User Linux

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 20:39 2/7/2004, Joe Klemmer wrote:
>On Tue, 2004-02-03 at 23:26, James Drabb wrote:
>
> > I know it sounds like I am coming down on Red Hat, though I do want to
> > state that I have used RH Linux for a long time now and find it the best
> > Linux distro to use.  I just am not happy how RH dumped the home user
> > and the small business user.
>
>         It really must be me, I guess.  I seem to be the only one who doesn't
>see this whole thing as RH "dumping" the home or small business user.  I
>guess I've been at this to long or something.

Joe: No, I have come to believe that most of us out here have a clue. 
However, there are still hundreds or thousands of people who Just Don't Get 
It [tm]. They will or they won't, but you'll have a hard time convincing them.

> > Now What IT manager is going to ever choose to use Fedora.  What small
> > business is ever going to choose to use Fedora with statements like the
> > above.  To me it sounds like RHEL is secure and stable while Fedora is
> > not.

James: To me it sounds like Fedora has software freedom, costs $0.00, and 
its security and stability will, over the long haul, be determined by the 
community of developers, programmers, and users involved with it. That can 
go well or poorly, but it DOES NOT automatically imply "poorly." That same 
RHEL you suggest as secure and stable was built mostly by the same 
community, and most of the packages in Fedora are the very same packages in 
RHEL... they are just newer versions.

Fedora moves forward more quickly than RHEL, thus of course over the long 
haul an RHEL version with 24 months of use behind it will be more stable 
than a current/recent Fedora version. However: telling me that a McLaren F1 
Formular racecar is faster than a BMW M5, while true, will not convince me 
that the M5 is slow. You are talking differential or marginal 
security/stability, not absolute.

Hence the argument falls completely apart on a philosophical basis, and can 
be discarded.

On a practical level, I have now had a couple of Fedora boxes running stock 
installs (and updates) as firewall/gateway machines for small businesses. I 
performed exactly the same lock-down measures which I did on RHL-9 and 
which I would need to perform on RHEL-3. Exactly the same. Both boxen have 
now been online 24/7 for 30 days with no crashes, no bugs, no problems, and 
no cracks. While this may not be a perfect test, no Windows computer I ever 
met could say the same.

Hence your argument can further be shown to have no practical merits.

> > Also, RH no longer has a Linux available that is cost effective compared
> > to MS.  You can get MS Windows XP home for $99, while Red Hat
> > Professional Workstation is around $110.

Is that XP Home a full version of the OS, or an upgrade? Also note that I 
just bought an RHPW box for $50 or so. Get your facts straight.


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com