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There's a nice little update on the front page of http://www.centos.org/ clarifying the situation a bit. Here's the relevant text from the sidebar:

"Facts Regarding CentOS and the Open Letter to Lance Davis # CentOS is not dead or going away. The signers of the Open Letter are fully committed to continue the CentOS Project. Updates and new releases will continue.

# The issues raised in the Open Letter have been raised privately literally for years and a voluntary resolution had been hoped for and worked toward. But progress requires follow through. We have tried contacting Lance in private for a long period of time before this Open Letter. While we received promises, there was no real response or follow through from him on promises made. We are sure he is not dead, on vacation, or sick. Once we all decided there was no movement in the matter we created the Open Letter. This is not something that appeared just recently.

# We would really like to continue the project using the centos.org domain. That is one of the reasons for the Open Letter. But the developers will move to another domain if there is no other option. Protective backups are in place; hot machines exist to allow for a cutover with a simple one time installation of one RPM package. We continue to refine our plans if this might be the case, to make the transition as smooth as possible.

# We thank the people who have stepped forward and want to donate to the CentOS project to hold off for now until issues surrounding the centos.org domain and donation policy are resolved. Selected donations will be privately solicited by the signers of the Open Letter on some transition matters. We will post general instructions on how you can help the project as matters become resolved.

# The CentOS project is run completely by volunteers and we are aware that this requires a different management style. We have been and continue to work to prevent issues like these from occurring in the future. We will continue this effort in the future, but the matters mentioned in the Open Letter prevent us from moving forward at this moment, as they need to be resolved first.

Last Update: July 30, 2009 20:45 UTC by Donavan "

It's not the money. It's Jerry Taylor finally getting his revenge after CentOS attacked his website. http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127

There is no need to disable updates, I don't think. All of the updates that I've seen on the centos-announce mailing list come from two people, and I believe those are the people with the GPG keys on the packages, too.

If Lance is still around, it is safe to say that he has had all of his access removed. If he has both access to the repositories and the GPG keys, I'd worry (assuming his intent is malicious, which I somewhat doubt would be the case) -- but until the current developers who rebuild/push the updates advise that we kill updates, I definitely will not be doing so. A great example was the BIND vulnerability a day or two ago.

Seriously, if you are a centos administrator, you should do a couple things:

1) Sign up for the centos-announce list, here: http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-announce
2) Watch it like a hawk.

It is safe to say that the existing developers will use it if they have a huge need to communicate an apocalypse situation where it would be wise to stop updating.

If they left a vm yesterday, they should give it at least until Monday before publicly humiliating the guy. Being a few days late in answering voiemail isn't odd at all.

If you read the information at http://planet.centos.org/, it appears to be a little worse than that.

They say that Davis vanished from the project "some time in 2008". Given that we're more than halfway through 2009, that means he's been gone for the better part of a year, maybe more. Also, they've been asking for quite some time for him to provide a public accounting of the funds collected from contributions to CentOS, and Lance stopped answering their questions months ago. It sounds like they've recently gotten serious about trying to get some answers and discovered that he's completely inaccessible.

It may just be that he's gone on vacation, but given that he's been refusing to answer questions for months about what has happened to what is probably a fairly large amount of money, I think their concern isn't at all unreasonable.

I'm just hoping that CentOS pushes out the update before 10:00 PM MST today.

Why?

So I'll get my daily e-mail status update, telling me to do just that: run yum, and then restart (just bind) -- as opposed to seeing it tomorrow.

As a footnote, it is generally a good thing to subscribe to whichever vendor's security-announce list that you use. It is really nice getting e-mail notifications of security-related package updates. CentOS has one, right here: http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-announce

... find a way to contribute some small portion of their profits to The Apache Software Foundation?

Or any number of PHP- and Linux-related organizations?

Or Drupal?

That just seems to be the right thing to do, is all.

I've found that when managers are ignorant about technology they often pretend that they understand.

I'm giving up mod points to voice my agreement with you. Anyone else remember Tuttle, Oklahoma? I don't expect managers, even IT managers, to know everything, but it would be nice if they admitted they made mistakes rather than acting like jerks.

At least the Bozeman city officials had some idea about "how them internets work". When their bad judgement was pointed out to them, they took the right path instead of digging in their heels and making complete asses of themselves

why does linux have so many release cycles

Because Fedora is a cutting-edge testing release that's done about twice a year. The RedHat Linux way is to take software that Microsoft would only make available to internal testers in Redmond, and make it available to the general public as "Fedora".

If you want something with fewer release cycles, you're best bet is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (which every three years or so, takes a release of Fedora, declares it stable, renames it "RHEL", and updates that version of Fedora for seven years). If you're too cheap to buy RHEL, you can get CentOS, which is a free derivative of RHEL. CentOS 5.3 is the Linux equivalent of "CentOS 5, service pack 3" [1]

[1] Well, except that adding new drivers to older releases of CentOS is harder than it is to do with Microsoft Windows. What can I say, Linux isn't perfect.

FYI: Centos Directory Server was recently released

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2009-May/015943.html

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/DirectoryServerSetup

FYI: Centos Directory Server was recently released

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2009-May/015943.html

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/DirectoryServerSetup

Local government websites are some of the most poorly designed and hardest to navigate.

I second you on that!

Take for instance the home page for Tuttle, Oklahoma: http://mirror.centos.org/mirrorscripts/noindex_new.html

That single page is so bloody cluttered and difficult to navigate that the Oklahoma City Manager (who is an very important pesron!) had difficulty with it. See http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127

Local government websites are some of the most poorly designed and hardest to navigate.

I second you on that!

Take for instance the home page for Tuttle, Oklahoma: http://mirror.centos.org/mirrorscripts/noindex_new.html

That single page is so bloody cluttered and difficult to navigate that the Oklahoma City Manager (who is an very important pesron!) had difficulty with it. See http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127

April 1st has called and wants its release announcement back :-)

On a slightly more serious note, CentOS 5.2 users that are upgrading to 5.3 should do "yum update glibc" first before a "yum update" because of a yum locking issue. For us at work, CentOS 5.2 broke nss_ldap (and it's still broken with 5.3) and 5.3 has broken sound support in the kernel (about 1 in every 4 boots, the sound modules crash and fail to load properly). Easily fixed by keeping older RPMs on the system, but a bit annoying for a clone of an enterprise distro (I suspect RHEL 5 would have identical issues).

I didn't notice until earlier tonight, but CentOS 5.3 has been released!

http://www.centos.org/

They've got some ace techies in high places!

If someone is used to RedHat and wants a free version of it, they ought to be using Centos, which is pretty much an exact duplicate of RedHat Enterprise, except rebranded and free.

It was my impression that Fedora was primarily used by people seeking a "stable and low maintenance" RPM-based distro that they don't have to pay for. I've only used it a bit (intranet server at a former employer) so I'm not in on the distro's culture, but that's the impression I've gotten from reading comments by its users and paying (some) attention to its development over the years.

Nope, you would be thinking (or should be thinking) of CentOS http://www.centos.org/

CentOS is friends with Red Hat and are symbiotic with them
NOTE: I work for Red Hat and we discuss CentOS from time to time internally. It's a generally well accepted relationship we share with the folks at CentOS.

Perhaps you can answer something I've wondered about: Why does Red Hat no longer allow Centos to use the words "Red Hat" on their home page? They've been replaced with awkward phrases like "a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor" and "upstream vendor".

Like you, I'd pay for a LTS Fedora but I can handle installing some codecs for multimedia.

No need, here you go.

ObDisclaimer: I just use the thing, and as a server OS, so I really can't judge suitability as a multimedia workstation OS. But CentOS 5.2 has been rockin' steady on the household server for months. (Starting with release 5.0.)

> Microsoft can't offer Windows for free until it loses it's monopoly.

Why? They happen to be the absolute LAST vendor trying to sell a PC operating system. So who would they be accused of competing unfairly against? Sun/Solaris? Red Hat? Ubuntu? Apple doesn't really count since they only sell hardware/software bundles. OS/2 is long since in the grave and NOBODY gives a crap about SCO/UNIXWare.

If they strongarm OEMs to preload Windows instead of competing systems it would be an anti-trust problem whether they sell it or give it away.

"At the university I went to the linux lab with Red Hat cost more to license than an equivalent sized XP installed lab"

What was the name of this university and why didn't they go with CentOS or Fedora

"Granted the linux lab was licensed as workstation installs (more expensive, but desktop didn't allow multiple users remoting in)"

Where does it say that ? My understanding is that you pay for a support contract, but as you are in a 'Linux lab' full of huge Linux geeks, you hardly need it :)

"I vaguely remember there was some weirdness with the RedHat licensing for education .. one would assume the linux licensing would have a slight edge regardless of the install type"

What ?

Do you, by any chance, live in Tuttle, OK?

If you MUST use Windows:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're partial to macs you have the same options:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're fed up with Microsoft and don't have a Mac (or if you have a Mac but are tiring of OS X):

http://www.opensuse.org/en/
http://www.kubuntu.org/
http://www.xandros.com/
http://www.centos.org/
http://fedoraproject.org/

At least she didn't threaten to set the FBI on him.

Note: it seems Dopey has moved on, but his replacement's qualifications don't look too impressive...

ITYM Jerry Taylor, City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma.

Who gave you permission to invade my website and block me and anyone else from accessing it???
Please remove your software immediately before I report it to government officials!!
I am the City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma

http://www.centos.org/127_story.html

JSF, RichFaces, Hibernate, MySQL, developed on NetBeans and served by Apache TomCat on CentOS for a state government contract.

We have to train ourselves, but that's half the fun.

The other half will be when we pull the plug on one legacy Oracle database with a per CPU cycle license the state is paying an obscene amount of money for.

So it's unlikely the decisions were influenced heavily from a budgetary standpoint. If they wanted to stay with a free RHEL derivative linux that's essentially identical to the one you pay for, they'd be using CentOS.

They chose Ubuntu. Maybe they just like it better? I think you can factor cost of out the equation.

Have they fixed the aacraid driver yet? The new kernel doesn't do me a bit of good if all I get on boot is a continuous stream of:

aac_srb: aac_fib_send failed with status: 8195

and my disk array is not recognized.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/5/12/365

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=450444

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=233364

http://bugs.centos.org/bug_view_advanced_page.php?bug_id=2911

http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=122166454808377&w=2

http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Kernel/2008-10/msg02493.html

First off, RTFM. CentOS is pretty much a RedHat clone, and their documentation is great and easy to understand.

Some general hints in no specific order:

- Go through all files in /etc/sysconfig, learn what they're doing and configure them as needed.
- Run chkconfig --list, find out what each and every one of those services do and enable/disable them as required.
- Don't plug in the network cable before you've done a rough setup of iptables. There's even a console based GUI for that.
- Never, never ever use easy passwords like root:root123, test:blah and similar. Believe me, if your sshd is accessible from the outside you *will* have a Brazilian script kiddie on it within minutes.
- After installing a service like apache or ntpd immediately find the config files and read through and try to understand all of them. Getting everything only half-working is of no use.
- Take your time and don't let anybody stress you about getting that server ready for production. Once there's stuff running on it any oversight will cost you.
- Do *not* optimize for performance. The server's probably fast enough as it is. Unless you know exactly what you're doing you'll probably only screw up and/or waste your time by optimizing a server that has a load of 0.02 anyway.
- Before moving to configure a different piece of software test everything as well as possible. Try logging in to your new ftpd as anonymous and start a warez archive. See if apache leaks configuration information. Use your mail server as anonymous relay.
- Learn whatever you can about the server itself. Install vendor-provided administration utilities and try to set up system event logging and notifications.
- Run yum update (or even upgrade) *before* going into production.
- Trust most default values of packages you've installed, but don't trust them blindly. If in doubt, read the man page or documentation.
- Most security stuff will be adequate out-of-the-box. Take precautions but don't be too paranoid. Trying to implement your own perfect security measures without knowing enough about the details, modifying perfectly good default PAM settings and similar will probably only decrease security.
- Don't forget why you're running a Linux distribution and not Linux From Scratch. Their packages, configuration subsystem, file paths, init scripts and so on are probably not according to the way you would have done it but customizing everything will only cause you tons of additional work down the road. Only customize when you have a good reason, no way around it or need to deploy your own setup to many servers.
- Last but not least, play with it as long as possible. Toying around and with and exploring a non-production server without breaking too much will teach you more real-life experience than any book could provide.

Per http://orcorc.blogspot.com/2008/08/cve-2007-4752-and-centos.html via http://planet.centos.org/:

updated 22 Aug 2008 CentOS acknowledge CVE-2007-4752 and are reviewing our build and signing processes and hosts for signs of tampering subsequent to retrieval of SRPMs.

This is Russ Herrold's blog, so you can consider it authoritative. I think that this announcement has become the channel MOTD on #centos as well.

Executive summary: They're aware of the issue and examining their stuff to see whether they got bit.

In this case they've made the binaries for this project unavailable for corporate users in a clear attempt to try to make things artificially hard so they can make money on unnecessary service contracts, instead of making it easy and concentrating on service contracts where they can provide real value (the former strategy often resulting in lesser adoption of their projects, to the detriment of said project).

Just needed to point out that Red Hat doesn't even make the binaries available to anyone who doesn't pay and doesn't even let CentOS use their name on thier webpage. Instead they have to say a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor or upstream vendor after threats of lawsuit.

dig porttest.dns-oarc.net in txt

FAIR or GOOD means you're ok, but POOR (which is the result I got) means you should be worried.

Thanks for that. I've patched our RHEL5 BIND, but I still failed that test. I discovered that our legacy named.conf had carried a 'query-source' directive from ghod-knows-when and that just patching isn't always enough.

I found the issue from:

http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?form=1&topic_id=15132&forum=37&order=ASC&start=0

> RHEL is 100% GPL as far as i know

It must certainly is. Without Redhat we wouldn't have CentOS. CentOS is built from Redhat's source with all the trademarking removed. http://www.centos.org/

• When I merged two pieces of source code using Meld, I donated $10
• Upon finding out I could resize windows in Vim in an xterm, I donated $10, and another $5 when I found out how nicely it works together with X11 clipboards
• When my business started earning money, I donated to CentOS because that's what's installed on my servers
• When the Dag Wieers RPM repository had packaged a piece of software for me, he saved me an hour of work -- so I donated $10

Yes.

http://apple.com/
http://www.centos.org/

Those are two places to start and both are VERY good at what you need.

Even better, use priorities so you can protect repos you are more dependent upon over peripheral ones.

After setting up yum priorities I don't think yum has had any dependency problems even with three or four external repos active.

If you are not going to even read my post, don't bother replying.

I will say this:

Didn't you also state that AMAROK (some app you use on Linux) took up 100% of a CPU? Bug or not, that still happened to you...

This one, it's possible I didn't make clear. It takes up 100% of one CPU, in an obscure bug involving me unplugging the soundcard, and plugging it back in. By closing it and re-opening it, the problem is eliminated -- no need to kill it, even. So we can stop talking about amarok -- unless your whole argument is going to be that we need three cores so that we can still work when two threads are stuck in infinite loops.

I'd say, if you have two threads stuck in an infinite loop, you have a bigger problem.

The rest of your post has descended into name-calling, arguments from authority, and a re-iteration of points I've addressed... all in the post you just replied to.

By the way, in case you were wondering, your "years of experience" get you exactly as much respect as it did this guy.

Nearly all OEMs still allow you to upgrade to XP, but you have to ask. They won't tell you about it, you have to be active about it. But then, those that make active decisions about hardware and systems rarely end up with Windows, let alone MS Vista. Lots of people are getting burned by leaving too much of the decision up to the sales staff.

But even if you can't upgrade to XP, unless she's playing heavily some games that don't run in WINE or surfing a lot of WMV porn, then she'll get more mileage out of a linux distro like CentOS and Kubuntu. Try it. If they suck, then you can crow about it. If they save you time and effort, then it was time well spent and you can go around to any MS Vista users and rub their noses in it. Nowadays even Photoshop runs in WINE.

If it's for school only, then the 13" macbook is perfect for the backpack and can run your choice of Linux or OS X or both, plus a number of legacy applications from Windows.

would sound like rants, yet, the only people I know using Fedora are using it "unwillingly:" because their companies run RHEL, because their partners are using RHEL, because they need need to be compatible to RHEL, etc. I know nobody who uses Fedora because s/he likes it.

So why aren't they running CentOS? It is RHEL without the trademarks and the promises-on-paper you don't get anyways if you're running Fedora, and as far as my experience goes it's production-grade. You're not RH's guinea pig like you'd be with Fedora.

People who are running Fedora because they want a solid server experience are mislead. The real reason to run Fedora is because you want to help out on the forefront, pioneering the good stuff that may eventually show up in RHEL (and CentOS).

On the other hand, pioneers tend to wind up face-down in the desert with arrows in their backs...

In all intended uses of a zone transfer,

Well, there's a problem right there. No one person knows all the intended uses of a zone transfer. I learned a new one today from a sibling post -- actually migrating DNS information to a new host, when switching service providers.

the secondary server is operated by the same party that operates the primary server.

*chokes on breakfast* ...what?

I've been using it for almost a year now, for dynamic DNS. It means I get to configure and run a real DNS server, and set it up exactly the way I like, and then, when I need to update the records on my real DNS servers (at zoneedit.com, dyndns.com, etc), I only have to change one setting -- the master host. This means that, for example, if I want to switch to another system, I don't have to learn a new API (or write one to crawl their website) that's much more complicated than a single POST request, updating which master server they should update from.

(Just been reading that zoneedit.com sucks, so I'm considering switching to dyndns.com, which honestly is pretty cheap, and their service which does zone transfers is cheaper than their service which has a web interface.)

That is to say: I operate the primary server, and the secondary and tertiary servers are operated by a third party, even if these secondary and tertiary servers are listed in my domain as primary and secondary servers. This is hardly unique to dynamic DNS -- it's also used in cases where there is a static IP, but you only want to maintain one server, and you (obviously) can't guarantee five nines of uptime on that server. So you pay someone to run a secondary DNS server.

A secondary intended purpose for zone transfers is to permit trouble shooting in which case zone transfers may sometimes be undertaken via the manually conducted host -l command. In those instances, however, the person conducting the diagnosis acts with the authorization of the operator of the system and is usually the network administrator for the system.

That's reasonable, but answer this: If I were to use the "host" command -- just "host", by itself, looking up MX records and such -- should I be worried about it being illegal? What about "whois" and such? There are plenty of times when it's reasonable to expect that a third party should run diagnostics -- such as when the first party is completely clueless, and needs to be told so.

Some other poster put it very clearly -- geeks generally believe that if you make a service public, it is public. It's certainly possible to limit zone transfers to the IP address of the secondary DNS server. This would not be an absolute protection, but it would at least show what the intent was.

This has been debated fairly often with respect to open wireless access points. What you have here is, according to the machine protocols involved, a machine shouting "Look at me! My name is LINKSYS, and I'm open! Just connect if you want to get online!" It is trivially easy, in most cases, to have it instead broadcast "My name is LINKSYS, and you'll need a password to connect!" Or, alternatively, to not brodcast at all -- to just sit in a corner until someone says, "Hey, LINKSYS! Let me connect!"

It's not quite that bad, but it's similar. "Hey, ns1.example.com! Would you mind telling me what all the subdomains of example.com are?" (There are legitimate reasons for doing this, too -- maybe I'm a spider, and I want to find web pages which aren't specifically linked to by www.example.com.) At this point, if ns1.example.com says "Sure! There's mail.example.com, and www.example.com, and, oh yeah, super.secret.stuff.example.com"... how is this your fault? If super.secret.stuff was really that secret, ns1.example.com could've left it out, or could've said "No, sorry, I'm not going to tell you."

The reason geeks w

The CentOS people have added some RPM's in their centosplus repository with newer version of some of the popular software on it. For CentOS 4, they have PHP 5.1, PostgreSQL 8.1, MySQL 5, and some kernels with support for other file systems (like XFS/ReiserFS I think, though I've not used them). RHEL 4 comes with PHP and MySQL 4.something, and PostgreSQL 7. That makes it easier for people running CentOS (or RHEL - though RedHat obviously wouldn't support it) to run more modern versions of a few popular applications. Its not exactly a cure for cancer type contribution, but it is certainly helpful to many people (including myself).

Here's a link: http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/centosplus/i386/RPMS/

Lets hope he embraces and extends an olive branch to the CentOS folks for their contributions.

At work, I've standardised on CentOS 5 on both desktops and servers for the very reason that core software will be updated for free for years. It's not completely hassle-free on the desktop - several important packages have to be hand-updated because CentOS won't jump major versions of any package in order to maintain stability. So I manually update Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org to keep those current, but it's a small price to pay.

Try using CentOS for personal use. It's Free and bug-for-bug compatible with Redhat.

RedHat does *not* hate CentOS... the issue has come up on the mailing lists over the years, and some see CentOS as the "gateway drug" that eventually brings more users to RHEL. Others feel that having CentOS around increases the RHEL{,-derived} userbase and therefore indirectly helps increase the quality of RHEL itself.

In fact, CentOS and Fedora shared a developer booth at FOSDEM this year.
http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Fosdem2007
http://spevack.livejournal.com/2007/02/25/

Additionally, it would have taken the author of TFA about 10 minutes of reasearch to turn up the FOSDEM tidbit and these little bits that make TFA completely irrelevant:
http://www.linux.com/?module=comments&func=display&cid=1161341
http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=511
(scroll down to the RH Q&A) on the second link.

That site doesn't document in detail how every option of every LVM tool works.

Oh so now the complaint is that you might have to check two or more places to get a complete picture! How dare they do not re-create the MSDN subscription and the MS "knowledge" base, complete with identical prompts and structure! I mean you would have to actually learn the traditional organization of information in an environment which was not, gasp, "invented" by Mirosoft! Horror! Heresy! Unthinkable! They all must conform to your way! Now!

That site doesn't document in detail how every option of every LVM tool works. Yeah, there are some conceptual basics on how VGs relate to PVs and LVs (which is obvious to anybody who reads the MAN pages or understands sotarge virtualization on any platform), but the exhaustive details of LMV2 simply aren't documented there, or anywhere else I could find.

Err, its a HOWTO, and it does include the basics. It is meant for people to get quickly operational, not as an end-all, exhaustive, last word on methods of storage allocation!

I decided your linked HOWTO page was not a good documentation resource to use when I kept running across pages like this.

Which is a page with an example of a simplistic boot-time script. In a HOWTO recipe. All you have to do is to follow it verbatim. Next thing you will be moaning about is that the HOWTO should also be the man page (which is where these commands and their options are traditionally explained).

Where is the comprehensive reference that documents every option of LVM2?

• 1. LVM2 Man pages
• 2. LVM2 HOWTO
• 3. LVM2 Mailing list
• 4. Comprehensive LVM administration guide and documentation (LVM2 uses many of concepts present in LVM)
• 5. LVM2 Source

In other words, where it has always been for every other new, still experimental Linux project. I noticed that you keep failing to mention that aspect.

If you are that incompetent (which it seems you are) that you cannot deal with the documentation which all of the other people using LVM2 follow, you can always pay RedHat to hold your hand and step you through the thing on the phone.

I didn't find any true documentation back in 2005, and I still haven't run across it. Compare that to Sun's documentation for ZFS, and you'll see why I think LVM documentation sucks.

The page you linked to does not load for me at all, which makes for an interesting standard to adhere to.

However the general gist of your moaning seems to be that no one has written a 600 page book, starting with a concept of a hard-disk drive and ending at a recipe for every conceivable possibility so that you do not have think at all while installing a new, still experimental software.

In actuality people have done just that, for the current standard, the LVM, like for example here.

Cry me a river.

But I don't code C regularly anymore, and I am certainly not going to try to decipher C source as documentation. I don't have time, and neither do most other IT folks. Professionals do not consider source code documentation.

Microsoft school of "professionals" you mean.

My developers write design and architecture documentation for all of their code, which is then passed on to technical writers so it becomes actual documentation for end users and system administrators.

Which is nice .... and still guarantees absoltuely nothing. At the first inkling of a problem not covered in those glossy pages with cutsey pictures, the user will be up the shit's creek without a paddle as soon as you go bust or they discover that your "yearly support con

I don't know if Ubuntu might ever match RHEL, but it's possible that Canonical might end up being RedHat's main competitor. Right now AFAIK that would be Novell and their server business is not doing amazingly well.