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Red Hat, IBM Expand Linux Deal
jukal writes "From ZDNet "Red Hat and IBM have expanded a partnership, with Red Hat bringing its top-end version of Linux to all four of IBM's server lines and with IBM's services and software divisions supporting Red Hat's software. "" The NYTimes also has a version of the story, as does the News-Observer.
I am quite pleased. As more and more open source project become so mature they can be run in a large corporation, the need to run on big iron emerges. This is the kind of deal that will enable Linux to nicely scale further into the corporate everyday life.
Stop the brainwash
Shouldnt we stop it. Just because somebody is successful, we cannot make it M$ of linux world. Ask yourself this
- Does Redhat violate GPL
- Do they refuse to divulge source code
- Do they steal code and then commercialize it?
Agreed RPMS are common but whats wrong. People who want tar gz always get it, its all there. Just because something makes things for lesser mortals easier does not mean that it is EVIL. User freindly does not EQUATE with evil , neither does sucess, the sooner people learn it the betterMy Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
RedHat produces several variations of its Linux distribution. You're most likely familiar with the one priced at $30 you can download basically free. The cost of some editions, however, reaches $2500. The version IBM is using retails for $800 I think (could be more). See it yourself at http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/software.html
SIG: HUP
.DEBs lack integrity checks - that means that the contents are not public/private encrypted. .RPMs have this ability. That is a very important ability in an internet setting.
.RPMs have their troubles, too.
That said,
Stop the brainwash
Er, hasn't HP chosen Debian? I can't find any recent links, but I'm pretty sure I heard something about that...
Well, considering that I use Redhat Linux almost exclusively, it's not hard to discern what my opinion might be. The reality is, this claim is so far offbase that it's ridiculous. Most of the people making this claim are elitist goons who probably don't use Linux anyway, they just read on some newsgroup that it makes you sound 1337 to bash Redhat and so that's what they do. The only thing that makes Redhat any different from any other distribution is market share. People claiming that Redhat is the Microsoft of the Linux world are arguing against capitalism. These people would bash any company that was successful. Redhat remains open source, and contributes a great deal to open source software and to the community at large. This is VASTLY different from the proprietary software development model employed by Microsoft. I get really sick of elitist Linux users trying to put down everything successful, user-friendly, or even remotely easy to use. It's these people that will prevent Linux from every truly becoming successful on the desktop. Too many people hear these goons claiming how hard Linux is to use, and how you have to be a genius to even install Linux. They do this simply to puff themselves up and try to gain some semblence of self-esteem. Sorry guys, Linux really isn't that hard to install OR use. You don't have to be a hard-core computer geek use Linux for all of your normal computing tasks. This is a figment of your wannabe-1337, s'kiddie imagination.
"Herbivores eat well cause their food never, ever runs."
Seems to me I've seen a bunch of articles on companies opting away from MS products. Dell offer Linux, IBM offering Linux, Dell (and other companies?) offering Word Perfect instead of some variation of Office.
In my opinion, this looks like the start of a stance by companies against MS. Time more than ever for ALL Linux distros to be more user friendly. Don't get more wrong, I think Linux is a great thing, but I still use OS X because I get a stable OS, PLUS the ability to futz with *nix.
The Linux "collective" needs to start making Linux less configurable (yes I said LESS) for the average user. The average user just doesn't care about all the configurability of Linux... heck, I'm a slightly above average user and I don't care!!! When the learning curve is less steep for Linux, or when somebody offers a distro (Lycoris?) that has less of a learning curve (a sort of Linux Home edition), then Linux will make some major inroads into the home.
That would be great to see... because everybody should have access to the world of computers and everybody shouldn't have to buy a new one ever 2 years to keep up with the low quality stuff MS puts out.
-AHow can Red-Hat Linux or any open-source operating system become the "Microsoft" of anything? Yes, some things only come in an rpm, but that dosen't force you to use RedHat.
If you are using open source software, you can by definition - get the source. You can even make all the Debian packages you like and provide them to anyone you wish.
If you choose to use software that isn't open-source, it's not RH's problem if rpm the only package it's released in.
At worst, RH is the "AOL" of the Linux World... but that really isn't all that bad.
It has always seemed to me that there is more money to be made in services than RedHat has ever been able to squeeze out of them. Every hardware manufacturer of any significant size derives large percentages of their revenues from their Global Services (enterprise consulting) divisions so why couldn't Redhat manage it? IBM seems to think they can do it bu supporting and integrating the same products redhat was.
Perhaps the key is that the hardware manufacturers are offering the services as a value added feature of their core products. This raises the question, why did VA Systems abandon Linux based PC hardware in favor of becoming a software shop, and at that, not even one that provides Linux software integration consulting? Well, in the case of VA it was probably due to their content holdings, but again, if the combination of hardware sales and software integration services can work for IBM, why wouldn't it work for Redhat or (in the past) VA? It just seems to me that, while having IBM enter what is esentially a reseller agreement, is not the most lucrative means for generating a revenue stream from Redhat's distribution; although it does have vary low overhead, which is parhaps a key for redhat at this point.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Your privacy has been invaded? Would you mind explaining how? Did someone crack your server and put a link to the NYT there? Did they spam you with a link to the NYT? Call you up on the phone while you were having dinner or engaging in some other important activity and tell you about it?
/. and saw the link there?
/.?
/., and they invaded your privacy by putting the link there.
No?
What's You visited
Did someone hold a knife or gun on you and force you to visit
No?
What? You came there of your own free will and saw the link? OK, I think I'm starting to a get a handle on the situtation? You must own
No? You're just a visitor?
Oh.
Pardon me, but I think I'm having a hard time believing your privacy has been invaded.
Right. Red Hat is so evil. That's why Mandrake can base their whole distribution on it -- i.e., clone the Red Hat distribution and then enhance it for their own purposes.
So who gets to do the same thing with a product from Microsoft?
Guns don't kill people -- people kill people.
But the guns seem to help a bit. (apologies to Eddie Izzard)
"Red Hat is the Microsoft of the Linux world."
Yeah, I can kinda see that. Compared to OpenBSD, Debian, or Gentoo, Red Hat seems bloated, bland, and corporate. When using the newer versions of Red Hat, I don't quite know what's installed on my system and I feel alienated from my computer and from my OS -- which is one reason why I don't like running Windows on my machines. I can't explain it, but Red Hat just isn't fun anymore. Lately, when I screw around with computers, I'd rather screw around with Gentoo or BSD.
But that's where the comparison between Red Hat and Microsoft ends. Sure, Red Hat can act unilaterally and piss lots of people off (GCC 2.96), but they're generally good corporate citizens. They make their ISOs freely available for download, even though they aren't obligated to do so (hell, even OpenBSD refuses to release official ISOs on their FTP site). They don't launch campaigns to embrace-and-extend Debian and Gentoo into existence. They don't charge K-12 schools assloads of money for site licenses and threaten to audit them if they don't pay up.
Red Hat's freely available, easy-to-use software is what enabled me to learn how to program. I'd always been interested in programming, but didn't know where to start and could never afford Windows compilers. Red Hat 5.0 provided an easy-to-use (by 1998 standards!) introduction to UNIX and Perl which ultimately led me to switch my major to CS. I know Debian is freely available, but try doing an FTP install over the phone line. I've since abandoned Red Hat in favor of Gentoo, but it's my experience with Red Hat that gave me the technical proficiency to install and manage Gentoo and, most importantly, to realize that Gentoo suits my needs better than Red Hat in the first place.
As much as I disagree with some of the design decisions that Red Hat has made, I think that their distribution is a fine product. I think RPM can be overkill for the casual user, but if you're an admin for a sizeable institution (I'm not, but I used to work for someone who was), and you've got Linux boxes scattered all over the place, Red Hat's package management is a good way to keep things syncronized. If I ever end up as a sysadmin in a similar situation, I'd very likely deploy Red Hat, just as they did.
Red Hat isn't perfect and it's totally legitimate to blame them when they do something that you think is dumb. But they aren't nearly as bad as Microsoft.
Steve
Debian has clearly pointed out that it will start using Hurd kernel in the future.
Debian will support the Hurd kernel as well as the Linux kernel. It doesn't imply they are dumping Linux in favor of Hurd.
This is on their website. Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel. Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide.
However, work is in progress to provide Debian for other kernels, primarily for the Hurd. The Hurd is a collection of servers that run on top of a microkernel (such as Mach) to implement different features. The Hurd is free software produced by the GNU project.
Lexmark is a somewhat owned by IBM. I still can't get my printer to go under Gentoo as the only drivers that come for the printer are RPM based binaries (rely on LPD not CUPS). My point is that we don't want a situation where many manufactures claim linux support when they only really provide RPM based distro support- I never knew a tgz and a detailed readme were so hard to organise! Clearly from my interactions with Lexmark they seem to not take RPM based distros very seriously, and, as lexmark has close ties with IBM, could this be a sign of things to come with other hardware manufacturers? Is the CUPS standard really all that hard to keep up with?
RedHat has pretty much become the de facto standard for Linux because of the fact this is pretty much the standard Linux distro found on many desktop computers. After all, a lot of Dell server racks run RH Linux nowadays.
It'll be interesting to see what Red Hat Linux will be like when the 2.6.x kernel appears.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
It's not surprising. the $1 billion spent on Linux last year has been entirely recouped at the beginning of this year. This is a big deal in this economy.
So who gets to do the same thing with a product from Microsoft?
* Scratches head
* Installs Windows 2000
* Installs Mozilla 1.1 and makes it the default browser and e-mail client* Installs Litestep as the shell
* Installs Magellan Explorer(free) or Opus Directory(rather expensive but kicks ass)
* Makes disk image
* Distributes disk image
* Hides in cave for 20 years
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
..Scott McNealy is updating his resume.
I love SUN and Solaris, but this is yet more really bad news for them..
Hear hear ! I, and a lot of others have been saying for a long time that IBM/Lotus should port the Notes client to Linux.
Hasn't the Notes/Domino server supported Linux for a long time? The problem seems to be that (1) there's no Notes client for Linx, or (2) a lot of people just don't want to use the Notes client.
Server apps are much easier to port than GUI apps.
"I think RPM's are better for the casual user (note I think of casual as inexperienced)."
./configure, make, make install. But for the inexperienced user (who doesn't care much about flexibility), RPM and Red Carpet can be just want they need.
I suppose that the word casual does imply a lack of experience. By casual use, I meant that you use Linux on your computer, but you don't want to fool with it too much. For the experienced user who uses his computer casually, RPM can be overkill. Instead of searching rpmfind.net for the correct RPMs, you could just download the tarball from SourceForge and just
Steve
This is a job for the distros. Lindows is having some success by bundling Wine and giving you a windows look & feel. RedHat is moving more towards an "official RedHat default desktop", while preserving your choice, if you want to do the expert installation.
Debian, Gentoo, and the other "hard-core" distros, I imagine, will never do this, because that's not the what their users want.
This is an excellent illustration of how you make money off free software. You put in the effort of selecting a single CD player, a single web browser, a single email client and so on, lay it down on the users hard disk with a minimum of flashy install screens. Then people buy it more than they buy those other distros that didn't want to make a decision.
--
E_NOSIG
Using anything but Red Hat will become harder and harder, and when the Boss says "Install Redhat or IBM won't give us support" you will do it or train your "do you want fries with that?". Just because the source might be free (mostly) doesn't mean there is a free spirit going on (or ease of use for that matter. I can recognise the reason why GNU came to be).
Why just today I looked at drivers for one of HPs RAID cards. Whoppie, they had drivers for Red Hat 7.1. Thank you very much...
There need to be a standard so that anyone can make a distribution that is supported, or Red Hat will 0wn Linux soon enough.
It'll be interesting to see what Red Hat Linux will be like when the 2.6.x kernel appears.
I guess Red Hat Linux 9.0 will be their first release with a 2.6 kernel.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Allright, so this music is protected from copyright violation by glue. Does this mean that solvents are now illegal? Start stockpiling acetone now.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.