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Linux Business Businesses Red Hat Software

Interview with Red Hat VP Michael Tiemann 112

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
david_ross writes "An interview with Red Hat's Vice President Michael Tiemann has just been posted on LinuxQuestions.org. His responses in the interview show that RedHat's community product, Fedora, has a bright future: "The project has been incredibly successful, and we have a lot of people outside of Red Hat to thank for that. What Red Hat must now do is to finish the job of making Fedora a true community project by publishing, and getting accepted, a governance model". "
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Interview with Red Hat VP Michael Tiemann More

Interview with Red Hat VP Michael Tiemann

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  • branding (Score:5, Insightful)

    by insensitive claude ( 645770 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @03:53PM (#10823452) Journal
    I still say it was a mistake to kill off RHL. It made the name "Red Hat" synonymous with Linux, at least to the casual observer. And people like to stick with what they know.

    • Re:branding (Score:2, Insightful)

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

      Try this new flash game... It's a strange blend of Dungeon Dice and Pacman.
      Chomp Dice [chompdice.com]

      • Some people do call Windows "Microsoft". For example, when I call into HP with a problem on our servers, I have to say "Proliant running Microsoft" to be directed to the right support people. That's just silly.
      • Huh? it goes company/product.
        Microsoft Windows
        Red Hat Linux

        What the hell was so wrong with that? The worst thing RH ever did was kill RH Linux. They now have a very limited community where they used to have incredible word of mouth and devoted supporters.
        • "Limited community"? Is that some sort of joke?

          Fedora has spawned quite a few community sites, most of which are extremely active. Places like FedoraNews, FedoraFAQ, and FedoraForum are top-notch and very helpful.

          -Erwos

    • Re:branding (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:03PM (#10823572) Homepage Journal

      And people like to stick with what they know.

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

      • Re:branding (Score:4, Insightful)

        by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:26PM (#10823791)
        B) many people think the Mac is the only alternative (and are too expensive)

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

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

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

        • Re:branding (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Xerp ( 768138 )
          show me one place a "normal" person can buy a Linux machine like Dell, Gateway, or HP

          Ok.

          1. Dell [dell.com] and Dell [slashdot.org]

          2. HP [hp.com]

          And if you want "shops" that sell Linux systems: Try here [dealtime.co.uk]

          Obviously a quick google will find even more!

          The problem is that people think a "pc" is "windows". They simply don't know any better. Sure, the thing becomes trashed by spyware and viruses within hours and thats when the go and see "the guy who knows about computers". By then of course, they have already spent their money and may or

          • OK.

            Link 1a goes to some Medium and Large business page. I don't immediately see any machines readily available for someone like my mother, father, brother or sister would click on and buy.

            Link 1b is malformed, but fixing it to point to http://linux.dell.com/desktops.shtml [dell.com] and I see where there is some mention of Linux on Dell "workstations". Which is not a normal end user PC (read much more expensive than a Mac). The same page says that Dell does not support Linux on regular PCs or laptops, and they ha

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

          That is the problem. JoeUser doesn't think like a corporation about itemizing an expens

      • So right there that told me A) inertia will keep them using Windows until they die and B) many people think the Mac is the only alternative (and are too expensive)

        And it should have told you C) a cheap, reliable computer or internet appliance running Linux could convert them.

      • Re:branding (Score:1, Insightful)

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

        No, its because:

        1) Windows isn't fragmented like Linux. There's 2-5 current versions at a time, not 300 distros. For frig sake even package management is different on different distros. You don't know how to install under Linux. You know a distro and its installer (rpm, apt/dselect, upmdi etc. blah blah).
        2) _Most_ of the time Windows installs out of the box with a GUI installer that requires no command line tweaking required. Even Mand
        • Most_ of the time Windows installs out of the box with a GUI installer that requires no command line tweaking required. Even Mandrake required some command line tweaking.

          Nah. Windows' installation process is about as hard as most Linuxes: easier than Gentoo or Debian, sure, but harder than SuSE. Do you honestly think most Windows users could successfully install Windows? I'd be really surprised if they could.

      • A gratis version of RHEL would have all the downside of technology and engineering compromises with none of the benefit of long-term stability and supportability.

        This was the one statement he made that sounded like Marketingspeak to me (even if he admitted their compromises). It doesn't have RH support, but Scientific Linux (and I assume White Hat and others) are exactly as stable and supportable as RHEL.

        I'm wondering if they don't keem him awake at night.,..

      • Re:branding (Score:2, Insightful)

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

    • Re:branding (Score:3, Insightful)

      by calibanDNS ( 32250 )
      The RedHat name is still branded on their Enterprise products. Brand recognizition if VERY important, as you've stated; especially when convincing management to switch to a new platform. If you're convincing management to buy a product, you're probably going to want a product from the RedHat Enterprise Line, and not Fedora. Fedora is, in my opinion, aimed more at the slightly more Linux-savvy crowd who don't need name recognition and care more about the use of Free Software and up to date software than t

    • Re:branding (Score:1, Insightful)

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

  • Take some of the load of of LinuxQuestions (Score:5, Informative)

    by teiresias ( 101481 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @03:57PM (#10823494)
    Michael Tiemann recently took some time to do an email interview with LinuxQuestions.org (Thanks Michael!). As you can probably tell from some of the questions, this interview is a touch old. If you have a question that you'd like answered, post it in this thread. I'll send a few of the best questions, as followups, to Michael.

    LQ) Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, where did you go to school and the other basics.
    MT) When most people ask this question, they mean "where did you get your degree?" I got my BS CSE from the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania. That's the final resting place for several chunks of the first all-digital computer, the ENIAC. But I started learning about computers at home, about 1974, when my father bought and assembled an IMSAI 8080, then later a Cromemco Z2-D with three or four 64KB banks of RAM and a 10MB winchester hard disk. As I recall, the Z2-D computer cost as much as our station wagon. And that's when I started to learn BASIC, PL/I, Pascal, C, FORTH, LISP, and many other programming languages. It was a passion of mine since I was 12 to write a compiler, and after writing a few toy compilers in CS class, I got my chance in 1987 to transform the GNU C Compiler into the GNU C++ compiler, and later, to merge it as part of the GNU Compiler Collection.

    Believe it or not, the Z2-D from 1976 was my PC in college (1982-1986). With my summer job at Cromemco, I'd upgraded it with parts from the scrap heap: a 68020 processor, 1.5 MB of RAM (3 512KB modules), a 48KB two-port graphics card. I also bought a shiny new 50MB harddisk which consumed my entire summer earnings.

    LQ) What's the hostname of your favorite linux box and why is it named that? Also, if you couldn't use Red Hat or Fedora, which distribution would you use?
    MT) I haven't paid attention to hostnames in forever, but if I were not using Red Hat or Fedora, I'd probably use Mandrake. Mandrake seems to have a very large number of RPMs available for it.

    LQ) What was your first introduction to Linux? What was the reason behind you using Linux and was anyone in particular responsible for turning you on to Linux?
    MT) My first introduction was via Adam Richter, creator of the Yggdrasil distribution. He called me up and took me to lunch one day, mainly to try to understand whether what I'd learned at Cygnus (the world's first company to commercialize free software) could be applied to the business he was thinking about starting. I didn't think so: we were selling support contracts for $35,000 to more than $1M per year, and he wanted to sell CDs for $99 (or perhaps even less). The two models could not have been more different.

    I forgot about Linux until I got a call from Larry McVoy, telling me that there was this software company in North Carolina (software company in North Carolina!?) that had about 15 people and was growing by leaps and bounds. It was committed to free software, and Cygnus should look at acquiring it. While I was not that excited about Yggdrasil, I did become excited about Red Hat. We held a board meeting to discuss spending 10% of our equity in 1995 to acquire Red Hat but I could not convince the two other co-founders to make an offer. Four years later, Red Hat acquired Cygnus with 10% of their equity. Sigh.

    LQ) I remember reading an interview with you in late 2000 in which you answered the question "Which distribution do you feel is your main competitor?" with "Right now our main competitors are Sun Solaris and Microsoft." Fast forward to today, do you think that same answer still applies?
    MT) Moreso than ever.

    LQ) Now that the dust from the initial Fedora announcement has settled and FC has a couple releases under its belt, would you say the project is as successful as Red Hat had hoped? In what areas would you say it really shines and what do you think are its biggest shortcomings?
    MT) The project has been incredibly successful, and we have a lot of people outside of Red Hat to thank for that. What Red Hat must now do is to f
  • I remember when the stock shot up... "This can make money?" some people thought. The answer to what RH is going to do now is actually in yesterday's news item about making money on this sort of thing...

    I remember trying to download Fedora...hahaha that took forever.

    I remember wanting to try it out...I guess I will now that I have a work-issued laptop that's better than my personal one. Time to play with Fedora on my Inspiron 8600! :P

  • Directory services (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gentoo Fan ( 643403 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:06PM (#10823591) Homepage
    Red Hat just announced the purchase of the Netscape Directory Server and Certificate Management System from AOL, which seems to be a slight departure from the usual business plan.

    What I don't get is if Red Hat acquired Netscape Directory Service [informationweek.com] why are they still claiming to be focusing on the "desktop" when Novell's NDS is Linux-friendly [p2pnet.net]. Is it mostly because of the proprietary nature of NDS? I just hope there isn't too much duplication of effort with the directory services biz.
    • When you buy NDS, Red Hat doesn't make any money. Case closed.

    • Re:Directory services (Score:4, Informative)

      by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @05:03PM (#10824255)
      Red Hat recently came to our school and talked about this very issue (among many others).

      Basically, OpenLDAP sucks. OTOH, Netscape has a very good version that doesn't suck. Therefore, Red Hat bought Netscape's, and will be open sourcing it shortly. All the other alternatives were proprietary, and Red Hat will only ship free software.

      -Erwos
      • The antique, hacked-up, unsupported version of OpenLDAP that Red Hat ships definitely sucks.

        The current OpenLDAP offering is too difficult to set up and configure for anyone but serious computer scientists. But that was true of X-windows not too long ago... now it's nearly useable!

        Saying OpenLDAP sucks is painting with too broad a brush. There are several extremely large implementations that perform extremely well and are rock-solid reliable; Stanford comes to mind.
    • Open source is the answer. RH will eventually GNU GPL it.

    • Re:Directory services (Score:3, Interesting)

      by illumin8 ( 148082 )
      What I don't get is if Red Hat acquired Netscape Directory Service why are they still claiming to be focusing on the "desktop" when Novell's NDS is Linux-friendly. Is it mostly because of the proprietary nature of NDS? I just hope there isn't too much duplication of effort with the directory services biz.

      The reason why is because a strong LDAP directory server is essential for a Samba PDC/BDC rollout if you're going to replace a Windows NT domain in the enterprise. This is a much needed piece to the ente

  • I do agree with Tiemann (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kompiluj ( 677438 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:07PM (#10823606)
    1) Fedora is a good distro, if you want the newest staff it will never be rock-solid, try for instance the debian-unstable, or Gentoo when it has a bad day
    2) RHEL is something important - RH needs money to support itself. A good UNIX operating system (like Linux cannot be cheap). Also people from management want to pay because:
    - they think if something is free cannot be good
    - they think that you should have someone you can blame
    3) RH didn't steal the Linux - it is free, what you have to pay for are two things: trademark and support - if you can support yourself and don't care about trademarks but have to use software that needs RHEL try a RHEL clone. On the other hand if you have enough money to afford such software (think Oracle) why not give some to the Linux community.
    But it's only my 0.02 Euro...
    • Wait...what's this? A sensible post from someone who isn't saying Red Hat is the "Microsoft of Linux" and how they've moved all of their computers to Gentoo because only wankers use Red Hat. Say it isn't so!
    • I disagree. FreeBSD is not cutting edge but its not behind the times either and is stable.

      That is the problem with Linux. It ever works and the applications are buggy with little QA. Debian is the only exception.

      At least Windows doesn't have this problem.

      • I was speaking about Red Hat, perhaps generally about Linux, and I always thought FreeBSD is not a distribution of Linux. But if I am wrong, please do correct me.
        OTOH if you think that FreeBSD is _very_ stable, I guess you should have tried 5.3 before the release. There were some really serious bugs. As far as I know the SCHED_ULE still is not ready for production and we have to get on with the old SCHED_4BSD.
        However, if you only wanted to say that if I cannot choose between different flavours of Linux I

  • Redhat? No thanks! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by asv108 ( 141455 ) <asvNO@SPAMivoss.com> on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:08PM (#10823614) Homepage Journal
    I gave them up a few years ago, ever since they decided not provide support for freely downloadable ISO's. I went to debian for most of our servers, gentoo on my own desktops. We still have fedora dual booting on our intern desktops but I have no interest in giving redhat money for enterprise linux. Debian has turned out to be a great solution for us. I'm not saying its a redhat replacement, the fact is, Debian really needs a "grown up" large company to provide commercial support, that will quiet the fears of managers. Yes, I've seen the the Debian contractors page.

    Our organization even has a Redhat site license that drops the cost down to $30 a desktop per year, but after they decided to effectively drop support for the millions of redhat 8 and 9 installations, I have no interest in dealing with a company that can make such a profound shift without considering the needs of their existing customers. Yes, we did pay for Redhat support! Suse looks like its moving in the opposite direction of redhat so that might be an option for a good option down the road.

    • Re:Redhat? No thanks! (Score:4, Informative)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:15PM (#10823680)
      Debian really needs a "grown up" large company to provide commercial support, that will quiet the fears of managers.

      Is HP, grown up enough? http://www.hp.com/hps/linux/lx_debian.html [hp.com]

      • hardware agnostic (Score:3, Informative)

        by asv108 ( 141455 )
        I should have been a little more clear, grown up support that is NOT hardware specific. Will HP support debian linux on Dell, IBM, whiteboxes, etc? When I pay for rhel i get hardware agnostic support from a name managers know, Debian needs a similar provider.
        • I should have been a little more clear, grown up support that is NOT hardware specific. Will HP support debian linux on Dell, IBM, whiteboxes, etc? When I pay for rhel i get hardware agnostic support from a name managers know, Debian needs a similar provider.

          I have RH support that is through HP. Me and my PHB feel better knowing that there is one number to call when there is an issue. Having that one number is even more valuable when its kinda blurred as to whether its a software or hardware issue.

          Also

    • Re:Redhat? No thanks! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jav1231 ( 539129 )
      I agree. I always thought Fedora was a bone thrown to those who had used RHL. They were actually making money on RHL which means they dropped it for focus, not profit. I think it's hurt them, no matter what they say. I think they are doing okay, don't get me wrong, but the community as a whole thinks less of them for it. I refuse to try Fedora for the reasons you stated. Red Hat doesn't want my business unless I buy enterprise versions which means unless I have a user base. Caldera got a bad rep for much of

      • Re:Redhat? No thanks! (Score:3, Informative)

        by mattdm ( 1931 )
        They were actually making money on RHL which means they dropped it for focus, not profit.

        Do you have a basis for this claim? From what I've heard from Red Hat folks, they were barely breaking even, if that.

        Red Hat really has no interest in you and me until we code something, put it back into the community, and they incorperate it into their workstation distro.

        And that's why all the stuff they write is released under the GPL. Those bastards.
        • Here ya go! From an interview with Matthew Szulik:
          8) Did The Consumer Stream Make A Profit? - by reallocate
          Has Red Hat's shrinkwrapped consumer-level product stream ever made a profit? To your knowledge, has SUSE or anyone else over made a profit from consumer sales?
          Szulik:
          Profitable yes. Was a shrink wrapped version sold at retail an economic model to grow a company? No. discounts leave a small amount of available profit. I can not speak for SuSE economics as until recently they were private.

    • Re:Redhat? No thanks! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:17PM (#10823708) Homepage
      Wait a minute. You criticize Redhat for charging for support, but then you claim that "Debian really needs a 'grown up' large company to provide commercial support, that will quiet the fears of managers."

      Am I missing something?!

      • I am not critical of redhat for the practice pf charging for support. I'm critizing Redhat for dropping support on 2 very widely used products and not providing support for its freely downloadable product. (Fedora)
        • I'm critizing Redhat for dropping support on 2 very widely used products and not providing support for its freely downloadable product. (Fedora)

          You've lost me. Why would you expect anyone to provide official support for a freely downloadable product? Red Hat developers produce updates and security fixes, they participate on open development mailing lists -- but, okay, they won't guarantee that they're going to fix your problems for free.

          I won't guarantee that either, although if you ask me about somethin
      • The last time I checked out Redhat's prices they were awfully high. My boss remarked that he could by a Windows server for less. Considering how much of Redhat's, or any Linux Distro company, work is done for free by the open source community I would expect the price to undercut proprietary code software everytime.

    • Re:Redhat? No thanks! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So because they stopped supporting the Free Iso's you went to distro where there isn't any support? Where you will face the same problem of the products eventually being dropped from support as well? How do you benefit? Either way you don't have support. Your not making much sense especially running Gentoo which for all of its merits isnt' a business oriented distro. This is expecially laugable if indeed your business is as large as your claiming. Somehow I dont' see many Fortune 500 companies running Gento
    • Wait a second... you want free support? Are you nuts? No sane company can afford that, especially on a free product.
      Regards,
      Steve

    • I gave them up a few years ago, ever since they decided not provide support for freely downloadable ISO's [...] the fact is, Debian really needs a "grown up" large company to provide commercial support, that will quiet the fears of managers.

      And if you get that how will it be different than the current situation created by Red Hat? Red Hat provides freely downloadable ISOs of Fedora Core. Support is provided by a community of volunteers on the mailing-lists and bulletin boards. There is commercial supp

    • Open Source doesn't mean charity work or not-for-profit. It's a business model and they were offering customers support for a largely compatible product (RHEL3) that was planned to be supported for far longer than RHL8.0 and RHL9 would have been, even under the old lifetimes.

  • Fedora is good, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:12PM (#10823658) Homepage Journal
    There just aren't enough packages in it. It's just too damn small. That wouldn't be so bad, if there was any obvious way to submit RPMs. For a "community-driven project", Fedora seems to be very good at keeping the community out of things.


    (Although I don't have that much code of my own that I could add, I track oodles of excellent software and would be more than happy to roll up the necessary files to convert these to RPMs/SRPMs.)


    Mind you, other projects aren't much better. A lot of Gentoo packages are old and you have to reach some unspecified level of standing in the Gentoo community before they'll ask you if you want to contribute. I happen to like compiling my own software, but I've started souring on Gentoo as a way to do it. Rolling my own binaries is only useful if I've got recent enough software to make it useful.


    As it stands, for me, the score is definitely: Gentoo, Fedora 3.

    • There are some fine community rpm repo's - eg:
      http://apt.sw.be/fedora/3/en/i386/dag/RPMS/
    • Not enough packages? You obviosuly haven't used it. In previous posts people were complaining that too many packages were installed with it. The thing with Fedora is it goes through extensive Q&A relatvie to the other distros so not every package you may find in gentoo will be in a defualt install of Fedora. This is why you can easily use outside reopsitories like DAG, Freshrpms, Fedora.us, Livna.org etc.. etc.. Fedorafaq.org is your friend. Fedora is really an amzing distro, especially Core 3. And more
      • I'm upgrading from Core 2 to Core 3, as we speak. (Though the mirror sites have horrible stability, right now.)

        I don't believe in this "too many packages" thing, because you can always not install what you don't want. It's much easier, in fact, to not install something that's there than it is to install something that isn't.

        Sure, some people are going to click the "Install Everything" button. Well, it's hard to feel sorry for people who do totally blind installs. It's not as if it's hard to check what y

    • There just aren't enough packages in it. It's just too damn small.

      Check out FedoraTracker [fedoratracker.org]. This will let you search for add-on packages from well-known third-party repositories, including the semi-official Fedora Extras (which is, by the way, the maybe-not-obvious-but-definitely-workable way to submit RPMs.)
    • I spent days on end finding every repository I possibly could in order to find all the programs I needed for Fedora Core 2. At best I was able to find 4000 packages. You might say "hey, thats enough," but for me it's not. Not when the programs I need aren't in that 4000. Thats why I'm using Debian right now; because I can find 18000 packages for it and all the software I need.

      I would love to use Fedora on my desktop. It installs live a dream and looks very clean. But sometimes you just need more...

  • The submitter wrote that Tiemann's responses in the interview show that RedHat's [sic] community product, Fedora, has a bright future. That's not quite right. They "show" rather that Tiemann believes that Fedora has a bright future, which is quite a different statement. That is, just because Mr. Tiemann makes a statement, it isn't ipso facto the case.

    That said, Tiemann did a good job of representing Red Hat and highlighting what he thinks are Red Hat's noteworthy achievements.

  • The Debian testing [debian.org] distribution already balances the leading edge with robustness very well. I don't think we need a new distribution to do it.

  • All we need... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:17PM (#10823709)
    What Red Hat must now do is to finish the job of making Fedora a true community project by publishing, and getting accepted, a governance model.

    That and the public CVS server they've been promising for two years.

  • Redhat/Fedora (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mentorix ( 620009 ) <slashdot@benben.com> on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:37PM (#10823938)
    Although I wish RH lots of luck with Fedora I can't say that I'm interested in what they offer.

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

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

    IMNSHO The products RH sells have nothing in common with Linux and the reason why it got so popular in the first place.
    • Although I wish RH lots of luck with Fedora I can't say that I'm interested in what they offer.

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

      Actually, the Fedora Core Linux kernel is relatively minimally patched. Check out the source, or look at this thread [redhat.com] for
    • Their commercial offerings are a pain in the butt, the kernel they use is patched all over the place and they don't even offer support for normal Linux kernels.

      That "patched" up kernel that incoveniences so much gives my servers rock-solid stability, better performance, and increased hardware support that "stock" kernels don't have. I have no need to use a stock kernel.

      Waaah mommy, I'm a l33t gentoo user who needs to use 2.6.8.not-even-out-yet.1. This distribution is not for you, it is for people who
    • Their commercial offerings are a pain in the butt, the kernel they use is patched all over the place and they don't even offer support for normal Linux kernels.

      AFAIK, neither Suse or Debian or any other major distro ship a Linux Torvalds kernel.

      The amount of patches that RH included that have now been made part of 2.6 should also attest to their quality. Oh, and the fact your database performs a shitload better when using a RHEL kernel (as many folks who use other distros do, specifically cause they wan

    • Re:Redhat/Fedora (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pros_n_Cons ( 535669 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @07:46PM (#10825639)
      Since you (and 30 others) feel its your duty to spit at redhat while holding up your Debian flag I think its about time you guys answer some questions. Red Hat did SMP, NPTL, clustering, O(1) scheduler, O(1) VM layer Starting and stopping 100,000 threads used to take 15 minutes, now it literally takes one second.
      Had major contributions to or wrote outright Mozilla, Open Office, Kernel, GTK2, GCC, Glibc, metacity, wrote Java compiler, Xorg(xfree), stateless linux, SElinux, exec-shild, RPM, Anaconda. It bought out 3 company's turning previous closed source software the company's owned into OSS software like netscape directory and GFS, sistina's VM. RedHat promises to spend 1/5th of their income on R&D of free software.
      Now... What has Debian done for us? Thanks for apt-get.
      Which side is "just packaging free software" again?
      Some of us BUY RH because they take our money and INVENT software that is OSS, they don't just patch security flaws.

    • They don't even guarantee API compatibility within major releases so I can't even update machines without testing the updates first.

      Really in RedHat Linux or in RedHat Enterprise Linux? They do if Fedora, but Fedora is a known broken tool (it's a shiny nifty looking tool, but broken as far as using for Enterprise quality Linux distros). I'd really like to see any anecdotes or documentation showing that RH broke the API/ABI inside the same series. As a matter of fact, they do support an ABI (which i

  • Redhat set up a meeting today with Michael, and it was very interesting.

    He is currently touring Australia and SE Asia, he said he would be in Malaysia (KL I assume) on the weekend.

    He was a very fluent speaker, and covered many of the points raised in the article, during our meeting.

    We also asked him about GFS (something we are working on deploying) and he had some interesting comments on where its going.

    He also was stong on making the point that newstuff/possibly unstable will be in Fedora, and when it
  • I'm a little late posting here, but I was just wondering how the security is on RHEL. Someone mentioned to me that it has gotten a lot better on security, but I haven't looked at anything from Red Hat in a while now. How is it compared to, say, Mac OSX, or OpenBSD?

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