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Red Hat Enterprise 3 Beta Reviewed
viewstyle writes "eWEEK has got a review of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Beta, code named Taroon. It now has the new Red Hat Bluecurve interface. New important stuff includes: logical volume management and access control lists in the file system. The access control list feature is something that has been in Windows and Solaris for some time. If you're interested, you can download it here."
That's not a review. That's just a list of features copied from the README file or something.
And notice that out of 10 paragraphs, 6 start with Taroon?
. Red Hat officials said they plan to ship RHEL 3.0 in October. As with Version 2.1, the new release will come in workstation, departmental server and data center server versions, with the high-end version priced at about $2,500.
Ummm who thinks this is a little expensive even for big organisations? Also..
Taroon ships with version 2.1 of the open source Eclipse Development Environment. Eclipse requires a Java virtual machine to run, but Taroon doesn't ship with one.
HUH!!!
Noone said you should. This is being released so that people can install it on test machines, put their software on it, see if/how it works and report bugs back so they can be fixed before the final release. I doubt RH would sell you a copy of the beta even if you asked them too.
That's FUD - red hat's enterprise stuff is 100% supported for mission critical applications.
You're probably thinking of the unsupported consumer releases, which in the past have been a bit buggy at *.0 releases and shaped up nicely by *.2 releases.
Having said that, our RH 9 firewalls are holding up nicely after some months of heavy use - but managers love the accountability of having someone to yell at with the "enterprise" editions...
When will people stop thinking about Access Control Lists? They're stupid, and overcomplicate things, plus they add bloat to the filesystem. Hello? User groups.
idiots.
Well as others pointed out that doesn't nearly apply to their enterprise offerings. I'd also like to say Red Hat 8.0 also pretty much crushed that myth. Maybe for workstation use 6.0 wasn't that great, but for basic server use I've found Red Hat has serverd me well regardless of the version. So I'd say its basically time to put the Red Hat .0 myth to bed now.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
But I'd trust my data on a beta OS before trusting the worm infested nightmare unleashed by some multi-billion dollar software company. It's a matter of perspective, but the order goes like this:
- Alpha - We know it's got problems, but the concept seems sound
- Beta - If it has any problems, we haven't been able to find them.
- Commercial/Final/Stable - We can't find any problems, and neither could our beta testers, so it must be your fault.
Many times, beta passes directly into the third stage without modification, but it's a crap-shoot no matter who you trust.On our campus, Red Hat is the most common Linux distribution in use. Hardware is currently being certified to run it as a production platform within the main data center.
However, everything has been roiled by their pricing and End Of Life announcement to the point that an exit strategy is being crafted.
The problem is the 1 year End Of Life for desktop products. Production systems cannot be built on a platform that will lose support within a year -- it takes 4 months just to certify that the build is good, leaving only 8 months of production. Turning over the OS every year is a non-starter.
The $2,500 price tag is also a non-starter. The data center is manned by UNIX professionals, several with RHCE certifications. Yes they need support, but they don't need $2,500 of support for every machine. The entire Solaris support contract for the data center covering dozens of machines, running "free" Solaris, is $3,000.
The allied agency, NCSA, has already abandoned Red Hat because they couldn't get a reasonable price for their Beauwolf cluster.
The problem is exemplified by one UNIX group that supports Departmental and Faculty machines on a contract basis. Red hat has been, and is, the most installed version. However, this customer base won't install $400 to $2,500 Red Hat to get the longer support life-time, they'll only go for the free/cheaper version with a 1 year EOL. The problem is Departments and Faculty also don't want their machines turning over every year (worse than Microsoft). To ameliorate this problem for the short-term, this group is getting ready to take over creating security patches (i.e., making RPM's) for 2 years after the official EOL for desktop versions. This will allow them to service existing and new customers. To solve this problem for the long-term, this support group is actively working to find another distribution that can offer a better EOL and pricing point. Currently, SUSE, with all of it's weaknesses, is the favorite candidate. This Fall, the group plans to learn SUSE, then shift the Linux Administrators course they teach from Red Hat to another distribution (possibly SUSE).
Unless Red Hat realizes they need to site license to Educational institutions, this will be the year they lose most of the Educational market. They'll still have a few contracts here and there for data center installs, but the vast masses (Computer Science Departments, etc.) will be encouraged to move to another distribution that can be supported for a reasonable cost.
Two years from now, unless Red Hat wakes up, they won't have significant penetration in the Educational market.
Folks aren't necessarily asking for "free," but they are asking for some reality in pricing. Currently, Red Hat turns a deaf ear to any criticism that their pricing structure is not appropriate. They can can continue to turn a deaf ear, but soon they'll find no one is bugging them anymore because we'll all be running another distribution.