[CentOS] RE: pronunciation? -- loving CentOS doesn't mean you have to bash Red Hat

Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:

> It's good enough that HP is losing lots of clients because HP (among
> other tier-1 OEMs short of IBM) is finding that Linux their support
> is sub-par.  Even Dell and others are just farming support out to
> Red Hat.

Yes, I can quite believe that! :)

> The Fedora Core and Legacy do a fine job for several years.
> Just not 5+ years like RHEL or SLES.  Other than the Debian Project,
> I've yet to see another distro break 2 years of support.
> 
> Red Hat used to support the last ".2" for a long time.  Unfortunately,
> by RHL7, they got very popular.  Companies where standardizing on
> ".1" and even, gasp, ".0" relesaes.  At one point Red Hat was supporting
> Red Hat Linux 6.2, 7[.0], 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0 and 9 _simultaneously_.

I'll come onto explaining why I've become a bit sensitive about this a 
few paragraphs down.  But yes, I can imagine that Red Hat was a bit 
sick of providing support for so many different versions.

> How was it any different than when Red Hat announced it would no longer
> support Red Hat Linux more than 1 year _well_before_ the Fedora Project
> was announced or Red Hat Linux became Fedora Core?

To be quite honest with you - that's been and gone so quickly I can't 
ever remember what my position was at that time.  I seem to remember 
it had something to do with Progeny and them supporting the releases 
as part of their transition solution.

> I honestly don't blame Red Hat for not wanting to simultaneously support
> 6-7 revisions simultaneously.  Dead beat companies who want to standardize
> on a release for 2+ years should pay for it.  Those of us who either "keep
> current" _or_ use a very stable/popular release (e.g., Red Hat Linux 7.3,
> or Fedora Core 1) can stick with Fedora Legacy instead.

Of course, very sensible indeed.

> You are paying for subscription, not a license.  If you don't want the
> subscription, run a stable version of Fedora Core that will be supported
> by Fedora Legacy for a long time.  That's what I do with my Fedora Core
> 1 systems.

Usually I've gone down the route of using dedicated server providers 
that can supply RHEL with the system.  What prompted me to buy my own 
subscription was that there were at least two providers that had 
issues with getting their RHN satellites/proxies/whatever working and 
left the machine in a potentially vunerable state if their install 
image was a fair a bit old.

> I have no problem with this sub-1 year "official" support model, and it
> was announced well before the "name change."  Red Hat got tired of
> expecting people them to support their free product for 3+ years.

Again, I've no problems with this whatsoever.  I just wish I could 
have purchased a cheaper service with less frills.

> You're talking to someone who started on Yggdrasil and, later, Slackware,
> and has been installing Red Hat Linux on corporate networks for more than
> just web services since Red Hat Linux 4.2.  I have installed both RHEL
> as well as RHL/FC at financial companies.  I've put a lot of Fedora Core
> into pilot production, and then when SLAs were required, we switched to
> RHEL.

Yggdrasil was my first too.  I then worked my way up to Caldera (spit! 
spit! spit!) but found my footing and went over to Red Hat from that 
point onwards.  These days I help look after many render farm boxes 
and workstations running a combination of Red Hat 7.2 and Fedora Core 
1.  We're still converting to FC1 and it's a long and laborious 
process given the number of machines that need updating.  From that 
point we'll then going to have to look at 64bit support.  Much of our 
needs are dictated by the software we run, and our vendors will only 
support certain distributions.  Which is why Studio Linux 
http://www.studio-linux.org was born.

> FC also makes a great "next RHEL generation" evaluation platform, and
> thanx to Fedora Core 2/3 deployments, many of my clients were able to
> evaluate how RHEL 4 would operate well in advance.

Oh indeed, it's been very useful in the whole evaluation process.

> Haven't you see the $99 Red Hat Professional Workstation / Red Hat
> Desktop at your local CompUSA?  It's RHEL WS in a shrink wrap package.

Difficult since we don't have CompUSA here in the UK ;)

> Again, check out your local CompUSA and look for the shrink wrapped
> version of RHEL WS for $99.  ;->

The last time I saw a shrink-wrapped Red Hat anything was back in the 
days of RH 7, 8 and 9.  I even bought some of them to support Red Hat.

> Okay.  But don't make statements like the one you did then.  ;->

I'll be good.

Regards,

	Martyn