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This is yet another example of too many to name, of Red Hat being an all-around bunch of warm and fuzzy penguins, guys! And this is so typical of them: buy a proprietary product, and as soon as they decide to do something with it, they open source it first!

RedHat has NEVER deviated from their policy of releasing SRPMS for all their stuff. You can very literally roll your own distro simply by taking their SRPM and compiling them! And a number of groups have done just that: White Box Linux, CentOS and Scientific Linux.

Red Hat employs some of the most prolific contributors to the Linux Kernel and is a vital force in making Linux what it is today. Go Red Hat!

PS: No, I don't work for them, just a very happy customer!

How about making yum upgrades across Fedora versions seamless, supported, and recommended so that no one gets left behind?

Because the whole point of Fedora is to invest time in the bleeding edge. You can't do that if you have to support incompatible old technologies. See Microsoft ...

If you want seamless upgrades, then use RHEL instead, or even WBEL if you want it for free. Based on Fedora proven technology, but smoothed out for the end user.

I hate to break it to you, but the "white" distribution has already been stolen. White Box Enterprise Linux

http://www.centos.org/
http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/

Can you compile the source code provided by Red Hat to equivalent binaries without using Red Hat's private keys. If the answer is 'yes' full coresponding source code has been provided.

• CentOS
  
• White Box Linux
  

To find any information on the web as opposed to mindless drivel, you have to use your wits a little. Here are a few tips.

Just to remind you, RH9 was the last free RedHat distribution called that way. Now they are called Fedora. Is that any surprise you wont find much *free* information on recent RHEL?

To find answers on the web about recent RedHat releases, do *not* search for RedHat, search for "Fedora Core" or FCx where x goes from 1 to 4 (so far). You'll find *heaps* of information. Every single problem I've had so far in FC had already been dealt with to death online by the time I realized I had them.

Now all RHEL distribution are based off FC ones, I forget which are which, but you should be able to find the info on google (left as an exercice to the reader), so you should be able to use the nearest FC information to help with your RHEL distro problems.

Now for real RHEL distribution, they are supposed to come with support. You've paid for it, now use it!

If you are not happy with the paid-for support, perhaps you should let RH know about this issue. If you are their customer, perhaps they'll listen to you.

Last tip, you can also search for the free repackaged version of RHEL. One of the most popular one is WhiteBox Linux but there are others. To find free answer on RHEL simply search for "WBEL" instead. You'll find forums, etc.

Good luck.

Maybe so, but in this case its still wrong. eDirectory is still being sold and is available on a massive scale. Its the foundation of SuSE Linux Server products as well a Novell's Netware products. It is available for all platforms in popular use today, including Windows. And the cost can't be beat.

For example, get a copy of Whitebox Enerprise Linux 4 (http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/ -- RHEL4 for free) and stick eDirectory on it makes for one exceptionally cheap, stable, supported directory server platform. At a price not even Microsoft can compete with.

Also, don't forget that now the Netscape Directory is back on the market and about to get a new injection of life as well. Then theres the SunONE suite.

I don't think Microsoft in this case is going to be able to own the directory services market in the same way the own the desktop market or the office suite market. I also think that if Novell were ever smart enough to license eDirectory at a $0 cost, they'd rapid gain massive market share. They don't have to open source it, just remove the price for adoption. Doing so would effectively provide an instant viable, user friendly, alternative to OpenLDAP for most $0 IT budget businesses and allow them to compete directly with Redhat's FedoraDS when that is finally fully GPL.

I've played with the FedoraDS and compared with eDirectory, I'd much prefer eDirectory. However, the price of FedoraDS is right and both are far more userfriendly than OpenLDAP.

Active Directory has never given me anything but headaches and while OpenDirectory has some excellent tools, its not the same without the Aqua gui ;-) SunONE is just... well... Bloated. :-)

Sorry, way off the original tangent... But you get that.

Apparently the GPL parts of the repository are free, so people could use the repository to build their own project, much as White Box Linux has used the RHEL repositories to create a similar, entirely free distro.

Moreover, the maintainers apparently have a good humor about the confusion over the Freespire project. Another company might have just served a subpoena to Andrew Betts, asking for trumped up damages and whatnot.

My post was wrong in implying that *BSD systems come without X. I should have been more clear. When I started out, at some time in the last year, experimenting as a hobbyist in the OSS OS world of Unices and Linux distros I tried NetBSD. It left me at a terminal when it was finished and I presumed that was a complete install.

It's only some months later (4 days ago in fact) that I finally got around to installing OpenBSD 3.7 and actually having another computer online so I could read instructions on how to setup the base install. So, maybe NetBSD is the same deal that there's no X until you xorgconfig. That'd probably make sense.

I've tried Solaris 10, but not in earnest. It doesn't offer me anything that my Linux of choice (SuSE) doesn't. It's a standalone machine, and no one else in my house would use a non-Windows system. They dislike even OS X - user-friendly as it is. Also, out of the box, all Linux distros and PC-BSD have detected my soundcards with no setup. No such luck with Solaris.

Obviously, as a n00b I do tend to gravitate to the lowest common denominator solutions. I'm not standing on the shoulders of giants yet as I am a hobbyist. I dropped out of my Comp Science course after 7 months because of my personal situation. Everything I know is rudimentary and incomplete. So in most instances I'm not doing things the right way long-term, because I don't see what problems are going to present themselves over the brow of the hill.

I've never used Red Hat, and am not too keen on it since I think it was their attitude to supporting clients/users on older systems that prompted the need for other distros such as White Box Linux to come into being.

I'll second that Ubuntu and Gentoo are moving in the right direction. Ubuntu may be the group I admire the most for their work to make alternative systems inexcusably accessible, in distribution and in user friendly setup and interfaces.

I hope there will be no AUTHORYTY to decide which Linux is kosher or not.

I agree with this sentiment, but I think that mutually similar sub-groups of distributions, say based on package manager similarities, maybe ought to be formalised so they consider each other when making advances which change the parts of the systems that should be common, or at least more common than unique.

I don't propose total consolidation or homogenisation, just a communal pull in similar directions for the Debian/RPM/tgz systems for the sake of consistency, and for the sake of the n00bs who get confused easily.

The latest release for WBEL4 was in May 2005. It is the equivalent of RHEL4.

http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/ is the alternate RHEL distro.

As a company, it serves its own best interests. It has always been honorable in doing so.

You will not find Red Hat "stealing" OSS code, compiling it into proprietary work, and not telling anybody. You won't find them attempting to "extend" open code with proprietary extensions without releasing those extensions, too.

They pay for a good, healthy staff of developers that work almost solely on GPL and otherwise released code. They release source binaries as though all their stuff was GPL, even with projects that are BSD-ish licensed.

It's not that difficult to take their source RPMs and create your own "Enterprise Linux", as done by Scientific Linux, Cent O/S, and (my favorite) Whitebox Linux.

I don't like that they don't support good old "RedHat Linux" like they used to, but as a company, RedHat has been nothing but good for the community. If you choose to have a hissy, then enjoy your hissy, and move on to Debian/Gentoo/LFS/Ubuntu/Mandrake/Whatever/YALD (Yet Another Linux Distro) to your heart's content.

But, I see no sign that RedHat is doing anything evil at all.

If Microsoft wants a linux distribution, they can (probably) just put one together themselves. Heck, if they want a Redhat Distribution they can just nab that and change the little redhat icon, to a flag and the words "start".

Sorry, I'm throwing away all of my mod points just to respond to this nonsense.

This is **NOT** the RedHat model coming to Windows. Redhat's subscription is 100% voluntary. You can still get all of their software, including the Enterprise stuff, without spending a single cent in subscription. Redhat's software is GPL, it is guaranteed to remain Free forever.

With RedHat, you pay if you believe their service actually add value to your business. With Microsoft, if you *don't* pay, your business can't run. Period.

There is no "evaluation" version with a 30 timer that starts to nag you. You can download RHEL and make and distribute your own version such as Whitebox Linux. The only real restriction is that you cannot call it Red Hat Linux since that is a trademark of Red Hat. The main thing you get with RHEL is the enterprise grade support. If you called Red Hat and asked for support for Whitebox Linux, you would be told to go jump in a lake or something. Here is the source to RHEL 3. Go have a ball!

The WBEL site is at http://whiteboxlinux.org/

Okay, someone please help me out here. Why would I choose WBEL/CentOS over Fedora Core? How do they relate, say, to Fedora Core 3, which has very similar specs (kernel version, Gnome version, etc).

And if there's a good reason to choose them over Fedora, should I look at WBEL or CentOS? I'm very confused by the conflicting statements on this site and those on this site. To my reading, the second site is trying to make it sound like WBEL is dead, and the CentOS FAQ "confirms" it, but that doesn't jive at all with the "official" WBEL site.

whiteboxlinux.org
^^ Notice the extension. whiteboxlinux.net looks decidedly different... also, note the date of the comment you cited - December 1, 2004.

Presuming you're not trolling...

But we will be hosting lots of servers for our customers with some RHEL4-based distro.

I want to make sure that when an update comes out from the source, that I am not wholly dependant on a middle man that not be able to or capable of a prompt update release.

I'm still testing our recompile version. If it works out, then great. Otherwise, I'm confident now that even running a non-North American Enterprise Linux Vendor version of RHEL4 I can always compile and distribute the errata udpates I need. (Well maybe except for a few kde packages, dbus and iproute which are spitting out heinous c++ errors at the mo).

Umm, why bother when you can just grab CentOS 4.0 instead?
(or one of the other RHEL-rebuild projects like Tao or Whiteboxlinux)

from original email:

Also, since the original purpose of the SCC proposal was to reduce the size
of the archive that mirrors had to carry, ...


wtf? drives are cheap. how big the complete archive happens to be is completely irrelevent.

just because TPTB can't light a fire under the maintainers of the odd-ball architectures to get moving towards release...... no excuse to completely abandon the biggest difference between debian/gnu and everything else linux: it runs on (virtually) everything.

drop to less than a handful of platforms, shrink the release cycle, and what do you get? fedora core without the graphical installer. but then, the whole idea of the new d-i was to have the same installer for the oddballs as for x86, and make it easier to develop and maintain it... what's the friggin point now? all that work shot to hell when they could've just ported anaconda and turned out "fedora clone 3.1" instead)

i think debian should stretch out the stable release schedule to THREE YEARS (or more), not shorten it to half that or less... that's the other great thing about debian, the loooooooong release cycle. "stable" should be the totally free competitor to RHEL, while "testing" can be the equiv of a fedora, suse, mandrake, etc...

i'd much rather install one debian than say, buy suse at 90 bucks and then upgrade it two or three times at 60 bucks a crack in the same amount of time.... that kind of release cycle really blows to hell the cost-of-ownership arguments vs windows, at least on the desktop.

ya, you could always reinstall or upgrade debian that two or three times too... but that's a lot of work and introduces more problems (the idea of 'stable' is that it's STABLE..... they might as well drop the "stable" name and call releases SID instead.. sheesh)...

hmmm.. i saw that a new release of whitebox enterprise linux http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/ is available... built from RHEL sources, it'll at least have a shelf life suitable for a server..... and being a (funded) one-man show, there's no ugly politics to get in the way either... :) btw.. a wbel built from v4 is not that far off... it's building successfully, so it's probably down to clensing the rh marks off and packaging it up...

Budget at least several hours sys admin work per server you manage each time a new version comes out to perform the upgrade.

Allow for the odd issue to creep in. e.g. pre-existing functionality not working, or not working the same.

And add in a bit of hair loss for the odd problem that crops up during the new distro upgrade. e.g. FC2->FC3 introduced udev which seems to cause the odd hassle.

So, if you are 'hosting' with a distro that changes every several months, then be prepared for the extra work.

We offer a choice of distros for our VPSs. And some advice on choosing between them.

We recommend people use Fedora if they like the latest versions of software and want to upgrade their software frequently. If follows that if you are running a hosting operation where you don't want to interrupt/change a working setup then FC is probably not the right distro for you.

We recommend WBEL if they want an enterprise distribution that is stable, widely supported and will have updated RPMs for fix bugs and security issues for the next several years. WBEL is derived from RHEL sources. WBEL alternatives include CentOS. Or rpmbuild --rebuild your own (just got a few udpates SRPMS to go on my own RHEL4 recompile...).

We recommend Debian for people that prefer it. i.e. if you are familiar with Debian then you'll know whether it suits you or not. If you are not familiar with debian then you'll probably find things 'easier' on a RedHat based distro.

--
Which distro do you want on your shiny new VPS?

CentOS is one of several projects that took the source rpms from Redhat and recompiled them into a working set of isos (minus Redhat copyrighted material). Whitebox Linux, Tao Linux, and Scientific Linux are some others.

They were basically all started independantly of each other.

Whitebox (being the only one I have really used extensively) is run out of Beauregard Parish Public Library by a a JMorris. He rules with a tyranical fist and has no desire to offer anything other than the bare minimum of changes needed to make the rebuild possible. Now I like this hard-line leadership, but it has caused some friction as to the timelyness of updates.

I did recently convert a machine that was Whitebox Linux to Tao Linux to verify that it could be done. I followed this basic procedure. With this basic procedure, picking one of the projects over another isn't that much of a life or death decision. It is relatively easy to move between this projects.

As far as I can tell (not having seen an actual RHEL box) both Whitebox and Tao are very accurate representations of RHEL. I have yet to see an instance where a package desigend for RHEL didn't work with Whitebox and Tao. I have installed Oracle, vmware, various rpm's that were packaged for RHEL without much troubles.

• Lineox released 4.0 on 2/25.
• Piebox released 4.0 on 2/28. No free binary downloads.
• White Box, no 4.0 yet.
• Scientific Linux, no 4.0 yet.

Sounds like what they're doing is a lot like the Whitebox guys. I can see no indication of threats on their part. I've never used either so they might not be even close to the same thing.

You linked to a community website. Not the official Whitebox Enterprise Linux website.

linkified for the robots:

Although those looking for a FREE ALTERNATIVE to RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX should also consider Scientific Linux, Taolinux, and Whitebox Linux.

FREE ALTERNATIVE to RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX
FREE ALTERNATIVE to RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX

linkified for the robots:

Although those looking for a FREE ALTERNATIVE to RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX should also consider Scientific Linux, Taolinux, and Whitebox Linux.

FREE ALTERNATIVE to RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX
FREE ALTERNATIVE to RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX

the white box site is http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/ run by John Morris

someone else wanted to be a co-developer and registered http://www.whiteboxlinux.net/ on their own initiative.

That second person who invited themselves to the party was rebuffed by Morris, who did not want to share control, and has moved to CentOS He was NOT the "main developer".

The original (one-person-run) whiteboxlinux show continues unchanged.

Whitebox linux seems to be doing the same thing. Will Red Hat chase down all of these RHEL forks? Doesn't this sort of go against the Linux "way?"

Does the same restrictions apply to white box linux too?

I wounder if this also applies to whitebox linux?

I purchase RedHat licenses for everything that is in the DMZ, or runs software that requires RedHat Enterprise Linux for support (think Oracle Databases).

Then I use Whitebox Linux for everything else. It's pretty much exactly the same as RedHat (you can pick another RHEL rebuild if you want, CentOS and Whitebox Linux are my two favorites). Whitebox can have problems from time to time, because it's a one man show. CentOS looks nice, but it sounds like the mailing lists are used less, and the web boards more for discussion and help (I've never participated, but that's the a complaint I've seen on WhiteBox lists about CentOS). I like e-mail lists for help/support. Call me silly. While web boards are nice for random discussions, I'd much rather review e-mail for technical support (both on the giving and receiving end).

I use that for the desktop. Other then, it's a bit RAM hungry, it's fine for a desktop for most people (the lack of a good MP3 player might bother most, but I play oggs, so I'm good with it). You need more then 128MB of RAM to run OpenOffice on it at a reasonable speed. (I was running a PIII-500 w/ 384MB of RAM and it was acceptable, with a new P4 w/ 128MB of RAM it was unbearably slow running Mozilla and OpenOffice at the same time. I put a 1GB of RAM in and now it's wonderful).

In the end, it means I can run almost exactly the same OS at home that I do at work. It's industrial strength, and all of the expertise I build up using it, is going towards one of the two distro's that all major software vendors support. I don't know of any Suse "rebuilds", otherwise I might recommend those.

Kirby

Red Hat Enterprise Linux on important servers. Guaranteed updates until 2010 makes me happy.

CentOS or Whitebox on servers that are less important, or more numerous than the notes in the corporate kitty. Both are Free rebuilds of RHEL that should have similar update availability, compatibility and QA.

Fedora on expert users' workstations or servers that need the latest and greatest TODAY, and damn the consequences.

Look, I got frustrated with the constant upgrade cycle of the consumer redhat products, and the whole fedora morass was what encouraged me to look for alternatives - because ultimately I'm too cheap to pay for software to run at my house.

Professionally I have no issue with paying for things that make me $$, but personally it's not worth a bunch of cash per systems to do the upgrade cycle.

I switched my home boxes to whitebox linux. It's a totally non-redhat affiliated distro - except for the fact that it's built almost entirely from the SRPMS released from redhat. It's designed to be binary compatible with RHES, and in my experience, I've found that it has been - down to the bugs!

I have a feeling that if you want to fix your relationship with redhat, there's an option - get in touch with their marketing team and work out a deal. If you don't, carping to an employee here is obviously not helpful.

I'm sorry that you're frustrated.

Respectfully,
Anomaly

"Yes.... Stupid from a monetary reason. You are absolutely right, but from a value reason: No. The eMac is a perfect investment for people who have light computing needs and need a reliable platform. Windows XP on a Dell (or any OEM) is just not reliable."
What about buying an inexpensive computer with Linux. You could put White Box Linux on it.

"What is the goal for White Box Linux?
"To provide an unencumbered RPM based Linux distribution that retains enough compatibility with Red Hat Linux to allow easy upgrades and to retain compatibility with their Errata srpms. Being based off of RHEL3 means that a machine should be able to avoid the upgrade treadmill until Oct 2008 since RHEL promises Errata availability for five years from date of initial release and RHEL3 shipped in Oct 2003."

The alternative to an eMac which you offer (a "Dell" with XP) is both more expensive (OS tax) and less secure. If you wanted an honest alternative, in my opinion you should have suggested a conservative version of Linux which will not change much (i.e. low maintainance) and will meet the "light computing needs" of potential users of the eMac.

People wouldn't be buying it if they could just get free copies, but Red Hat has now prevented that and thus they're making more money.

You actually can get free copies, or as near to it as makes no difference. For example, check out White Box Enterprise Linux. Totally legal, totally legit.

When companies buy RHEL, what they really want (and get) is the ability to call up Red Hat and have useful discussions.

If you think Red Hat charges too much for this, why don't you start your own business and undercut them?

As has been pointed out, the fee RedHat charge is for their services. If you can forgo the services and the brand there are freely (beer/speech) available alternatives.

Whitebox Enterprise Linux 3 has taken the RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 source RPMs, removed trademarks and RedHat artwork and produced their own binary distro of those source RPMs. The resulting server is RHEL3 RPM compatible (which is useful if you are using 3rd party repositories.

WhiteBox Linux release erratta fixes following on from any that RH release. So the distro is kept up to date (using up2date or yum, or if you're like me, apt)

There are other projects with RHEL3 based distros as well.

Don't you just love the GPL?

--
WBEL3 Based Linux VPSs

After my department (at a Canadian university) decided that it couldn't afford the .edu prices, I investigated the clones, and settled on White Box Linux - and we're now using it on about 30 Dell Poweredge servers with no problems to speak of. We're very happy with it. I hear good things about the other clones, too.

I'm all for paying for RHEL, mind - they do great work, and give a lot back to the community... but the price did turn us away.

CentOS is basically just a totally free and open version of RedHat Enterprise Linux

There are a couple of projects doing this.

See also Tao Linux and White Box Linux.

There's a list of similar projects on the Tao Linux site, including a roll-your-own-distro-from-RHEL-SPRMS HOWTO.

The price is too high, that is why some of us have been using White Box Linux for some time. It's 100% binarily compatible with RH, and it works.

From the above linked website "This product is derived from the Free/Open Source Software made available by Red Hat, Inc but IS NOT produced, maintained or supported by Red Hat. Specifically, this product is forked from the source code for Red Hat's _Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3_ product under the terms and conditions of it's EULA."

So far - and 10's of servers later - no complaints, works like a charm. Since it works so well. Why pay? For their support? Lets be honest, we generally find the bugs before RH does, and our staff can handle anything - including figuring out the undocumented changes that RH makes to their own products (example: static routes anyone?).

cluge

RHEL was definitely far out of our price range, especially since we have absolutely no use for the support that we would be paying for. We ended up going with CentOS on our fourteen Dell servers that run everything for somethingawful.com.

CentOS is a community-supported build of the RHEL source RPMS. They closely follow RedHat errata and release updated packages shortly after the official RedHat packages appear. We've used it for over six months now and it's been great. It's perfectly stable, and it's easy to rollout updates via a local yum repository that rsyncs off the CentOS mirrors.

Try CentOS or WhiteBox!!!

CentOS
http://www.caosity.org/

WhiteBox Linux
http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/

Um...RedHat's software is all Free (as in Freedom)/Open-Source. In fact, their EULA specifically says (and the GPL and other open-source licenses guarantee) that you can redistribute the source code for their products, so long as you remove their trademarks and logos and whatnot. In fact, this is what White Box Enterprise Linux aims to do: be binary compatible with RH EL by rebuilding and distributing RH's source RPMs. Or you can always check out The Fedora Project...

Try Whitebox Linux or CentOS, both are free clones of RHEL.

Don't have it available for download (RHEL anyone?)

Well, in fact RHEL *is* effectively available for free download in binary (and source) format. Whitebox Linux http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/ is RHEL with the logos, trademarks etc. of Red Hat stripped out.

... or if you don't need the support, White Box Linux offers an RHEL derived distribution, that enables you to use Red Hats errata.

Yes Red Hat is propriatary according to:
Whitebox
SCI-Linux
CentOS
Lineox
Taolinux
Those are the RHEL builds feel free to ask Mandrake, or RedFlag, or Fedora how propriatary other builds are.
Can I have more FUD please? mmmmm thank you.

The use RHEL or one of it free counterparts.
6 moths or so schedule isn't that uncommon or rapid btw.

I can't believe how fast the FC1 has gone into legacy. I know this isn't RH supported, but I think I'm going to have to switch to an RHEL rebuild like WhiteBox.

For the interested, we use WhiteBox at work on one of our AMD 64 bit servers and it works like a champ. They added yum, but other than that it's binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Chris