these products have been developed largely by independent parties over whom open source vendors exercise no control or supervision. If open source software should fail to gain widespread commercial acceptance, we would not be able to sustain our revenue growth and our business could fail.

    Our reliance on the support of Linus Torvalds and other prominent Linux developers could impair our ability to release major product upgrades and maintain market share

    We may not be able to release major product upgrades of Red Hat Linux on a timely basis because the heart of Red Hat Linux, the Linux kernel, is maintained by third parties. Linus Torvalds, the original developer of the Linux kernel and a small group of independent engineers are primarily responsible for the development and evolution of the Linux kernel. If this group of developers fails to further develop the Linux kernel or if Mr. Torvalds or other prominent Linux developers, such as Alan Cox, David Miller or Stephen Tweedie, were to join one of our competitors or no longer work on the Linux kernel, we will have to either rely on another party to further develop the kernel or develop it ourselves. We cannot predict whether enhancements to the kernel would be available from reliable alternative sources. We could be forced to rely to a greater extent on our own development efforts, which would increase our development expenses and may delay our product release and upgrade schedules. In addition, any failure on the part of the kernel developers to further develop and enhance the kernel could stifle the development of additional Linux-based applications.

    We may not be able to effectively assemble and test our software because it consists largely of code developed by independent third parties over whom we exercise no control, which could result in unreliable products and damage to our reputation

    The scarcity of software applications for Linux-based operating systems could prevent commercial adoption of our products

    Our products may not gain widespread commercial adoption until there are more third-party software applications designed to operate on Linux-based operating systems. These applications include word processors, databases, accounting packages, spreadsheets, e-mail programs, Internet browsers, presentation and graphics software and personal productivity applications. We intend to encourage the development of additional applications that operate on Linux-based operating systems by attracting third-party developers to the Linux platform, by providing open source tools to create these applications and by maintaining our existing developer relationships through marketing and technical support for third-party developers. If we are not successful in achieving these goals, however, our products may not gain widespread commercial acceptance and we may not be able to maintain our product sales growth.

    We may not be able to generate revenue from sales of Official Red Hat Linux if users can more quickly download it from the Internet

    Now please read their financial statements. [yahoo.com]

    I'm not knocking Red Hat, but people need to stop thinking that they are the shining example of Linux business. They aren't, yet.

  • By default, weird inetd daemons like fingerd and telnet are open to security threats Well - the default workstation config doesn't install inetd. On top of that, RedHat 7.0 uses xinetd instead of inetd for improved security. If the newbie is clueless enough to put up a server with everything loaded on it despite the numerous FAQs and warnings, I don't have a lot of sympathy and DON'T blame RedHat.
  • I beg to differ on just a little issue, here. After being a happy RH user for the best of five years (well, not always that happy <g>) and switched to Debian about a month ago. The installation was OK, but then again I have some experience in my belt. It was definitely more difficult than Slack (which I ditched a looong time ago) and probably much more confusing for a newbie to get around to. BTW, I'm as happy as a clam with Debian now, but I won't diss RH. It is a very good distro, no matter if you're a newbie or a guru, and RH deserves the respect of all free software lovers.

    I don't why people emphasize this point about Slackware being difficult. It is not significantly more difficult than RedHat, just different.

    On anothe note, apt-get is really the shit, but gnome-apt still has some rough edges to be smoothed out.
    --

  • The article also mentions receiving updates on physical media, as well as across a network. I worked at a major resellor of other software that had a simillar subscription plan. You paid a so much a year to receive updates on CD, when in fact the same software updates could be pulled from the FTP site FOC on the day of release.

    Most organisations I dealt with were run by the suits who would always wait for the physical media to arrive before applying updates, even if these were critical security and device-driver fixes that should have been applied yesterday. Those run by someone knowledgeable pulled the pathces off an FTP server somewhere, and had the patches inplace that day.

    Since the turnaround for receiving physical media was at least a month after the release of a major patch, security and other critical fixes were very late to be applied, judging by some of the support calls I had to field. I can envisage the same sort of thing happening here, with organisations waiting until the CD comes appears before installing any security fixes.

    Well, the script kiddies will be pleased!

  • by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <`gro.srengots' `ta' `yor'> on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @05:51PM (#765240) Homepage
    I've got rpm-4.0-0.66 installed on my (pinstripe beta) Red Hat system, and I'd love to know how to do apt-get type stuff with it. The Rice LUG is choosing a distribution tomorrow night for our installfest on the 30th, and being able to tell newbies, "Type this one command, and you're assured that all security fixes are installed" is a pretty big selling point.

    Yeah, "rpm -Fvh http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/distributions/redhat/up dates/current/*/*.rpm" works, sort of... but it downloads the entire file on every single RPM before it decides whether or not to upgrade it, even when the file name and file header data should indicate that no upgrade is to be made. This makes that command worthless for dialup connections. I've got an enhancement request "bug" submitted to Red Hat tonight, but they aren't going to have a fix out by the time we need to start burning Debian CDs.

    So, is there any other way (short of paying $$$ for many access licenses to a non-clogged up2date server) for us to give newbies a "one command security update" for Red Hat or Mandrake?
  • by MSG ( 12810 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @05:53PM (#765241)
    If that's insightful, check this out:

    The two services are actually completely opposite each other. Microsoft makes you buy the software in the first place, pay for every major upgrade, and gives you SOME bugfixes for free.

    Red Hat on the other hand, will distribute the software for free, including major upgrades and bug fixes. If you'd like access to their well tested, bugfixed, signed bugfixes and updates on a high priority, high availability basis, then you can pay for such a service. These same bugfixes and updates will still be available for free on Red Hat's site and all of their mirrors.

    Red Hat's way of doing business hasn't gotten any less friendly to their customers, and they aren't forcing anyone into ridiculous licensing schemes like some other companies we've been reading about here on slashdot.

    You're not in the twilight zone, and nothing is backwards. Just look at the pretty GNU and repeat to yourself "It's...OK".
  • by Chmarr ( 18662 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @03:17PM (#765246)
    Yes. RPM 4 is supposed to include many features that apt-get supplied. RPM 4 should effectively do away with 3rd-party applications (such as autorpm).
  • I wonder if RH is going to put any consideration into security this time? 6.0 wasn't exactly the most secure OS in the world... or do we not want "newbies" to be securE?
  • Or does EVERYBODY have to try to make some kind of subscription service for EVERYTHING?

    I mean geeze.

    It's just a glorified product service contract thingee.

    Mike

    "I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
  • If redhat is the Linux Micosoft what does that make Mandrake??? ~~ V O D A K ~~ Cleveland, Ohio, USA icq : 30242206 \\// http://www.nacs.net/~vodak/
  • Funny how, with all the version bumping thing and what not, Slack still hasn't managed to come up with a decent package manager or to follow Linux FSS correctly..
    --
  • Vc cogitou a possibilidade de que talvez, provavelmente, o Cláudio desconhecia as novidades com o RPM 4 ou estava realmente interessado na integração do RPM com o apt?

    Já temos teorias conspirátorias o suficiente por parte dos gringos aqui, não é necessário que brazucas também o façam com os produtos da terra. A Conectiva emprega dois dos mais competentes "hackers" brasileiros, o Cláudio e o Alfredo Kojima, e não merece esse tipo de coisa. Além disso, eles pagam o Andrew Clausen (na Austráia!) como mantenedor do GNU parted. Acho que isso fala bem alto, não?

    E por outro lado, qual a diferença entre o que eles fazem e o que a Mandrake faz? Ou a SuSE? Pense nisso...
    --

  • Hmm,

    The thing that really swung me over to linux was when I wanted to do a dual boot install - Win 98 + RedHat 6.1 on my laptop (a recently bought second hand P133, 40Mb RAM, 1.6Gb disk).

    It came with a buggered copy of Windows 95 on it.

    Having used linux before I knew I had to partition the disk. Win 95 had thrown system files everywhere so FIPS[1] was no use. Hmm, nothing for it but to pretend I'd had a disk crash and do a complete repartition, reformat reinstall.

    [1]FIPS is the non destructive disk partitioner which works providing that Windows hasn't done something stupid[2] and rendered the disk impossible to modify.

    [2]This could be approximated to hasn't been booted yet.

    Step 1: Drop down to fdisk, create my 500Mb FAT partition. Leave space for Linux, swap and shared later on.

    Step 2: Install Win 98.

    STep 3: Discover that it is impossible to install Win98 without a working CD rom drive or a copy on the hard disk. There is no way to make the PCMCIA network card go without installing Win 98.

    Step 4: Install DOS from floppy, attempt to pull Win 98 over a serial connection. Give up due to being very slow.

    Step 5 : Give up, insert Linux boot floppy, spend 20 minutes installing RedHat 6.1. Let it correctly autodetect all of my Hardware and set up LILO to dual boot to the dos partition. Create a boot floppy.

    Step 6: Use ftp, mirror the Win 98 CD to the hard disk.

    Step 7: Boot to dos disk, install Win 98, watch it destroy the boot sector.

    Step 8 : Rebuild boot sector with LILO - working computer.

    Conclusion, the correct way to install Windows 98 onto a machine with no CDROM drive is to install Linux first.

    Microsofts installer is good at detecting hardware.

    However, it does not allow me to partition the disk (to install a fresh dual boot system I had to repartition after the first install of Win98), it will not share the boot sector.

    What we need are manufacturers to create dual boot systems by default and sell those. That gets over the inital difficulties with Linux (i.e. that it tends to destroy your Windows partitions unless you are careful).

  • by treke ( 62626 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @06:21PM (#765268)

    You do know you can pick and choose what you want installed right? An install I did last week was roughly 350 and something megs. That's before I went through and started stripping stuff out. And 7.0 is supposed to be smaller than 6.2. Having a lot of packages does not make it any more bloated, just more flexible.

    The standard installs aren't even that bad. If you just choose a workstation install you don't have those security problems because inetd isn't installed. I've found that I have to manually go through and install inetd so that I can run things that use it. If a newbie chooses to install httpd and inetd then that's their fault if it's exploited. A different story would be if someone chose to do a KDE workstation and ends up with telnetd, ftpd, inted, whateverd running. That is not the case. Should RedHat second guess those who actually want them installed on their system?

    I really find the comment that RPMs make people lazy. Why reduplicate the effort in recompiling software that doesn't need recompiling. For some software (Apache, Kernel, some bleeding edge CVS source) it makes sense to compile your self because of the build time options. Why is it of any use for people to spend a couple of hours building X? or the couple of minutes per package it takes to compile it? Having the build tools themselves take up a significant amount of space, and it's often more economical to just install an RPM and be done with it.

    That being said, if you don't like RPMS, don't use them. Feel free to compile whatever applications you want. You could even recompile the base operating system. It would't matter. The RPM dependencies wouldn't be met, but you wouldn't care. Just don't insult those of us who value the time it takes to do a ./configure, make, make install and wait for things to build.

    I do agree on the mailing list point though
    treke

  • One good reason is that T1/T3 lines are not free. A properly designed, paid service allows the provider to provision adequate bandwidth and server resources for the predicted load. The problem with "free" services is that they are often overwhelmed by the demand and there is no money to upgrade the capacity of the service.
  • by UVABlows ( 183953 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @03:22PM (#765277)
    I'd start to get weary if they store a whole bunch of information about you (what software you have installed, which packages you cared to upgrade, etc), package that information with your name and address and targeted you for specialized advertising, but...

    This network thing they've come up doesn't look like such a bad idea, in theory at least. It could turn out to be a crock, but otherwise my company will probably subscribe, as long as the fee is not outrageous. One of the reasons that a lot of closed-source folk don't embrace the open-source business model is becuase they claim that no revenue can be generated. Redhat has come up with another way to make money off of their open-source product. It's good to see that.

    Cheers

  • >RedHat is actually going to charge money for people downloading rpm's??

    RedHat is going to charge for priority access to fast, guarunteed servers and to notify you of updates.

    I have no problem with this. I pay money, I get a service. If I choose not to pay money, I can go to the hassle of doing it myself.

    Similarly, if I want to download Debian over my (free) modem then I can do. I can also choose to buy my friend with a cable modem a beer in exchange for his greater bandwidth.

    I pay my money, I take my choice.
  • From what I'm reading, Red Hat Network is NOTHING like apt-get

    Sure, it lets you simply get updates from a recognised source.

    But it's not free.

    I can apt-get anything I want for my Debian system, without paying someone (other than my ISP) for it.

    I could be on the Red Hat Network for a year, paying a monthly subscription fee, for which I don't get a promise of quality, regular updates, or anything other than being able to say "Hey, I run Red Hat Linux, and I'm on the Red Hat Network."

    Reminds me of the Microsoft Network. Abso-fscking-lutely useless.

    I know which distribution I'll be using.

    *sniff* *sniff*

    Do I smell potato?
  • by JCCyC ( 179760 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @03:25PM (#765287) Journal
    What's the scoop behind this? Could this have something to do with the alleged incompatibility between the kernel source and the newest gcc? Perhaps they'll be using a kernel patched to be compiled with gcc 2.9x?

    About the subscription service, it seems everybody is doing the Helix nowadays. But Helix itself is poised to allow updates of the entire distribution (not only GUI), so won't a paid service like that become moot?

  • by dbarclay10 ( 70443 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @03:26PM (#765290)
    Red Hat Inc. next week will announce a bold new concept in the provision of its Linux software to users.

    Bold new concept? Don't get me wrong - I love Red Hat and buy every .1 and .2 release, and I hope they're successful, but I *really* wish ZD Net wasn't so bloody stupid. No other way to put it. Most of the stuff I read there is drivel. Ugh, it bothers me so much when someone starts an argument by saying, "But on ZD Net I read that ..." Absolutely infuriating. So when they say that Red Hat's new subscription service is a "bold new concept", I can't help but be offended. I use Red Hat exclusively, but I wish they'd step up and tell these people not to write things that are blatant lies. How long has the "bold new concept" been used for Debian's distribution? Much longer than Red Hat Networks, which has been around for ... oh, wait, it's coming this Monday, so it isn't even here yet.

    Dave
    'Round the firewall,
    Out the modem,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
  • Just a tip from a guy who spends way too much time on #debian on irc.debian.org handing out free technical support for the Debian community (something most other distributions don't have):

    #apt-get install alien

    #alien -d foo.rpm
    #dpkg -i foo.deb

    Alien [kitenet.net] is a program by Joey Hess [mailto] (the same guy who writes the Debian Weekly News) that converts packages between the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and slackware tgz file formats. Note that installed 'alienised' packages are classified by dselect and frontends such as gnome-apt and aptitude under a separate 'alien' section.

    MashPotato - Mobile Array of Support Helpers for Potato

  • by ledbetter ( 179623 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @03:27PM (#765298) Homepage
    Anybody ever seen windowsupdate.microsoft.com [microsoft.com] Sounds like a pretty similar service if you ask me. Except for this one little thing: Microsoft gives it away, and RedHat is going to make you pay for it.

    This just can't be. I must be in the Twilight zone! Everything has gone backwards!
  • Also, the default disallows everyone through the hosts.deny. It's great. This distro is much more secure OOB and much more easily securable overall.
  • Heck, I just use the following Perl script to keep my system up to date...

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    use Net::FTP;

    $remote_path = "/mirrors/redhat/updates/6.2/i386";
    $remote_host = "";

    $VERBOSITY = $ENV{VERBOSE} || 0;

    open(RPM,"rpm -qa |") or die;
    while() {
    ($name,$version,$pkg) = /(.*)-(.*)-(.*)/;
    $rpm{$name} = "$version-$pkg";
    # printf "%-30s %-10s %s\n",$name,$version,$pkg;
    }
    close(RPM);

    $ftp = Net::FTP->new($remote_host) or die "cannot connect to ftp server";
    $ftp->login("ftp","dmerrill\@nexen.com") or die "cannot login to ftp server";
    $ftp->cwd("$remote_path") or die "cannot chdir to remote package dir";

    @update_list = ();

    foreach $_ ($ftp->ls) {
    print "checking $_ ...\n" if $VERBOSITY > 0;
    next unless /\.rpm/;

    ($name,$version,$pkg,$arch) = /(.*)-(.*)-(.*)\.(.*)\.rpm/;
    print "$name is not installed.\n" unless (($rpm{$name}) or ($VERBOSITY 1));
    next if $rpm{$name} ge "$version-$pkg";

    # don't actually install kernel upgrades, but make sure to point out that
    # they're available.
    if (/kernel/) {
    print "Kernel update $_ is available (currently at $rpm{$name})\n";
    next;
    }

    # add it to the list
    push(@update_list,"$name-$version-$pkg.$arch.rpm") ;
    }

    grep(s/^/ftp:\/\/$remote_host$remote_path\//,@up date_list);

    unless(@update_list) {
    print "No packages need to be updated.\n" if $VERBOSITY > 0;
    exit 0;
    }

    print "The following packages need to be updated:\n\n";
    print join("\n",@update_list);
    print "\n";

    #print join(" ","rpm","-Fvh",@update_list),"\n";
    system("rpm","-Fvh",@update_list);
  • >Is this just a new version of gcc, or something else more noteworthy?

    Its "just" a new version of gcc. Or rather: Its a special RedHat version of the not-so-soon to be released GCC 3.0 compiler. GCC 3.0 have been worked on for a while now, but the official release is still some months away.

    RedHat is probably using some of their in-house expertice (the Cygnus folks) to rip off the most stable parts of the gcc snapshot and package it for their new distribution.

    To my knowledge there is nothing revolutionary about the GCC 3.0 - except for better standard compliance and perhaps better optimizations.

  • and like all previous versions of Red Hat, you'll get to have rsh, rexec and all those other worthless security problem inetd daemons enabled by default.

    This isn't true at all. Red Hat Linux 7 does NOT enable any of them by default. 6.2 didn't enable them all by default.
    Now that we can ship a secure replacement, we would have no reason whatsoever to enable them by default on fresh installations, and we aren't doing it.

    wu-ftpd is still there if I'm not mistaken

    Yes it is, and it's the right choice. Yes, it has had some security problems. Name an alternative that didn't have them. Remember the early days of ProFTPD (the only viable alternative IMO)? Remember the fact that the most recent root exploit related to an sprintf without a %s actually affected BOTH wu-ftpd and ProFTPD?

    Right now, I'd call them about on par, and there's no reason to move users to a totally different configuration file layout if it doesn't get them any major benefits.

    Also, last time I checked (admittedly I haven't checked the latest couple of releases), ProFTPD didn't support virtual hosts with different password files for each of them. Same for e-mail notifications to the admin for uploads by anonymous and a couple of other features.

    Lastly, there's kwuftpd (included in kdeadmin as of KDE 2.0) which provides an easy way to configure wu-ftpd. I haven't seen a similar tool for ProFTPD.

    Sendmail is still the default MTA

    Yes. Some people rely on its features.
    Some of the alternatives (especially postfix, IMO) are great, but not sufficient for everyone.

    shouldn't [OpenSSH] obsolete rshd/rexecd and to a lesser extent telnetd?

    No way.
    Interoperability is still important, and a lot of other OSes (even other Linux distributions) still can't access ssh servers.

    We aren't enabling rshd and friends by default, but it's important to keep them in - many setups still depend on them.
  • by pb ( 1020 )
    I get to upgrade all my RPM's again! Hopefully it'll all work with kernel 2.4.0-test8, since that's what I've been running lately, but it'll probably break all the extra RPM's I have for the NCSU realm. Oh well, I can probably fix that...

    But guys, only do this if you like to live on the bleeding edge; the X.0 Redhat releases are generally pretty rough, with lots of new stuff; I know, because I've been through three of them. If you're just trying out Linux for the first time, stick with 6.2 and wait for the reviews.

    Generally Redhat Release X.1 is pretty decent, and X.2 is downright stable. If you're deploying a system based on RedHat, go with 6.2 and all the updates, with Bastille and the Openwall security patch, and watch redhat.com for updates. Otherwise, beware.

    Also, what's this 'apt-get' for Redhat I keep hearing about? I've been using rpmfind for a while, and it works great. RedHat has their own stuff for this these days, but generally rpmfind.net is faster for me...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • If you'd like access to their well tested, bugfixed, signed bugfixes and updates on a high priority, high availability basis, then you can pay for such a service

    True - but it's not even that. We will, of course, continue to make updates available on updates.redhat.com and announce them on redhat-announce-list@redhat.com and, if necessary, bugtraq and friends.

    We're not stopping to give away stuff - we're just introducing some additional services for pay.
    (No details before the official announcement ;) ).
  • Wasn't there supposed to be a release of the
    server software or specs so we could run "update agents" or whatever it was called on other servers than redhats? Perhaps we can just subscribe to our friends servers... this would also be useful for people who want to do custom patches for a field of machines.. of course apt-get works for that as well.. but then you have to have debians release cycle :)
  • Like someone else has pointed out..

    Windows update is free.
    Debian gives you that service for free too.
    So why pay redhat for that?

  • The first witness for the defense.

    .

    .

    (In other words, the mere existence of Mandrake makes it blindingly obvious that Red Hat is not Microsoft.)
    --

  • What's worse, you'd probably have to download every stinking RPM to do the upgrade. And I thought installing off the CD was hell enough. The Red Hat installer makes the Windows 2000 installation process look like a freakin' bike ride. At least the temporary ATAPI drivers for the Win2000 install have DMA enabled; Linux always uses PIO mode during the install (unless you hack the install disk with the IDE driver module for your chipset, maybe).

    It's kinda funny seeing Microsoft and Linux going opposite ways. You can download Win2000 Service Pack 1 for free, but OldHat wants a credit card number before you even start upgrading. It's pure capitalist hypocrisy!

  • It would work... if you were running Windows.

    Now before you "flamebait" this, think about a minute. How many messages have you seen on Windows message boards that say "I can't install the drivers correct?" You see, "the computer crashes when I update the drivers," and "I had to reinstall to update the drivers," but you rarely see problems of this nature. That is such a waste. Linux has these good qualities that stuff usually works. However, people who write Linux applications/systems, really have no clue how to package stuff for the user all friendly-like. Who cares if it's totally stable if you can't even INSTALL it? As long as people keep distributing important things (like Glide, or XFree86, or the NVIDIA drivers) with poor documentation and no installer, Linux will continue to suck for a large portion of the computing population, despite any technical merits it may have.
  • by Doviende ( 13523 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @03:40PM (#765330) Homepage
    BTW has anyone played with gnome-apt?

    hey taco! haven't you tried the Storm Package Manager? it's got all the features of apt, in a nice GUI interface. from what i've heard, it does more then gnome-apt, and it'll be included in Woody some time soon.

    you can get it right now, along with other nifty additions like the Storm Adminstration System, from the stormix [stormix.com] ftp site.

    Or, add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file and do an "apt-get update; apt-get install stormpkg":

    deb http://ftp.stormix.com/storm hail main contrib

    blatant plug: try out the new Storm Linux distribution (called Hail) that just got released, based on the latest debian potato. I wrote part of the ftp install :)

    -Doviende


    "The value of a man resides in what he gives,
    and not in what he is capable of receiving."
  • They use 3 revision numbers (.0, .1, .2) and then work on a distribution that may break binary compatibility due to a major program update. 5.0 was glibc, 6.0 was kernel 2.2 (I think). In this case, GCC is upgraded to 2.96 which means C++ programs may have issues.

    --
    Ben Kosse


  • Windows Update suck, and are pathetic, kludgy interfaces


    Bullshit, Windows update is a very clean. The only client side install is a small activex control it's a transparent install of of a tiny WMI program that quickly scans your computer for what updates the webpage should bother to tell you about. It couldn't be simpler.

    I honestly think that you haven't used windows update, or are just another stupid linux zealot blindly bashing anything with the microsoft name

    -Jon
  • I am just wonder why they are releasing 7.0 so soon instead of waiting until linux kernel 2.4 and XFree86 4.x will stabilize more? On the other hand if the latest kernel 2.4.x and XFree86 4.x are not included, then what is redhat's excuse for such a major version bump? If all they want is release a few updates to 6.2 they could just make it "6.3"
  • Oh my GOD! I can't spare the bandwidth to download TWO copies of Mesa! Oh whatever will I do!

    Seriously though, the RPM-packagers logic is seriously flawed. If you've got a slow connection, then more likely than not, you will just download a bunch of stuff overnight. In that case, you don't care about the extra size, and it makes it more complex to download multiple packages (you've got to either FTP or use something like GetRight.) If you've got a fast connection, you really don't give a damn if the download is 10 megs larger. Usually the RPM-bloated packages don't make sense. If I'm downloading GNOME, chances are that I won't already have GTK, glib, fnlib, etc. Those that do, are in the minority. Even then, most will have to download the latest versions of the packages anyway. Slackware has the right idea. KDE2 is in two tar.gzs (the KDE2 tarball, and the Qt tarball.)
  • "On the other hand even the CVS version (HEAD) of samba still does not support windows 2000 client logons, so there you go."

    Ah HA! I was trying to login to my LAN with smbclient on my Linux box, and it was asking me for a password. I tried the administrator password (which logically should've worked), and it wouldn't go in! Good thing I installed Win2k on my former Linux box; now I can start a Q3 server again (The DMZ option on my router was set to the box's IP).

  • There are several points.
    With Microsoft you pay for a 'premium update service' whether you want to use one or not.
    With RedHat you only pay for it IF you want it.
    If you don't you still have access to updates through normal channels.

    As proprietary vendor Microsoft's Windows Update is as much a tool for Microsoft to pimp out their latest wares as it is a tool for the user (I for one regret also downloading Media Player 7 when I last went to get a Java VM fix from Windows Update).
  • I know you're trolling, but. . .
    Will it repair the many bugs that have been crashing GNOME?
    What bugs that keep crashing GNOME? GNOME 1.0 was a POS, but the latest versions are absolutely fine.
    Will Enlightenment finally run faster?

    If you run a nice clean theme, probably. If you run an all-singing, all-dancing, ridiculous theme, probably not.

    Will Samba be upgraded to run in Windows 2000 networks?

    Will Microsoft stop changing their protocol for no other reason than to break Samba?

    Will OSS finally have a latency of less than 70ms?

    Will Creative release Windows drivers that don't crash your system every time you attempt to play a sound?

    Will anyone care?

    I don't - I'm happily running Debian and intend to stay running Debian!

  • Whether they charge for it or not does not make the concept "bold" or "new". I know you agree with me, but I'm really pissed and I need to vent :) We all bitch about how adding the word "internet" to an idea all of a sudden makes it patentable, non-obvious, and innovative. Well, this is the same case. Just because they charge for it doesn't make it new. I think the Red Hat Network will do well, and I will probably subscribe myself, if I find it useful. I tend to stay on the bleeding edge, rolling my own RPMs, so I probably won't. But if I get a free 60-day trial, I'll try it. I might just stick with it. I hope everyone here understands that I'm not mad that Red Hat is charging money for this - I think it's a good idea and a good way to make money. I'm really just mad at ZD Net for their usual reporting sub-standardness. Makes me want to puke.

    Dave
    'Round the firewall,
    Out the modem,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
  • In the press in general, and the computer press is no exception, a "good" or "exciting" thing is one that looks like it's gonna make the doers a large amount of money. It may be neutral or bad for the general public, but if it is financially good for the person who does it, it's good.

    So a "good" thing is a new secure digital distribution format. A way of selling public databases. A "good" thing is basically a new way of way of making money for some people. A thing that is good in an unselfish way, such as a volunteer project, a free display of art, or a public protest is rarely good. Usually it is "weird".

    That way we can all subscribe to the unspoken fiction that one day we shall be the lucky ones, we shall be the ones who will see the way and make money, and may god keep us safe until then...

  • Well, what do you expect them to say? Microsoft has the trademark on "Innovative" :-)
  • by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:10PM (#765366)
    Redhat updates are free too.

    Their 'updating service' is not. You are always free to ftp the files yourself and add them manually.
    They simply want you to pay for a SERVICE they are offering you. No sweat.

    And because it's open source stuff they are distributing for the mostpart, anyone else can go make their OWN automatic updater for redhat as well.

    People, they are offering a SERVICE. Believe it or not, lots of roothat users are *NOT* really computer savvy yet, and don't WANT to do it all manually.
    Do the tech savvy find this service useful? I doubt they will. Will the common user? For sure.

  • I imagine that's what this is for. Most people will keep their system up-to-date on a piece-by-piece basis. I know I do. For those who want to do it all in one whack, you can buy a CD, or burn one yourself, and select the "upgrade" option. For those who don't want to download a whole CD, they can use Red Hat Networks to upgrade just the packages they need to. Sure, they could do it like you ask, but this is a company that *needs* to make money. Most new companies that arn't making a big profit after a few years get shut down by their investors. Red Hat is still in the red, in a big way. So, they've got to make money somehow, and I guess this is it ;)

    Dave
    'Round the firewall,
    Out the modem,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
  • by SimplyCosmic ( 15296 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:11PM (#765369) Homepage
    Isn't that one of the business models that's proposed under most open source software theories?

    Make the software free ... Make money through service and support of that software.

    In RedHat's case, you can easily provide yourself with the same service and software manually. The fees, as I read it, are for updates and whatnot delivered to you in a convenient and timely manner.

  • Seems to me that...

    You can always upgrade any package you want, just like always, for free. But if you subscribe to their service, instead of having to check for updated packages every day using Redhat's update tool, downloading from a mirror, all the while hoping that their anon ftp server isn't already full, you are now notified as soon as updated packages become availabe, and you have the ability to download from redhat directly, without worry that all the mirrors are full.

    You aren't paying to upgrade your packages, you are paying for the service of being alerted to new packages and having a very dependable source to download from.

    Cheers

  • FYI, a tool called "autorpm" will do automatic updates for you. Rumor also has it that rpm 4.0 will have auto updates and some other features apt-get had that were sorely needed in rpm.


    --
  • *Most people will keep their system up-to-date on a piece-by-piece basis. I know I do.*

    Yup, I think my system is at a point now where I wouldn't dare trying to upgrade from the CD automatically, manually maybe.

    If you strip your system down to just what you actually use then keeping up to date isn't that difficult. (in fact I may even get round to doing that someday :)

  • by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:13PM (#765376) Homepage

    [Steve Martin voice] Excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm so PISSED!

    Go ahead. Mark this as flamebait. Mark me down, bring up the same complaints already voiced in other threads as if they're unique...but answer me this;

    Why are people ripping RedHat a new one?

    Is this just an attempt at 'bash the leader' again? Sure looks like it, and I'm sick of it.

    Is any of this based on facts of a real problem, or just unhappyness over someone charging for something nobody's forcing you to buy?

    I'll give folks who mentioned Debian/apt-get/windows_update/... a point. Yes, those are handy. You can do similar things with RPM -- no not _identical_, _similar_. Not really interesting, though.

    If you know how to run a Linux system, you probably don't need any special services. I sure don't want to update anything without seeing if there's a reason and what those changes are first. If you want to use the service, and it saves you some anguish/time/effort then it does not seem that prohibitive.

    It's like people complaining about the cost of VMware or other handy tools. If you don't want to play, don't pay. Why gripe about it?

  • by EvlG ( 24576 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:13PM (#765377)
    I think a lot of the people posting to this article missed the point of the RedHat Network.

    Big businesses like subscription models, for a number of reasons. Pay-as-you-go, and pay-as-much-as-you-use-it allow them to tailor the pricing to their needs. And the subscription-style updates frees them from having to worry so much about the OS changing. Having updates and new releases automatically shipped to you vastly simplifies the whole process. If you read the article, you'd note that the subscription will delivered on CD as well as electronic distribution.

    Its true that the updates were available from their site, and with up2date. But this is going beyond simple OS updates. Read the article and you'll see how.
  • by decaym ( 12155 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:13PM (#765378) Homepage

    RedHat stated a while back that 7.0 would ship with a 2.2 kernel but that everything would be ready to go for the 2.4 kernel when it became availalble. Expect to see the kernel change as just another update package in a couple of months.

    Related to this, KDE 2 is supposed to go final within the next month. That's another major applicaiton set that it would have made sense to wait for. I expect to see this updated after release as well.

    Odds are, people can come up with a dozen other major packages that are "close" to having a new stable version ready. If RedHat waited for all of them, they would never get a release out.

  • by Dr. Sp0ng ( 24354 ) <mspong.gmail@com> on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:15PM (#765384) Homepage
    They don't wait because then RedHat 7 wouldn't be out for a long time after those two come out - they can't just download them, throw them onto the CD, and send it to the presses - they have to make sure adding those two doesn't break anything else in the system, and that's a time-consuming thing. If they did just release it quickly, you all would be bitching about how they didn't test it well enough and XFree86 4 doesn't work with XYZ app when you have an ABC video card.
    --
  • I tried, for the first time, to install RedHat alongside Windows this past weekend. I was appalled to find that the RedHat 6.1 installer wasn't able to do a non-destructive repartition, nor did it play well with Windows after I did so by hand. I tried and tried to get LILO (I have no experience with it, but I read every related HOWTO and FAQ) to recognize Windows, even popping my head into #linpeople for help, but I got nowhere. I eventually uninstalled Linux and apologized to the victim, my girlfriend, who is now somewhat less than impressed with Linux.

    Of course, it's my fault that I couldn't get things running right, but this seems like a no-brainer for RedHat. They need to get the rights to (or make) a disk optimizing utility and a non-destructive repartitioning utility. So here's my question: does 7.0 incorporate this? For folks like my girlfriend that just want to try Linux, not go whole-hog, the 6.1 setup is ludicrous. As a 5-year Linux user, I should have known how to do this. As a brand-new user, there's no possible way that she would be able to install RedHat. How can we hope to get more widespread use of Linux without comfortable, flexible, reasonable installers?

    -Waldo
  • by moron0 ( 13503 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:29PM (#765399) Homepage
    I think it's unfair to trash Redhat just for offering a subscription service. The people that use the service will be the ones with extra cash that are too lazy to follow the updates and grab an rpm every once in a while. To generalize.

    Don't discount what may be a perfectly good distrobution because they are trying to make a buck.

    And don't get me started on the Microsoft Network... hehe

    I'll most likely continue using my current Redhat 6.1 and update packages where I see fit. I'd love to try Debian, but I figure it would be such a hassle to migrate, I can live without apt-get.

    Just my two cents.
  • by Jason W ( 65940 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:34PM (#765404)
    Can you say knee-jerk reaction?

    Its a 3/4 page ZDNet article, for christ's sake! Have you forgotten that Redhat, just like every other Linux distribution, is based on GPL software? Thats free to upgrade. Why anyone would rely on a distribution to determine what software you get is beyond me. Download what you need, when you need it. Sure, have a list of new packages to review, but don't trust just one source with your computer's (read: network's) well being. One bad package, and everything goes kaputz.

    Also, you mention that there is no promise of quality. Of course, Redhat can't guarentee the quality of GPL'd software. No one can! Do you think Debian guarentees all of its packages are bug free? Ha! Of course, since they release a new distro every other year, we should hope there would be less bugs. Just wish harder I guess.

    But getting back to Redhat, they probably have an uptime guarentee that says their update server will be up 99.9% of the time or something like that, and that all packages will be updated in a timely fashion. That's better than nothing.

    ----

  • by FattMattP ( 86246 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @06:33PM (#765406) Homepage
    Yes, according to this article [nwfusion.com]. Looks like they will be including OpenSSH and OpenSSL in 7.0.

    From the article:

    Two other security technologies, OpenSSH and OpenSSL, which were formerly available separately because of U.S. export laws on encryption, will be included in Linux 7.0.
    Annoying that they call it Linux and not Red Hat Linux, though.
  • From the article, there doesn't seem to be many significant improvements that aren't being made by a million-and-one other distrobutions. The "auto-update" concept is not new. It's been in Mandrake and Debian for a while now-plus it's free. Also, Mandrake 7.2 will ship with kernel 2.4 and kde2/GNOME1.2. Plus, it will have the usual large number of other updates/improvements. Can RedHat say this?
  • by UVABlows ( 183953 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @04:35PM (#765408)
    Ok, this is a dialogue between you and your boss, as you try to convince him that a webserver running linux would be better than NT. He is a long time windows user and redmond believer.

    Boss: "So you're telling me that open-source practices lead to more secure software because security holes are spotted quicky and once a hole is found, it is patched up in a new version of the software... How do you know when a new version gets released?"

    You: "Well, this distribution of linux called Redhat has a utility called up2date that you can run everyday and it will check for new packages"

    Boss: "What if you're on vacation for two weeks, and there are critical software updates, how will we know about them?"

    Which is a better response, a) or b)?

    a) "Well, for a small fee, we can have Redhat alert us by e-mail whenever a new package is released"

    b) "Uhh, hmm, yeaahhh... Linux good. Microsoft Bad"

    Or how about this one?
    Boss: "Hmmm, well where do we download the new software from?"

    You: "Many universities and other organizations have set up mirror sites across the country"

    Boss: "Universities, huh? There doesn't seem to be anyway that to guarantee that they will always be up, and fast?. How do you know that their download sites won't be full?"

    a) "Well, once again, for a small fee, we can have guaranteed access to redhat's fast, priority servers, without ever having to worry about those things."

    b) "Hmmm... Good point. Well, universities are reliable, they don't even take race as a factor in admission!"

    It looks to me like Mr. Suit would be more likely to take your proposal seriously if you answered a) to both of his questions. They are looking for the "reliable" solution, even if they have to pay for it.

    I don't even use Redhat, I just think they have a pretty good idea

    Cheers

  • by Trepalium ( 109107 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @06:47PM (#765412)
    Yes, and like all previous versions of RedHat, you'll get to have rsh, rexec and all those other worthless security problem inetd daemons enabled by default. Sendmail is still the default MTA, despite RH's continual positioning as an "easy-to-use" Linux distro. Wu-FTPd is still there if I'm not mistaken, as well. You'd think that after 7 versions, they'd get this right...

    It's been repeatedly proven that Sendmail is extremely easy to configure poorly, and even one of the more "fringe" Linux distributions -- Debian, has switched to exim which is a breeze to configure, even if it's isn't all that powerful or feature packed.

    Wu-ftpd is, well, wu-ftpd. I think we all know it's not too distant past.

    I know RedHat is trying their best to make a "ready-to-use", friendly version of Linux, but I think they need to audit their default installation. Far too much is loaded at installation time, and much of it is of limited merit (does anyone really use rsh/rexec on the internet anymore?). Adding OpenSSH is nice, but shouldn't it obsolete rshd/rexecd and to a lesser extent telnetd?

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