Red Hat Backlash? 309
FolkWolf sent us a link
to CNET which as an article
on Red Hat Backlash
speculated on by the The Gartner Group. Basically
revolves around the recent investment announcements.
They talk about RH walking a line between
boasting their successes, and alienating themselves from
the community.
What is your problem? (Score:1)
What is your problem? (Score:1)
Re: Red Hat == The Problem (Score:1)
Look. Red Hat is a threat. Pure and simple. Sure, Gnome is great. Thanks. But right now Red Hat is VERY CLOSE to becoming the new MS of Linux. Look at what IBM did-- it didn't want to settle on one company and crown it "CZAR of the PCs" like it did with MS in the 1980s.
This is FUD pure and simple. Saying "RedHat is a threat" over and over does not make it so. If it is a threat, tell us how it is a threat. Vague references to IBM granting the PC-DOS contract to Microsoft in the early eighties doesn't cut it. Not only is IBM's investment in RedHat completely different from granting a monopoly contract, but IBM is a completely different company now than it was then. If RedHat is a threat than you should be able to come up with a plausible chain of events from the current situation to a bad one. RedHat has bent over backwards to make sure there is no such chain.
As far as I'm concerned, it's Debian all the way, until Debian gets too corporate. And then it's off to some other model.
More FUD. How can Debian possibly get "too corporate"?!!? They're a non-profit organization based on volunteers with almost no cash flow.
They're welcome to contribute to the free source initiative all they want. (Hey, Red Hat, FUCKING JOIN IN ON STANDARDS, why doncha?) But I don't trust them just because they're kewl and sold Linux back in the old days.
What standards aren't they joining in on that they should? Again, vague accusations just make for FUD. They have a delegate to the LSB, their distribution is POSIX compliant, they ship an ICCCM compliant X Server, they follow the FHS better than most distributions. What do you want from them, Unix trademark compliance?
Stick to core principles: Trust no one but yourselves.
Finally, some wisdom. I'm certainly not going to trust an anonymous coward with anger but no information.
Troll bridge...pay troll (Score:1)
And no, I don't consider myself a sucker for replying to a Troll. My posts are more to get my viewpoint out there, either directly or in response to an opposing viewpoint. The troll's viewpoint here was one that is common enough that I thought it should be rebutted regardless of whether or not it was the person's real opinion. It all goes to show that, even if you think you're playing petty games, there's a valid place for some trolls.
It's just another flavour of FUD. (Score:1)
ttyl
Farrell
The web got its start by fsking over gopher (Score:1)
Time for an open letter to Red Hat? (Score:1)
What is your problem? (Score:1)
Slackware not the original! (Score:1)
Red Hat Sucks (Score:1)
They're nothing but a bunch of sellouts. Here in North Carolina, everybody who wants to be cool talks about how they're so into redhat. It's disgusting.
The UNC computer science club toured their building a couple of weeks ago and it was the worst tour in the galaxy!! They had some former airforce cowboy lead us around, showing us empty cubes and let us watch a bunch of software developers play video games for 10 minutes. When we asked for some of their free software, they told us to go to the store and buy it! And one of our guys just happened to be wearing a faded red cap (which has been around longer than that lousy company), and that cowboy insulted him, trying to pawn off some really cheap, scsi blazing-red baseball cap on him.
I've only been using linux for about a year now, and setting up and administering slackware 3.6 by hand was tons more fun and informative than setting up a red hat box.
And RedHat SparcLinux especially sucks!
What is your problem? (Score:1)
Coward, if it weren't for Slackware, there'd be no RedHat. Slackware is old, but I'd take it over selling out to RedHat any day. Have a little respect for the original innovators.
Slackware not the original! (Score:1)
And you're just an anonymous coward. I know about SLS. I also know that Slackware is what originally brought Linux to the masses. And that's a good thing. What's bad is when self-righteous cowards like yourself decide to insult the very people you want learning about Linux (Linux, not RedHat, Linux).
And while I may not be a math major, I do know that if SLS was ripped off by Slackware, and Slackware was ripped off by RedHat, then RedHat is no better a distribution than Slackware. So get off your high horse and lick me.
Red Hat Sucks? (Score:1)
You missed my point. The tour is indicative of how RedHat treats the people who actually use their software. They'll suckle Netscape's and Oracle's teets and roll out the red carpet to get money and corporate prestige, but when faced with a bunch of college kids with no money but an earnest love for computing, they show us where the documentation people sit, where the gnome people sit, give us the honor to watch that rasterman dude play video games, and then boot us right out of the office after 20 minutes. And I'm not going to even talk about the effort that went into getting the tour in the first place. They won't send someone to come speak at our meetings, but they'll send someone to the local LUG meeting the next night. And they put off the tour for an entire semester!
I'm sorry, but I was under the impression that it was the users who counted, not the big bad corporations. To hell with all this corporate acceptance bullshit. Why must Linux be validated on whether or not it's helping IBM exploit users?
alternative music (Score:1)
This is is different than what I have been hearing (Score:1)
As long as Red Hat doesn't break standards (Score:1)
annoyance is that Red Hat sticks things in odd
directories -- they seem to totally ignore the
/usr/local directory and stick everything in
/usr instead.
Another RedHat-ism is this linuxconf tool --
I don't like the smell of it, so I disabled
it on all my boxes.
I hope Red Hat doesn't try to bully new "standards"
on Linux.
at least three horses (Score:1)
but it must really suck to be Caldera right now... :-|
TedC
The state of Caldera (Score:1)
Well, it's not that you have a bad distro, it's that people are showing a strong tendency to 'follow the herd', and Red Hat is getting most of the media attention. As Bob Young would say, they're good at marketing catsup. :-)
I happen to use OpenLinux as my main distro simply because it's stable and it came with KDE. I also use Red Hat 5.2, and I'm evaluating SuSE 6.0. I was disappointed with the 60 page getting started guide that came with 1.3; hopefully 2.0 will include a more extensive manual, and more than 30 days of installation support. I tentatively plan to buy OpenLinux 2.0 to get the 2.2 kernel and KDE 1.1.
I don't have any real complaints with Red Hat; they have a good product and market it well. But I am concerned that the LSB is going to get run over in this sudden Red Hat lovefest.
TedC
Shrug (Score:1)
My personal experience with Red Hat (Score:1)
Michael Johnson, a Red Hat developer, came and gave a speech to my LUG as soon as Red Hat heard about us -- one of their marketing people, Lisa, apparently searches the LUG databases and contacts their founders. Well, she wrote me, said she and Michael were coming to Minneapolis, and would we like to hear him give a talk? And what's your address so we can send you 100 free Power Tools CD sets?
In his talk, Michael stressed numerous times that everything coded at Red Hat is released under the GPL, and that they are committed to free software. Red Hat Linux is a quality product that is free-as-in-speech. That's all that matters, and I wish them well.
And the Power Tools CDs? Into the hands of more than a few people who had never heard of Linux before. I defy any of you to say that introducing people to free software is a bad thing.
I totally agree there is a backlash (Score:1)
Every GNU/Linux "review" now is really just a review of what RH has done lately, and how it compares to NT this week. Maybe if you're lucky you'll see SuSE or Debian mentioned, or a reference to slackware being "the true hacker's" distribution, but that's rare. They're definitely starting to alienate people, and they better start paying attention to that, otherwise they *will* be the next slackware.
Debian ... (Score:1)
And, wrt to 'ease', I saw someone mention SuSE as making things easier for the 'old user'
So far, nothing else I've seen has been as easily upgradable as debian
To put my comments in perspective, I've used Slackware and Redhat, and still use Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Solaris.
/var/mail (Score:1)
or directly to the user's home directory.
That's right (Score:1)
What in the hell are you talking about? (Score:1)
Bob Young owned a bookstore, and was on the Slackware mailing list. At some point he bought a CD burner, started selling slackware disks at a cheaper price, and spammed everyone on the Slackware list about it. He then included glibc as a way to make other distros incompatible.
(btw, I learned the info in the first paragraph of this post from someone closely involved in Slackware whom I met at LinuxWorld; any innacuracies are my fault.)
Uh huh. Tell me another one. I'm sorry, but I've been in the Linux community for a very long time (since Slackware 1.0 in fall of '93), and I remember nothing of the sort.
Red Hat's been its own distribution as long as it's been around; it was never based on Slackware. (Anybody else remember *.rpp files?) Red Hat's package management scheme has always been better than the rather lame way Slackware handles things. The glibc claim is ludicrous, given that that's the direction the libc architects (including H.J. Lu) are encouraging people to go.
Your acquaintance may be horribly misremembering how Slackware got started. Slackware was originally a set of patches for the SLS distribution, which was the very first commercial Linux distro on floppy and CDROM ('92-'93). Everything in SLS was freely available, but the media was extremely pricey, even for the time. Pat Volkerding made Slackware originally as a patched version of SLS, but then the SLS guy (whose name escapes me) threatened to sue Pat for using the SLS install scripts, which the SLS guy saw as his proprietary property. This was widely seen (or at least seen by me) as an attempt to keep Slackware from cutting into SLS sales, but it failed miserably. Pat wrote his own install scripts and SLS died a slow death over the following year or so. By mid-'94, Slackware was in the position that Red Hat is in now in terms of percentage mindshare.
Care to name your source? Didn't think so.
Um, no -- *you* made the claim, *you* back it up (Score:1)
Look, email Pat V., or find the old Slackware mailing list archives (if they're still around), either one of these would either verify what I was told.
You made the claim. It's your responsibility to back it up.
I was there, and I remember nothing of the sort. Slackware doesn't maintain any sort of mail archive that I can find. A Deja News power search for "bob young slackware" in comp.os.linux.* over 1/1/1994 - 1/1/1996 confirms my memory, as it turns up zero hits.
As far as the libc thing, Slackware still carries libc instead of glibc.
So? This proves what, other than the fact that Slackware's libc is horribly dated, not thread-safe, and no longer maintained by the libc developers? Debian ships with glibc too, ya know.
I totally agree there is a backlash (Score:1)
Chris DiBona
VA Research Linux Outreach Guy
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Electric Eyes (Score:1)
Darwinian Selection (Score:1)
distribution *has* to win. Just as Microsoft Windows won the DOS/OS2/Mac/Amiga race of the
80's/90's, Red Hat is winning the Linux race of today. One team comes up with a solution that's better
than the rest, and then everyone start standardizing on them, and then anyone who doesn't is left up the
creek without a paddle. Is this a bad thing?
Yes. I don't want to be forced to use something that I consider to be technically inferior. If Red Hat abuses its power (which it hasn't yet) we could very well see other distros being forced to adopt their way of doing things. I already have enough trouble with stuff that's only distributed in RPM form (alien helps, but it can only do so much)
Daniel
Which Library do Distributions Use (Score:1)
Daniel
[ neither Gnome nor KDE is the 'official' Debian 'desktop environment' AFAIK. I suspect Potato will have a choice between them in installation if a kosher version of Qt is released by then. But what do I know..? ]
Whatever. (Score:1)
--Defiler.
/var/mail (Score:1)
Red Hat has lost sight of what is important (Score:1)
This is not to say that KDE isn't good software. I was impressed, and I am sure that Harmony has some talented people working on it as well. It just pains me to see talent being wasted on a toolkit when it could just as easily be used on a widget set that it already free software. The fact of the matter is that GTK development (and Gnome development as well) is moving along at a frightening pace. Troll Tech had better look lively if they don't want to get completely outmaneuvered.
In the world of computers (especially in Unix) the most open standards tend to win out, and there is no more open standard than GTK.
yeah (Score:1)
--
Red Hat is Linux (Score:1)
Don't shun Red Hat
Have any suggestions on how they could make Linux better, easier, cooler? Write them!
What is your problem? (Score:1)
Disclaimer: I may be considered a bit biased. But whatever.
Explain thyself? How is Slackware, for instance, worse than a distro (Red Hat) that renames their libraries and kernels so that they appear to be full releases when in actuality they're pre-releases? How is it worse than a distro whose install often ignores the user's wishes, and which actively presents and promotes itself as the Linux? How is it worse than a distro that is far, far more marketing and hype than QA and careful testing?
Redhat got its start by fscking over Slackware (Score:1)
And no, I do not care to elaborate.
Red Hat doesn't break standards (Score:1)
What is your problem? (Score:1)
Maybe it sounds paranoid, but then again maybe it deserves some consideration. Because the first half of that scenario is already occurring, and the second half (based on observations of Red Hat's past behavior) seems not at all unlikely.
What is your problem? (Score:1)
What in Slackware is not "completely free"? Patrick Volkerding himself has written a fair amount of Linux software, some of it without credit, and provided us with a traditional unix-like distribution at the same time. How can you say Slackware contributes nothing?
Kernels must be renamed because some of the tools can't tell them apart otherwise. I think the modules stuff has problems.
Kernel packages do not need to be renamed, under any circumstances. I am not talking about your vmlinuz image, I'm talking about the actual package it originally comes in. If you download and install a tarball named 2.2.3, it damn well should be a 2.2.3 kernel, and not a 2.2.3-pre2 or some such thing. (Note: this is an example. I am not accusing Red Hat of distributing 2.2.3-pre2 and passing it off as 2.2.3, specifically.) Such practices have also been noted in the realm of libraries.
Marketing is good. Excessive QA lets the software get obsolete. Red Hat generally ships with the most recent kernel they can find, and then some.
Marketing is all well and good, yes. But your point about "excessive QA" puzzles me. You would rather have a system slapped together the day before yesterday from whatever was lying around than one that was put together and tested over a period of the last couple of months? There's a reason it's called "bleeding edge."
A proud Debian Linux user (Score:1)
The single biggest problem with the dominance and commercial acceptance of Red Hat is that support deals are only being announced for Red Hat installations. There may be exceptions, but in most cases these new support contracts don't cover Debian at all, so from that point of view Red Hat will become the de facto Linux standard.
Whilst I wish Red Hat all the luck in the world, and acknowledge that they've done a huge amount for the Linux scene, this recent turn of events is dangerous.
Incredibly wrong economics... (Score:1)
Of course I won't say the differences between, say, Redhat and Debian, are imaginary, like say the difference between Marlboro and Camel (if that were the case, I wouldn't have recently switched from RedHat to Debian on both of my boxes), but from the average corporation (or even software developer) point of view, all of your software should work on any distro anyway, so they might as well be imaginary differences.
Don't worry if RedHat becomes the preferred distro of PHB's, you'll always be free to choose what works for you.
-Jake
As long as they innovate. (Score:1)
IIRC, redhat can be credited for:
The first Alpha distrubution (no longer the only one)
Championing E and Gnome (And employing Carsten the Rasterman)
RPM (though I like dpkg and apt better)
Kind of a swank set of installation systems that have been adopted by several other distro's.
Once they stop creating and start leeching, then I will have good cause to hate them.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
I like Linus' pants analogy. (Score:1)
Redhat may end up the "Levis" of Linux, but how many different profitalbe brands of jeans can you name?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
What is your problem? (Score:1)
i also have beefs with redhat's installation procedures and also alot of the defaults suck but i still think they're good for the linux "industry". i think they will be the "for dummies" version of linux while people like us move to suse, debian, stampede or tom's.
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
But the frontend isn't GPLed. (Score:1)
A few comments on your post (Score:1)
Making $$==selling out? If you've ever written code for money, then I guess you sold out too. If you haven't, then maybe no one would hire you?
>Here in North Carolina, everybody who wants
>to be cool talks about how they're so into >redhat. It's disgusting.
So being popular means it "sucks". By that logic, you yourself are either "popular and suck", or are "unpopular and don't suck". Wonder which it is.
> The UNC computer science club toured their
> building a couple of weeks ago a
> was the worst tour in the galaxy!!
Well hell! I would NEVER use a product from a company that gives BAD TOURS!!
> I've only been using linux for about a year now,
> and setting up and administering
> slackware 3.6 by hand was tons more fun and
> informative than setting up a red hat box.
I think thats great that you use and enjoy slackware. I did at one time too. Please don't dog on us who use red hat now, though. To each their own, I say.
The meaning of freedom (Score:1)
- They don't GPL or LGPL everything they write
[...] Only Debian has a perfect record.You sound like a case of "more catholic than the pope".
Perhaps you should read the Debian Social Contract [debian.org] and the Debian Free Software Guidelines it contains.
There are more free licenses than GPL and LGPL. (And if you refer to e.g. BSD-licensed code as "half-assed Open Source", you should include LGPL in that as it could encourage development of non-GPL-ed software).
In my book, there are valid reasons to use a different DFSG-free license than (L)GPL:
I happily put changes I made to public domain crypto code in the public domain and happily used the BSD license for a manpage I contributed to a BSD-licensed project, because that was the way in which I could improve that free software (more so than GPL-ing my modifications, and cutting them of from many in the development community involved. I used the FSF documentation notice (which is not GPL) for manpages I contributed to a GPLed project.
I use (L)GPL on new code I write myself, as I don't want to encourage proprietary software development too much.
I believe in respecting the license an author chooses for her code. When I believe an author should have chosen another license (e.g. because of lack of sufficient understanding of licensing issues (as is often the case with "non-commercial use only" licenses)), I don't think she should die, I try to reason with her.
If you don't like the license an author chose for his code, reason with him. It's going to get you much further than telling them to die. And if he doesn't change the license, you still have the freedom not to use his code.
What is your problem? (Score:1)
The only other distribution that is as free as Red Hat, Debian, is unable to really support Linux.
Would you care to explain what you mean by "support Linux"?
If you're referring to support Linux users, I'd strongly suggest you check out Debian's support options [debian.org]. If you're referring to having an unsurpressable urge to pay for support, check out the Debian consultants [debian.org] page.
If you're referring to supporting the development of Linux, I'd ask you to reflect on what a fellow Debian developer said: Debian supports free software development the old-fashioned way, by writing it. And of course there's the license lobbying/politics that got ncftp free, got Rocks'n'Diamonds free etc. And let's not forget
where the first donation to GNOME development came from.
Which Library do Distributions Use (Score:1)
QPL 1.0 [troll.no], the license under which Troll Tech will release Qt Free Edition 2.0, is a DFSG [debian.org]-free license.
But the problem with KDE's licensing is more subtle than that. Debian can't at the moment distribute KDE at all (not even as part of "contrib"), because Qt's license isn't GPL-compatible. (See the news item [debian.org] for details)
Even when we have a DFSG-free Qt, there is still the issue whether its license is GPL-compatible. If it is (I haven't seen an analysis of QPL 1.0's GPL-compatibility status, so I really don't know), KDE can be included in Debian's main. If it isn't, the licensing issue continues until KDE's licensing changes (e.g. by an explicit exception clause to the GPL allowing redistribution of KDE binaries linked against a QPLed Qt [1]), or the QPL is made GPL-compatible.
[1] A similar exception clause for non-free Qt would have made KDE suitable for contrib. Unfortunately, the KDE project refused to take the licensing issue seriously, and did not chose to fix it this way, unlike for instance the LyX [lyx.org] developers. With LyX, there was a similar situation of GPL-ed software linked against a GPL-incompatibly licensed (binary-only non-system) library (xforms). The LyX developers explicitly added an exception to the GPL's requirements wrt. libraries, making it possible for Debian to distribute it in "contrib".
Debian does nothing. (Score:1)
I can't speak for all of us, but in my case, I'd strongly doubt I'd have learned anywhere near as much about UN*X systems and free software development if I hadn't become involved in Debian development.
Cosider Alan Cox. He would have to work at a normal place if Red Hat didn't support him. His free time to hack would be more limited. Were he with Debian, he could only do half as much as he does now.
Being employed by a Linux distributor that's dedicated to free software is hardly the only way to spend a large amount of your work time developing free software. Consider Linus' position at TransMeta, independent free software consultants like Jim Pick, people working for companies like Cygnus, Cyclic and Signum, sysadmins and programmers in certain university and ISP environments etc.
Working for a commercial Linux distributor is but one way to pay a free software developer's bills.
portals are for market losers (Score:1)
Discussing the differences between distributions is difficult enough, without getting into which is better (or even if "better" means something in general).
In any case, if you're genuinely interested, there's a lot of material from debian users' perspective(s) in one of this months threads on the debian-user@lists.debian.org mailing list; see the archives [debian.org].
Debian's dedication to free software, the openness of it's development model, the responsiveness of the developers, the flexibility of the package management system, the stability and integratedness of releases, the finishing touches (automatic menu updates for all window managers, automatic mailcap updates, handling of the slight incompatibilities between some Athena-using binaries and the various enhanced Athena libraries (e.g. neXtaw) through xaw-wrappers) etc. are what make it the right distribution for me to use and to work on, but choice of distribution is a case of YMMV.
Gnome 1.0 (Score:1)
Debian 2.1 ships GNOME (albeit a prerelease, as there was no release available before the start of the code freeze); Red Hat does so too (GNOME is in RH 5.2, right?).
It is very important to provide an unquestionably free desktop NOW. There is no time to waste. We have a parisitic company to fight. If they get control of critical libraries, Linux users will have lost their freedom.
I've been critical of Troll in the past, and I've been extremely annoyed by their dismissal of the importance of freedom. But since then, Troll have made what I think is a sincere effort at improvement in this area. They've worked on a DFSG-free license to be used for the forthcoming Qt 2.0, the QPL 1.0 [troll.no], and they've been quite responsive with regard to the input they've received from Debian's Joseph Carter.
Whatever Troll's failings in the past, in my opinion they deserve at least the benefit of the doubt for this change.
Let's worry over the remaining issue wrt KDE: is QPL 1.0 GPL-compatible, and if not, how do we get KDE to take licensing issues seriously, and get them to put in an exemption clause in their license to allow binaries of their code linked against Qt 2 to be redistributed (similar to how the LyX folks fixed the LyX license [lyx.org].
The art of Linux (Score:1)
Do you tell an artist who has spent months of his or her life engaged in the creation of a work of art that he cannot sell his work to a museum without losing the artistic dignity and pride? Certainly not. The artist is offering a valuable service to the community by creating beauty and enlightenment through hours of hard work. As long as the money does not dictate the art, then the artistic integrity is maintained.
And so with RedHat. While what they do is not necessarily art, there is still the respect of the community at stake in this discussion. While they may not have completely designed and coded Linux, they do a valuable service to the community by promoting, supporting, and distributing Linux, and if they can get paid for it, more power to them. As long as they don't attempt to change Linux in an attempt to take control of it, or in any other way violate the agreements which our community is founded around, then they are right to make a living selling Linux.
Listen, as a developer in an ever changing software world, I am glad to see that the open source community has a place for people like me to survive. I don't want to have to develop Windows software to do what I love- and I don't want to do what I love for free! I have to pay my rent and so do the people at RedHat. If there is such a problem, then don't buy RedHat. If Caldera is struggling because of RedHat's support, then Caldera needs to get on the ball and get some support of it's own.
Just make sure that RedHat doesn't get like Microsoft (especially with licensing deals). Other than that- leave them alone!
I've no problem with Red Hat (Score:1)
Bruce
re:Anyone use Linux to use Linux anymore.. (Score:1)
Too many people define their computing need as "I need to use Word 97" instead of "I need a word processor." Darnit, define a need and select a good tool. If you select RedHat as a Linux distro then fine. If you don't then fine too. Bitching about a Linux distro is a waste of time. At least you are free to select another distro.
What?? (Score:1)
Sweeping comments like that don't alienate me from Red Hat... Just the Gartner Group.
Sorry no dice, success dosn't automaticly make someone suck.
Debian does something (Score:1)
Berlin
Debian
GNOME
LSB
Open Source
Open Hardware
These volunteers are supporting Linux and related software by donating the time to organizing projects to write software and writing said software.
Have you ever heard the saying, "Time is Money". You don't think all the time these people have spent in contributing time counts for nothing, do you?
Please think before you type.
Troy
GPL, Redhat, and misc (Score:1)
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Gartner Group - blech.... (Score:1)
"NOBODY CARES ABOUT LINUX" (Score:1)
No serious professional uses Linux. Sure, a bunch of dorky students in LUGS install it, but they dont matter.
Serious, professional, users choose NT. The use it because its better than anything else.
-----
I hope you can see now why your "argument" is pretty worthless.
Crappy arguments live forever (Score:1)
Go spend a few months on alt.atheism or talk.origins and you'll see just how wrong you are. The crappiest arguments are not only the longest-lived, they're also the ones most often cited.
Re: LSB (Score:1)
Don't worry about the LSB, Red Hat is a participant and I'm sure they'll try to abide by it. Red Hat is actually one of the most FSSTND/FHS compliant distributions which is why they rebuild packages to install in what some people consider "the wrong place" (which in their opinion is anywhere other than where a package's make install shoves stuff). Basically, some people get pissed off whatever you do...
I think Linux really does "level the playing field" in the OS realm. I suspect that Caldera will do just fine.
--
Redhat is still cool. (Score:1)
And to redhat: If I see anything "redhat-only".. your distribution will go the way of the dodo.. and I'll rm -fr / faster than you can say "what was your username again?".
--
Red Hat is Linux (Score:1)
Hmph. Never saw source code for the Red Baron browser. Would sure like to see more openness in Applixware, for instance.
Red Hat is Linux (Score:1)
right. But I was calling foul to the
argument that RH is "ANTI-proprietary"
That's Debian's role.
RH has bundled more proprietary stuff
with their distro than anybody. Not that's
a bad thing, just not deserving of "anti-proprietary" appellations.
RedHat overstepping the line (Score:1)
You should understand that trademark law forces them to act that way. If you don't enforce your trademarks, they get declared public domain and you lose them.
Also, by putting Red Hat's name on the box you may damage their reputation if you screw up. Why should they put up with that?
SuSE: GPL's tools and uses RPM! (Score:1)
YaST - SuSE's installer - is just a powerful frontend for rpm and other things. You don't have to use it when you are running SuSE Linux.
Killing Linux In 3 Easy Steps! (Score:1)
Speakinsawhich, I'm installing Linux Mandrake 5.3 tonight, all of the bonuses of RedHat, none of the problems.(No KDE, no x11amp, no xemacs)
I am presently using RH5.2 and have downloded and installed all of the above, but lets face it, that's a pain.
Honestly, with distros like SuSE, I'm supprised that RedHat has the share it does.
Ben
portals are for market losers (Score:1)
SuSE has more WindowManagers (FVWM, KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, CDEsim (FVWM, I know) and a whole slew of others like TWM)
SuSE is easier for the new user
(YaST, SaX, easy WM selection, easy PPPsetup, you name it...)
SuSE doesn't "Look" like a cheap Win95 out of the box, like RedHat 5.2 does (I know you can change it, but you have to admit that redhat is ugly by default)
SuSE has More (5CD's with everything under the sun, like JDK, XEmacs, WINE, x11amp, StarOffice, jx, xcdroast, vnc, and all those other programs we all download)
Now, what RedHat has going for it is its leanness and marketshare. Everything comes out for RedHat first, that's why I use it.
If Linux is about choice, then I think that RedHat limits that choice.
Ben
Distros will eventually be a two horse race (Score:1)
Gartner Group (Score:1)
Now they are saying Linux inroads into Fortune 1000 space will backslash BECAUSE of the top software vendors support.
The problem is that Fortune 1000 PHBs really listen to these guys (they listen because Gartner reports are very expensive, so they must be true).
portals are for market losers (Score:1)
not that I really blame them for it, it's a specialized thing and it takes 10 minutes to rebuild an Apache w/ mod_perl once you've done it once and written down the config options.
Only Red Hat follows standards. (Score:1)
RedHat isn't the big bad penguin...yet. (Score:1)
-Andrew
Not FUD at all! (Score:1)
Debian: We do free software the old-fashioned way, we write it.
couldn't agree with you more (Score:1)
could you imagine microshaft doing that?
if it weren't for redhat, linux would have half the users it has now, if that.
Darwinian Selection (Score:1)
I've already been experiencing "Red Hat Monopoly Syndrome", albeit minor, when a very large program (that I'm not willing to compile on my slow computer) is distributed only in Redhat binary packages, and for some reason or other the rpm's won't install under any other distribution except Red Hat. I'm pretty sure all the packages on Red Hat's CD's were purposely built this way to discourage installing them in other distributions.
Red Hat also appears to be using it's weight to kill KDE. We all know the Qt story. Redhat wants to control the desktop. And they will no doubt encourage/force (whichever is your choice of words) its users to use Gnome and Enlightenment (the stuff it's putting money/time into) by making all of it's proprietory software Gnome compliant. And since most people will probably standardize on whatever Red Hat uses we will be stuck in a world full of mostly Gnome and E. Not to speak harshly about Gnome or E though, they're kinda cool. I can live with that but I don't want KDE, WindowMaker and others to shrivel up and die.
These issues should concern us. We can learn what not to do by observing Microsoft. They have a monopoly, and eventually all monoplies must come crashing down. We can already see the walls holding up Microsoft starting to buckle. And I certainly don't want RedHat to become the next Microsoft.
Troll (Score:1)
For example... (Score:1)
BTW - I've heard LT say, more than once, that he is pleased with what RH is doing for Linux.
xemacs? (Score:1)
Corporations will standardize (Score:1)
Let's say that you've convinced your skeptical IS manager to put some boxes on Linux, but only if you have a support contract, just so everyone feels better.
Here's your options:
(1) SuSe (Who?)
(2) Some local consultant that will vouch for Debian or Slackware (Right.)
(3) Red Hat (evil)
(4) Caldera (more evil)
(5) All of the above (bzzz. Not an option.)
--
What is your problem? (Score:1)
Red-hat is fine for a newbie, I give redhat copies out to newbies all the time. It's just that Slackware has more "compatability".
Very disturbing article... (Score:1)
I do not like this... Seeing is believing... And I see what actually a lot of people see:
I see that all BIG GUYS are trying to team behind a single distribution in order to tame us.
And I strongly dislike this...
I am really disappoint to see FUD in linux. (Score:1)
x86, Sparc, Alpha, m68k.
In between I am buring the Sparc CD's at the moment...
Gartner Group (Score:1)
How can people here that should know better pay any heed to that sort of "report"?
The message thses people are trying to convey is that the Linux community is intrinsically anti-business and will shy away from any commercial effort involving Linux.
If you scream loud enough, you will just prove them right.
I am all for free software, and Redhat has done nothing so far to spoil their image of a free software supporter. That is good enough for me?
Is it good enough for you?
More crap. (Score:1)
Redhat got its start by fscking over Slackware (Score:1)
For example... (Score:1)
I personally can't find any problems with RH's bussiness practises. They have a dist that's almost 100% GPL (Netscape and xv are the only exceptions I can think of off hand). They are paying people to code stuff for linux which is being released as GPL. I like redhat.
What is your problem? (Score:1)
What is your problem? (Score:1)
not Q and A.
Slackware not the original! (Score:1)
Sometimes using a other distro to help boost your production speed is not a bad thing.
While RH might (i donno) have ripped from slack, RH is not a clone of slack.
Mandrake is an example of a distro clone.
Be nice to each other.
I agree. And we're safe because of the FSF (Score:1)
But Redhat is enterint a new relationship -- a relationship with businesses -- that both parties have to adapt to. I think there are some good people at the helm, and so I'm not worried.
Thanks to the FSF, we don't lose out on the success of a brand name Linux distribution company.
-- Duane
Red Hat backlash (Score:1)
The unwillingness to join the LSG has me more than a bit concerned. It appears that RH is taking the "...we don't need to adhere to any standards..." mantra that is so deeply rooted in the MS mentality.
I'm not sure about that. The critical standards are things like Posix, X11, the various RFCs, the FSSTND, things like that that are already there and RedHat seems to follow those either deliberately or by default. The LSB seems to be going in the direction of "This is the standard window manager and desktop, this is the standard X11 widget set, and so on.", and RedHat seems to be saying that that's not useful. I agree with Redhat: there should not be a standard window manager as such. There should be one like twm that you can expect to have on all distros, but you select the window managers, widget sets and such depending on what software you want and what it needs and then select a distro based on which one provides what you need with the least fuss. And if you like the rest of Redhat but want KDE, you just buy RedHat and install KDE, confident that RedHat follows all the standards KDE needs it to follow.
It's what causes Linux to be more mainstream (Score:1)
So what about that software and the distribution would lock you in to a particular distribution? What precisely is it that would be incompatible between distributions? Maybe this would help clarify what the problem is that needs solved.
at least three horses (Score:1)
I admit I was a little surprised to see that Novell had invested in RedHat, not Caldera. Even if they're your future investors, this doesn't look too good since you add the most integration for them.
Anyway, I bought the retail (big $$) 1.3 distro for the Netware integration and was more than a bit disappointed. No glibc, netware utils keeping me at 2.0.35, and all mostly oldversions of software and rather useless documention. Trying to upgrade any of the pieces (such as netatalk to a recent asun version) led to total dependency hell.
I ended up reinstalling my Cheap Bytes CD from #1. Sure, I'm back to using ncpfs and no admin utils--but at least I'm happy now.
I sure hope the next distro is better....I will say, though, that it was well done (lisa is nice; the OpenDos Dosemu was great--and everything worked unlike the average redhat install); it just seemed to be a year out-of-date.
This is HOGWASH folks!!! (Score:1)
I can't help but think that because of RedHat's presence, Linux is closer to becoming a Windoze killer. Before RedHat we didn't even have a package manager (tgz were it), now we have several, but Redhat was first. RedHat was the first to shrink wrap Linux and put it on the store shelves across the country. But most of all, Redhat has put a face on Linux, a presence. Did they write Linux, no and I don't think they are saying that. All they are doing is packaging Linux in a way that is more useful to the consumer. I can't help but think that if it weren't for Redhat pushing Linux, Linux wouldn't be nearly as far as it is. Maybe someone else would have stepped up.
Also commercial vendors like IBM, Oracle, Sybase, etc want a "corporation" to work with. Right now it's Redhat, next year it may be Caldera, who knows. You can't expect Linux to succeed at gaining massive market share without it, I'm sure some do.
-dubbs
So what is so important? Did YOU forget??? (Score:1)
Going Commercial (Score:1)
Help me
Oh and by the way (Score:1)