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Which Red Hat Should Be Worn in the Enterprise?

Posted by Cliff on from the for-those-who-like-to-wear-hats dept.

weatherbug asks: "I've recently been appointed as a member of a team to help determine the direction our organization is headed with Red Hat Linux. Currently we're using multiple versions from Red Hat 6.x through Advance Server 2.1. However, now that Red Hat has effectively separated their distributions into a 'consumer' (Red Hat 8,9, etc) and 'enterprise' (Red Hat Adv. Server 2.x, etc), we aren't sure which version we want to adopt. A Red Hat salesman recently told us that the 'consumer' version of Red Hat was mostly for hackers and hobbyists who weren't concerned about stability and wanted the most up-to-date software, while the 'enterprise' version would be more stable and have a five-year product lifetime. As a long time Linux system administrator, I feel that this is a sales tactic and that there really is no compelling reason for us to ever use the 'enterprise' version. After all, it is Linux and it is open source, and we have enough in-house talent to not need Red Hat support. Why would we ever need or care about a five-year product lifetime? Am I wrong, and if so, could you set us straight? We'd be interested to know what other large organizations have decided to do."

5 of 710 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What My Organization Did: by rkz · · Score: 1, Troll

    Yeah thats a better idea than red hat, but debian is something you should consider if your have some hardware that is not supported by FREEbsd.

    And then again while were talking about options you could always try Windows Server 2003 I've tried this out on a spare machine and it certainly lives up to the hype.

    --
    There is no god
  2. Re:Get a Real OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    I'll get a "Real" OS from Redmond when they offer one. When will that be?

  3. Re:Get a Real OS by Ravenscall · · Score: 0, Troll

    It is called Lycoris, formerly Redmond Linux.

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    You say you want a revolution....
  4. Re:What My Organization Did: by misleb · · Score: 0, Troll

    Heh, try upgrading from NT 4 to Windows 2000 in one command without requiring a reboot... for FREE.

    --
    "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
  5. 1 more vote for debian by Deadplant · · Score: 1, Troll

    Debian -> Stable for all my servers.

    Debian -> testing for all my workstations and my video encoder machines.

    Debian -> unstable for MY workstation and home machine because i'm adventurous.

    My few encounters with redhat have all been quite unpleasant.
    I can't believe people actually use redhat for servers... that just seems wrong to me. The very first thing I do when we order a new colocated server is to log in via ssh, install debian and a custom kernel then reboot.
    Call me crazy but i don't think a server should have X and all the related gui apps installed at all.