[Pc_Support] Generic Linux question ....

[Bryan J. Smith]

Whaxiac Patrick <pberry2 at cfl.rr.com> wrote:

> Some Proprietary versions that I have tried out: LinSpire, 
> Libranet, BearOps, Suse, Red Hat, Mandrake don't make the
> grade for my personal preferences of what can be updated,
> upgraded, quickly and with little conflict.

Please don't label Red Hat as "proprietary."

It is not in the least bit.  100% of what Red Hat does and
releases is open source, an overwhelming majority is GPL --
to an anal power.  Otherwise, projects like CentOS -- which
is RHEL only without the Red Hat(R) trademarks, could not
exist.

As far as the inflexibility and rigid/fixed nature of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux (RHEL), that's the technical design and
focus of the product -- especially considering that Service
Level Agreements (SLA) are the major driver.  You do _not_
want to use it when you need flexibility, non-certified 3rd
party apps, etc...

As such, I suggest you not differentiate it as "proprietary"
but another term -- such as "enterprise."

> In my many trials, since 1997, I have noted that the most
> problems I ever had were with the proprietary
distributions.
> Too few inputs, single point of control of the choices of
the
> apps, and thus, the functionality.  

I can't speak with regards to the other distros, but both Red
Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Novell/SuSE Linux Enterprise
Server (SLES) are purposely designed to be inflexible and
fixed in configuration.

> So, I have prchase a lot of retail boxed sets from all of
> the above,

Chump change.  The economies-of-scale involved mean that even
if you sell 1M copies, you have to charge 100x what Microsoft
does to see just the same revenues on Windows.  And God knows
Microsoft's profit is not from Windows, but from applications
like office.

Red Hat got completely out of it, and Novell is largely
following their lead.

> plus, done direct donations to some contributers,

That's more effective.

> my personal goal is to stay open source, in it's true
sense.

I have no problem with Red Hat in that regard.  They produce
Fedora Core, which only lacks 3rd party certification and the
Red Hat(R) trademark that even Microsoft was free to use
under the old distribution model (thank you Sun!). 
Everything else is as it was with Red Hat Linux (including
the promised support duration -- which has always been only 1
year**).

[ **NOTE:  And much like Red Hat Linux before it, Fedora Core
often gets supported much longer than 1 year.  But it's not
an official policy -- just like the Red Hat Linux days. ]

> Proprietary vendors seems to do weirdness to give out some
> eye candy, to hype and market their products, but, seem to
> have natural limits upon the number of contributors
> (usually on the payroll- so, limited in number).

You obviously don't know the first thing about the Red Hat -
Fedora symbios.  ;->

I guess with regards to the other vendors, this is true.  But
not Red Hat.

> whereas the free distros seem to either be excellent,
> have many contributors,

Why do you think Novell is switching SuSE to a Fedora-like
model?

Again, labeling "Brand Names" as "proprietary" is rather
ignorant of how the development models actually work --
especially in the case of Red Hat.

> or, fail due to lack of support.   

"Lack of support" is subjective.

The reality is more like the fact that if you have a "kitchen
sink" and you cater to "any 3rd party application," it's
impossible to deliver Service Level Agreements (SLA).  That's
why features/leading-edge and stability/trailing-edge will
always be conflicting.

Red Hat solidified the 2-2-2->release, 6-6-6->enterprise
model long ago.  The problem was that the single product line
did not satisify either solution -- the people bitching for
more apps and the people bitching for less change.  The issue
that finally forced everything was the trademark, once Sun's
lawyers asserted they didn't have to pay Red Hat a dime and
could freely abuse it like Cobalt did, it meant Microsoft
could do the same thing.

The result is that the former got the same 2-2-2->release
model, while the latter still has the same 6-6-6->enterprise
model.  Ironically enough, the model is now becoming more of
a 3-3-3->release and 9-9->enterprise now -- we're actually
getting one "flaky" Fedora Core release followed by one
"solid" Fedora Core, which is the foundation of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                | Sent from Yahoo Mail
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org     |  (please excuse any
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ |   missing headers)