Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik Responds

The "Call for Questions" post for Mr. Szulik generated over 650 questions and comments, 32 of which were moderated +5 at the time we selected questions to send him. And unlike many CEO responses, Szulik's answers to the selected questions are his own, not PR-generated. (One clue is that they are not in perfect English, as interview responses or articles that are 'laundered' by PR or media relations departments almost always are.)

1a) up2date - by aldousd666

Is the up2date service going to continue to work for us end users who still use RH9, or are we going to have to go Fedora treating our existing installations as defunct? I've spent quite a lot of hours configuring my systems, and I think you're going to make a lot of angry users if things change too drastically. I know a number of people who are already shunning the name red hat in favor of the other flavors.

Szulik:

up2date as shipped with Red Hat Linux 9 will continue to function against the RHN servers for up to six months after RHL9 goes out of maintenance on April 30, 2004. Fedora includes an up2date that can speak with Yum and Apt repositories and can work completely without using the RHN servers. From a sysadmin's perspective, the tool is nearly identical to what was used before; it simply pulls the packages and data from a different location. It also lets you pull both official Fedora packages as well as third party packages created by other Fedora users and developers as well as create your own repository for packages you want to distribute among your own systems.

Users continuing with RHL9 past the end of its maintenance window will be interested in the Fedora Legacy Project, a community-driven continuation of updates for RHL9 and RHL7.3.

1b) Return on RHN Entitlements? - by Anonymous Coward

I would like to consider myself a red hat advocate. It was largely based on my recommendation that 50 RHN Entitlements for updating non-enterprise version of red hat GNU/Linux. My boss has since been rubbed the wrong way when RHN failed to "work as advertised" on August 29th. The best explanation that I have gotten from red hat is that it is "the nature of SSL" that forced manual upgrades of up2date & up2date-gnome for each system. In October, red hat charged a renew fee on the 50 RHN Entitlements for another year of service. So, now that my boss has gotten the bill, he is asking what type of return on investment he should expect from May 2004 to October 2004. To make a long story short, the question is, are we being charged a full year for only 7 months of updates? If non-enterprise contracts aren't fully honored as advertised (automated updates require manual updates after Aug 28th and a full year charge only provide 7 months of updates) then how does red hat expect advocates of red hat to successfully encourage the companies that have gotten burned to pay out even more for enterprise contracts?

Szulik:

The SSL issue in August was an unfortunate result of transition inside of RHN. Although it was a significant inconvenience to our users, it was actually the result of our own tight security policies, and at no time was the security of our service at risk. Numerous steps have been taken to ensure this does not reoccur.

The entitlement renewals that occurred shortly before our recent announcements were limited and stopped when the changes were announced. Although the end of life for RHL9 was announced when RHL9 was first released, many users are in a situation with entitlements going past the end of life for Red Hat Linux. For those in this position, entitlements to both Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES and WS will be made available for the remainder of the subscriptions. in addition, discounts are available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to any RHN customer.

2) Opportunity for small business - by salesgeek

Matthew - If you were looking for an opportunity to start a small business (size at peak $25 Million revenue, perhaps 250 employees) in the Linux world, where would you go?

Szulik:

$25M is not a small business. It's about the size when someone crazy in your organization suggests that you go public. I believe that the IT industry has increasingly adopted a transactional and services model. Differentiated service skills around Open Source software will be in demand based upon the large transition which will occur over the next 10 years as businesses transition from proprietary to commodity hardware and open source software.

3) What's next? - by Mr. Sketch

For the average person, RedHat _is_ Linux. Who do you believe will replace you as being the defacto Linux distribution for the average person?

Szulik:

The definition of average should be clear. For the 'average' reader of Slashdot, the Fedora Project is the ideal Linux distribution. For the average knowledge worker in an office setting, we believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.3 WS is appropriate. For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par. We hope that consumer-focused technologies will thrive and mature in the Fedora Project setting. When the code is production quality, Red Hat will make them available as part of a supported distribution.

4) Server without Desktop? - by drinkypoo

One of the (many) factors leading to Microsoft dominance was that they had, from the user's perspective, essentially the same operating system on the desktop and the server, in that they ran the same software; And recently, Microsoft has provided literally the same software on desktop and server. red hat began with a general-purpose product, and then moved to an artificial separation between desktop and server as Microsoft now has, and has since moved to providing only the Server. Do you feel that this is a necessary product of the differences between open and closed source models, or is it simply the right position for red hat to take, and not the rest of the Open Source Unix community?

Szulik:

Recently we launched a statement of direction - Open Source Architecture for the enterprise. As more large customers move to distributed computing architectures, firms will want to leverage the flexibility and independence a integrated stack can create for a business. Our product line is being built through the delivery of software sold modularly. For example, our cluster suite.

5) If you could go back in time - by AftanGustur

If you could go back in time with the knowledge you have to day, and live the dot-com years for a second time. What would you change in Red Hat's business model?

Szulik:

Nothing. Three critical events occured during 1997-2000. Red Hat was able to capitalize itself for the long term. The Linux kernel continued to scale in performance and application availability with each increase in performance which helped to drive the enterprise adoption of Red Hat. These were matters of when and not if.

6) Will Red Hat become more proprietary? - by divec

One of the strengths of Red Hat has always been its emphasis on Free software. Unlike, say, SuSE, which contains significant pieces of SuSE-only infrastructure (such as YaST), Red Hat has always been more careful not to "Weld The Hood Shut". This is one reason we recommend Red Hat to customers at work.

Will we continue to see this, or will Red Hat start trying to beat the competition with proprietary add-ons?

Szulik:

No. For over 10 years Red Hat has built relationships with developers, ISVs and customers on the brand promise of delivering software based upon the GPL license in collaboration with the Open Source community. If you look back over the past 5 years, you will see the failure of companies that were building hybrid models which could not deliver the consistent value of open source code over time.

7) Diverse Hardware Support - by capt.Hij

One of the biggest issues for putting gnu/linux on the desktop is more support for hardware. I understand why Red Hat is supporting Fedora and focusing more on industrial clients, but I am concerned about the long term implications. What will Red Hat be doing to increase hardware compatibility and support? Without an official Red Hat "civilian" distribution do you feel that you will have the ability to sway hardware manufacturers to support gnu/linux?

Szulik:

3 important activites will have to take place before we see a significant increase in GPL'd hardware driver support. A large marketplace develops, customer demand and a viable supplier exists to deliver and service the integration. I'd say we are at the early stages worldwide to respond to these requirements. Increasingly we are receiving more support as compared to 24 months ago. I believe the civilian version will be filled by Fedora which will develop into a solution for many.

8) Did The Consumer Stream Make A Profit? - by reallocate

Has Red Hat's shrinkwrapped consumer-level product stream ever made a profit? To your knowledge, has SUSE or anyone else over made a profit from consumer sales?

Szulik:

Profitable yes. Was a shrink wrapped version sold at retail an economic model to grow a company? No. discounts leave a small amount of available profit. I can not speak for SuSE economics as until recently they were private.

9) personal OS choice? - by BigGerman

Which OS and desktop environments you, your colleagues and friends use every day?

thanks in advance for your honest and direct answer.

Szulik:

I have not used proprietary software for many years. I run a 5 node Linux cluster at home. I use Gnome.

10a) Education and Research Markets - by Frater

I work for a world-renowned research institution. We have ~500 Red Hat Linux systems in labs and on desktops, mostly administered by scientists and technicians rather than central IT staff -- so keeping them up to date is a challenge.

We have twice, over the past few years, attempted to contact Red Hat regarding site licensing or educational volume licensing for access to Red Hat Network. Both times the answer has been that -- unlike Sun, Microsoft, Apple, and our other OS suppliers -- Red Hat has no licensing programs for the education and science markets. For this reason, we have turned our Red Hat Linux users away from Red Hat Network and towards FreshRPMs APT [freshrpms.net] as a source of regular software updates.

With the discontinuation of the Red Hat Linux product line, we are now at an impasse. We do not expect FreshRPMs to conjure up security and bug-fix updates for a system that will no longer be supported upstream. My clients would prefer a more guaranteed solution than FreshRPMs. However, Red Hat still shows no signs of interest in the education and research market. Fedora is not an option, as we can't expect our science staff to accept major upgrades every 2-3 months -- they are science nerds, not Linux nerds.

Is there any chance that your plans for Red Hat Enterprise Linux include site- and volume-licensing oriented at the educational and research community? For if not, my colleagues and I will have a hard row to hoe -- migrating existing Red Hat Linux users to supportable distributions such as SuSE or Mandrake.

10b) Academics... - by PseudononymousCoward

Mr. Szulik,

As a professor at a Big-10 University, I now find myself in the curious situation that RedHat, for either server or workstation usage, is more expensive than Windows, owing to the terms that MS offers academia and the new licensing of RH products. Most Universities can _purchase_ Win2k3 Server for the price of one year of RHEL WS support.

Does academia constitute one more market segment that RH is no longer contesting?

We have rolled out an education plan which was priced between $25 and $50 for client and server quantity one for an annual subscription. I believe the pricing and service relationship will begin to address a void filled by the Red Hat Linux transition at an affordable price.

10c) licensing issues - by painehope

when will RedHat have a more reasonable licensing scheme? Your licensing is excellent for corporate enterprise workstations, and I realize that you are moving away from home users, but what about clusters and universities?

For example, I run Redhat across a rather large (> 4000 CPUs) cluster, and have never bothered doing more than buying a few boxed sets due to the fact that I have never been able to get a reasonable price from your sales team. Cluster support tends to be more like dealing w/ a single machine, since the hardware is generational (if you add 512 CPUs to the system, their hardware is going to be exactly the same if you ordered it that way). Why should I pay a license for each machine, when I can just get a license for one that is having the same problem as the others (for example, a bizarre problem we had w/ the eepro100 driver + PVM - and yes, I know PVM is generally used for > 1 machine, but technically I probably could have addressed the support problem w/ 1 license). I wouldn't have a problem buying cluster support if you had a decent sliding scale (ex. : 512 nodes @ $50/node, 1024 nodes @ $35/node, etc.). And of course, have a caching update server for the site.

And for universities: if you want brand recognition, try offering site licenses or educational discounts. Don't count on all CS/EE students to be clued in enough to install Fedora on their laptop and then debug any problems that come up. Offer a site-wide license to all students for $50k, or a department for $10k, or something like that. That would probably give you a lot of name recognition in the future. You already offer site licenses for corporations, right?

So when will RedHat come up w/ some decent licensing schemes for those environments?

Szulik:

Painhope, my view of reasonable and your view of reasonable might be different. And I would like to take you up on your offer. Send me an e-mail and we will take you up on your offer. Keep in mind that we do not sell licenses. We sell subscriptions where the value of the bits are integrated with service levels. I believe our educational subscription plan will be seen as a good solution to opportunities like yours. And you are correct, most student computing activities must be supported by campus IT to get plugged into the campus network. Site license for $50k. For many public schools and university, this is a large sum.

Comments

User friendliness

[October_30th]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par.

Why, oh why must it be so?

Why is it so hard to have real user-friendliness in Linux?

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

Because someone hasn't programmed it yet, wrapped it in a DEB or RPM file, and put it on Freshmeat.

Re:User friendliness

[herrvinny]

Because geeks always compete to see who can use the most austere interface.... Face it, geeks don't need user friendliness. They want something that works. And Linux does. Besides, you need to start bringing in outside people, artists, psychologists maybe, to rearrange interfaces and make stuff easier to use.

Re:User friendliness

[metallicagoaltender]

It's a catch-22 - the average Joe on the street doesn't want to touch Linux until it's friendly, but companies don't want to invest the time and money to get their goods working on Linux unless the user base is big enough to give them a good return on their investment.

Hell, I can see why the average person won't touch Linux - I bought a Radeon 9200 dual head video card 2 weeks ago, and after off-and-on screwing with it, I still haven't gotten both heads working at once, excluding cloned mode. Some soccer mom isn't going to want to be dicking with XF86Config while her kids are bitching about wanting to play Pokemon...she's going to want to boot into Windows, pop in the CD that came with the product, and have it work.

Re:User friendliness

[TedCheshireAcad]

No one wants to work on the little "niceities" that a user-oriented OS such as Windows or Mac OS X has. OSS developers want to work on the "cool" projects, that and for us, functionality is relative to the user. OSS developers tend to write software for developers, not your average Joe Sixpack.

Fine by me, though. I'm not afraid of the command line. :)

Re:User friendliness

[October_30th]

Because users are morons.

No, that's a cop-out answer of an elitist.

Answer me this: what will you lose if "the moron" users are able to simply plug in their scanner, external USB hard drive or an USB CD-RW drive and use it straight away?

Re:User friendliness

[slimak]

Many camera owners that use a Windows PC like use the software that came with the camera to download images -- thus far, there has been very limited support from manufacturers for linux. It is really a shame that someone like Canon does not create some linux software and include it with their cameras. Similar issues exist for other hardware, although exceptions exist such as USB mouse.

I have a PowerShot A70 that I use under linux with mild success -- this usually requries cycling the power on the camer a few times before I can get the images. This generally does not bother me, but I have a feeling my mom would be less than excited to do this.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, just perfectly summed up the attitude of the Linux community in a single sentence.

Re:User friendliness

[Tarrek]

[Note: I am using any Linux commands as examples from personal experience, I am not taking the effort to ensure that the linux terminology I'm using is perfectly correct, because it's supposed to be an example from the lay-perspective anyway, so, no nitpicking my mount points, 'cause I don't care]

Just because it's not quite there yet, more than anything. I don't think anyone is claiming that Linux will never, ever, EVER be suitable for the mass market, but, well, damnit, it isn't yet. The console commands are confusing to those without experience with them, and they aren't always perfectly documented from the layman's perspective (something like "-con350 will shift my R-variable? Why the hell would I want to do that? What IS that?").

From someone without computer experience, what the hell is "mounting" a hard drive?

Where do you put your pictures? Not in "C:\pictures", but in "/mnt/users/username/home/pictuers" or somesuch.

Hey, how about "How does someone with no Linux experience install things?" - They don't. "That program I downloaded doesn't have an install file!"

It's a good OS. I've got two flavors triple booting on my machine, so I can learn it. It's absolutely great for coding. It's got solid support for the basics I want to use my computer for, and, with effort, I can always get whatever else I need to work- With effort, because I'm new to Linux, and because, thank god it's possible because I'm computer literate enough to know damn well that it will work *somehow*.

Re:User friendliness

[scarolan]

The reason it's so hard is because the manufacturers will not release the source code to the drivers that make these things work. For example, your Kodak newbie camera that sits on the docking station was designed with software that works only in Windows.

This level of user-friendliness will not come until there are enough people using linux to make it profitable for the manufacturers to write drivers for the linux platform.

Re:User friendliness

[croddy]

"real user-friendliness" and "automated support of recent consumer hardware" are very different things. a lot of people find the GNOME and KDE desktop environments to be very user-friendly, as far as the current state of the Linux application base and hardware support go.

I, for one, find it very friendly that I can install and upgrade my OS for free, and that when I do so, it includes all of the things I need (web and internet applications, media software, graphics software, office and productivity) ... with the base installation.

as mr. szulik says, improved hardware support will depend on hardware manufacturers' cooperation, for the most part, and thankfully that has been improving of late.

Re:User friendliness

[Tarrek]

All the precious Geek chic, for one.

Ppppbbtthhhh! (To the idea of Geek chic, not to parent)

Re:User friendliness

[Duckman5]

As far as just plugging in the camera and having it work, isn't that what gPhoto and it's GTK2 frontend gtkam are for. It seems to me that those would work just fine for many cameras. And if you have a camera that uses USB Mass storage, it's even easier because automounter should work just fine for you.

There are a good number of things that aren't perfectly userfriendly on a GNU/Linux system, but i don't think this is one of them.

Re:User friendliness

[October_30th]

This level of user-friendliness will not come until there are enough people using linux to make it profitable for the manufacturers to write drivers for the linux platform.

That's rather a good argument but I think it still does not hold water. Just how much profit do the manufacturers make writing drivers as opposed to selling hardware?

Re:User friendliness

[Ktulu_03]

I have that same Camera, and was able to get Digikam to work very well with it. I didn't even have to select the camera model in KDE's peripheral's configuration in the Control Panel, the automatic button was able to detect it.

Epson in the past has seemed to be the best in terms of opening up specifications to write drivers for scanners and printers. I bought an epson scanner for that reason, and it works great under USB. I wish the other's would be as open as Epson seems to be.

Re:User friendliness

[Perl-Pusher]

I plugged my Kodak digital Camera into a Mandrake 9.2 System and a camera appeared on my desktop. Clicking it brought up the application gphoto. I had to install software from a CD on a windows machine. Mac OSX did the same as Mandrake! Though iPhoto is a better app. I guess Mathew Szulik should use Mandrake!

Re:User friendliness

[The Irish Jew]

What the hell kind of soccer mom is going to be using a dual-head setup anyway? Oh yeah, none. Doesn't sound like much of a problem to me. If her computer came w/ linux pre-installed she wouldn't have any problems.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess he doesn't run Debian.

apt-get install -u gphoto

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

Refer to the answer to question #9. He uses Gnome. That's why.

Re:User friendliness

[Ktulu_03]

Most geek users are already using Linux. If you want to grow that number, being user-friendly is the only way to do that.

Re:User friendliness

[Glock27]

Epson in the past has seemed to be the best in terms of opening up specifications to write drivers for scanners and printers. I bought an epson scanner for that reason, and it works great under USB. I wish the other's would be as open as Epson seems to be.

I had understood that Kodak fully documents the API for it's cameras. Has that changed recently?

Re:User friendliness

[Short Circuit]

Well, why don't you try fixing it?

(That's the generic answer.)

There was an article recently about matching client feature/bugfix needs with OSS developers. I'd like to see that take off. (Hell, I'd like to participate!)

Re:User friendliness

[fucksl4shd0t]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par.

Why is it so hard to have real user-friendliness in Linux?

Check out Mandrake 9.2. :) With the default kernel installed, my Olympus d520z (using a broken USB protocol which previously required a kernel patch that didn't always work) works out of the box! Mounts up as a mass storage device and there's an icon on my desktop to open it and browse the pictures.

I expect similar results with other cameras, but do not have other cameras to test.

Re:User friendliness

[scarolan]

The profit is not made selling drivers, it is LOST supporting customers who call in trying to figure out how to work their camera. If Kodak has to have a whole SEPARATE tech support division to help 0.5 percent of their customers it costs them money.

Re:User friendliness

[Ktulu_03]

I don't know if Kodak has changed their policy, I was just commenting on Epson. I hope Kodak keeps their policy of allowing others to write drivers/software.

Re:User friendliness

[AMystery]

Because people who code are not people who need a user friendly interface for their camera. There is a small group of people like me who both want a point and click interface and who know something about code, but we are generally too weak in one section or the other to really make something great. I had to create a script to use my camera, there was an app that came with RH9 and Fedora that does it, but its not something that pops up when you plug in the camera, so you have to go hunting through the menus, and then its harder to use than the one button I click that runs the script. Linux is a wonderful OS, but it is maturing much faster in some areas than others and that causes some growing pains. I would love to see a powerful, friendly interface. CLI is great for speed but far from intuitive. Still, I've been using linux since redhat since 5.2 and it has come an amazingly long way, and has a long way to go.

Re:User friendliness

[deuce868]

How many times have you read a review that stated that while the hardware was fine, the software for configuring/using the device was far too complicated? The software that a device comes with can make a huge difference in ease of use.

For instance, I won't buy a linksys WAP anymore. I liked the first generations that had a USB plug in the back and a nice simple config software package. The software in later versions drove me nuts.

Re:User friendliness

[Uma Thurman]

My Toshiba digital camera has a Cannon lens and produces top quality images. Combined with a low price, a full manual mode, and the fact that the device behaves like a USB mass storage device, I think that it's an ideal digital camera to use with Linux, and seriously underrated in the marketplace. Nobody considers Toshiba for digital cameras - only Cannon, Nikon, or Olympus - but they should.

Re:User friendliness

[Drantin]

well... i'm going to complain about your picture location anyway :-/

Why aren't you using something like '~/pictures'?

Re:User friendliness

[Otter]

Many camera owners that use a Windows PC like use the software that came with the camera to download images -- thus far, there has been very limited support from manufacturers for linux.

On the other hand, in OS X you plug in your camera (or digital video camera or MP3 player) and it works right away and iPhoto (or iMovie or iTunes) deals with it correctly and you would never think of using the bundled crapware even if a Mac version were available. The thing is, Apple has: 1) sufficient desktop market share that the peripheral makers get incompatibilities straightened out before release and 2) Apple's business model allows for significant resources to be put into driver development and the iApps.

Re:User friendliness

[mark_space2001]

Personally, I think it's because real user friendliness is a QA issue. And not just QA of software but of a whole system, how all the modules and packages work together.

That's something that most "geek" projects have a hard time handling. It's just too large of a problem. They don't have the time or resources to QA their's and everyone else's work.

And as I think about it, it might be tough for a large company too. Take all that work and QA it, turn it into something useful. Hard, hard, and that's what most people like doing, right, is fixing some one else's work? Not.

So I was going to try to give you an answer but no I've talked myself out of it. Too big for geeks, and too big for companies too. I think perhaps we need a paradigm shift. Something that allows individual geek projects to work together better. Something like Extreme Distributed Software Engineering. So that the QA of an integrater for a distro is much smaller and easier.

Hmm, maybe this is a role that the DLC or OSDL could play.

Re:User friendliness

[IWorkForMorons]

No...he's right. Users are morons. I work for many of them. But the morons aren't the only one who would find this useful. I would love the ability to simply plug in my USB webcam and have the software for it automatically load, so that I can start using it right away. But I can't do that in Linux. I can't do that in anything below WinME, but at least I can do it with a more modern version of Windows.

Re:User friendliness

[smackjer]

The dual-head video card is just one example of many. It IS a problem. Not only does Linux desktop not pass the grandma/soccer-mom test, it doesn't do the job for the vast majority of people who actually want to use a computer to do stuff without needing to recompile half of the OS.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, C:\ is pretty stupid too, it's just they're used to that. Anyway, on WinNT it goes in %USER_HOME%\My Pictures or something like that.

They all suck anyway. On my amiga, my pictures went in PICTURES:
(well, actually they went in PIX: but I was very sad back then...)

Re:User friendliness

[13Echo]

Console commands aren't normally needed. That isn't to say that you can do everything without them, but the majority of Linux users would rather have it that way. It allows for flexibility. Unless people with complaints start writing GUI-based apps that change that, there will never be a change... And the geeks won't care.

Mounting a harddrive isn't necessary to do by hand with Automount. Most "user-friendly" distributions use it. Windows also "mounts devices" but the way the file system structure works is different. Drives (most often) get letter assingments, while UNIX devices get attached (or mounted) to a directory on the tree. Either way, with automount, it doesn't matter. Many distributions detect when a new drive is installed. From there, it configured the fstab for the device so it mounts on bootup.

In comparison to Windows machines, in which you have something like "C:\My Documents\Username\My Pictures", Linux isn't really any different. A lot of programs default to "/home/username/" for file storage. Is it hard to add a "Documents" folder with Nautilus? I use one on my machine, and it works rather well. Nautilus (and other file managers) default to opening the user's home directory... Not some directory in /mnt as mentioned. It would make no sense for a program to default to "/mnt/users/username/home/pictures".

Yes. Linux has install files. They are generally with the extension SH, BIN or RUN. Theyrun the same way that Windows EXE files work. Most commercial Linux games come this way. They are self extracting and have graphical installers in the majority of situations. The difficult part is that you often have to launch them from a shell window. Programs like Nautilus tend to load SH script files up as text files, unless you teach it to work differently. Not sure about the KDE side of things though.

Re:User friendliness

[JoeBuck]

Almost all Canon digital cameras work very well with Linux; you plug in the USB cable and go (provided that you've installed a gphoto2-based app such as gtkam or kamera). Some other brands don't work as well.

Digital cameras are actually an area where Linux does quite well (for some other devices it's a different story), and the Linux situation even has some advantages over the Windows situation. Consider the digital camera owner who visits a friend's house, and who brought her camera's USB cable. Can she upload her pictures to her friend's computer? If the friend runs Windows, probably not, if the friend has a different brand of digital camera. If the friend runs Linux, and it's one of the hundreds of supported camera models, it just works.

The Windows user could bring her software along as well and install it on the friend's computer, but this would violate the EULA and potentially subject her to prosecution!

I don't want digital camera makers to include binary-only drivers and put us in the same box that Windows users are in. Instead, they should document the protocol used on the USB cable, so that the gphoto2 people can add support (gphoto2, despite the "g", is used by both KDE and Gnome apps to access digital cameras) . Better yet, they can submit source code to the gphoto2 people.

Re:User friendliness

[bigox]

Not soccer moms, but clueless graphic designers and photographers. But of course, they have Macs to play with.

Re:User friendliness

[michrech]

No, he didn't. I am in the Linux Community and do not share his opinion. There are many more like me.

I have gotten into many a heated arguement in varied linux IRC channels on why things can't be eaiser than they are today. The arguements were not me against the whole channel (it usually split 50-50). Once we can get the stubborn asses to see that having to go to the command line and enter in a bunch of cryptic crap or modify a bunch of .conf files to get something to work (even if you only half to do it once) is NOT the best way to do things, even if it only makes installing hardware easier for THEMSELV'S, things will improve..

Untill then... There's always Gentoo. As far as installing devices, with the recent LiveCD's, a user (during the install process) can setup the kernel that they will end up using every day to be like the one on the LiveCD - in that it will automatically detect any devices that are supported by that kernel and set them up for you. I don't know how this would work if you put a device on the system AFTER it starts (as I haven't use it at all), but it's a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned.

I'm sure that's not a capability that is only available in Gentoo either. It's only what I'm familiar with.

=]

Re:User friendliness

[Yazheirx]

'~/pictures' works for one user. What do you do if you want to keep it in a common location? Where do you put a folder to keep sub folders with lots of common items like pictures, budgets, recipes, and other common documents and files? I am not trying to be argumentative, I just don't know.

Re:User friendliness

[pyros]

Just how much profit do the manufacturers make writing drivers as opposed to selling hardware?

Spending the money to pay the programmers to write the drivers is the deterrent. The money that customers spend buying the hardware because the programmers wrote the software is the incentive. When the incentive becomes greater than the deterrent, the company gives it serious consideration. If 50k people write to Kodak and say "I will buy your camera if you publish a Linux driver for it," they can run the math and maybe decide that the investment will be worth the return.

To put it another way, the release of the software for other platforms will increase hardware sales (witness iTunes as a vehicle to sell iPods).

Re:User friendliness

[acidrain69]

He is talking about the symptoms of a greater problem. I can throw 2 video cards into windows 2000 and they just.... work. No crazy editting of the config files.

Granted, I have a dual monitor setup working in win2k and Debian, but I haven't had to set it up for a while, so I don't know if the configuration has gotten any easier. I have 2 machines on the desktop, and the dual monitor setup usually runs windows, with a single monitor-setup on a KVM for linux.

Re:User friendliness

[hmckee]

How can you not nitpick your mountpoints when their obfuscated names are one of your arguments? Because the correct information makes Linux look better.

You don't put pictures in "C:\pictures", they go in "C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Pictures".

All my harddrives are automounted, especially /home, so I put my pictures in "/home/username/pictures". I don't even have to remember some arcane OS construct like "drive".

To be fair to Microsoft, they're trying to move away from the harddrive concept so your photos will go in some virtual photo album named "My Pictures". Only the sys admin will know where they are really stored.

Re:User friendliness

[stevesliva]

Actually, the Sony software DLs all photos on a Memory Stick into a directory such as C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Image Transfer\'03_08_05_01\DCIM\101MSDCF

gphoto asks where I'd like to put them, and which photos I'd like to put there.

Re:User friendliness

[RobotRunAmok]

soccer mom

I suggest you find another under-represented-on-Slashdot group upon which to show your clueless-20-something prejudice and bias. My wife is the classic soccer mom, van and all, and has been modifying config files -- DOS then and Linux now -- when you were still wearing plastic pants.

Of course, when the kids want to play video games, she fires up the Xbox or GBA. Unlike you, she's smart enough to use the right tools for the job.

Games on your Linux box? At home? For kids? Ye gods, why?!?

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

where ever you want.
how about /pub/{pictures,recepies,budgets,...}?

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly. Yeah, some users are morons. But that's beside the point. The problem here is device makers who don't care about Linux. You don't see Microsoft writing drivers for every little piece of hardware on the street, do you? So why should it be on Linux devs to write device drivers?

Companies like NVidia seem to be able to at least meet us halfway, writing proprietary drivers that work with Linux. But when we're talking about stuff like cameras... why does that even need a special driver? Why can't it just offer up the photo memory as a USB filesystem? Which we could then write an automount script for and put the photos at /mnt/usb/camera or something.

Re:User friendliness

[mahdi13]

Not really, it's true.
I know of many users that don't know what USB is or even how to use it! "Just plug it in the USB port" and they look at you like your from another planet, and proceed to attempt to pulg the USB cable into the floppy drive
RTFM is over used, but maybe if half these people would at least glance through the manual they might have half a clue of what to do!

I'm not user bashing, I'm I D 10 T bashing!

Re:User friendliness

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Plugs Fuji digital camera into USB port of MDK 9.1 box. Watches camera icon appear on KDE desktop. Clicks icon and watches Konqueror open the directory and display thumbnail image previews.

What's that you're saying about user-friendliness?

Re:User friendliness

[danheskett]

To be fair to Microsoft, they're trying to move away from the harddrive concept so your photos will go in some virtual photo album named "My Pictures". Only the sys admin will know where they are really stored.

Thats really true. Windows XP works nice with the concept of removing where files are really stored from the user's mind. File selection dialog in Windows XP show "My Documents", "Shared Documents", "My Pictures", etc really well. So much so I am surprised how adept my family members are at using them and managing them and getting them into a working situation. Before file management was a real pain for them, because the concept of where stuff went - drives letters etc - was really hard to swallow.

Its a nice touch.. something worth copying a little more directly.

Re:User friendliness

[metallicagoaltender]

My wife is the classic soccer mom, van and all, and has been modifying config files -- DOS then and Linux now -- when you were still wearing plastic pants.

And does the average soccer mom have the same abilities as your wife? Survey says...nope. There are always going to be exceptions to the genealization, but they very rarely make a point invalid. The average person, be it soccer mom or not, isn't going to want to screw with their computer to get it working.

Unlike you, she's smart enough to use the right tools for the job.

And unlike you, I understand the concept of an example. :-)

Re:User friendliness

[faaaz]

It really isn't.

When my Linux experience was next to none I tried SuSE 8.2. A few things bothered me. How would I get the camera to work. And how would I ge my hdd-based mp3 player to mount?

Well, first I plugged in my digicam. Voila, an icon on the desktop appeared, indicating that my camera was ready to be explored. No problems there.

Second, I plugged in my mp3-player. Voila, a mountpoint was automatically created and all I had to do was click a button.

Windows never did that. I had to fiddle with buggy drivers.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

Most geek users are already using Linux.

ITYM: self-important geek users. HTH. HAND.

Re:User friendliness

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I keep my photos on a Samba server.. referenced from my Linux box, the location is: /shared/picures/ and from my significant other's Windows box the location is: G:\shared\pictures

Even have a shell script to copy pictures from the camera into a dated subdirectory under pictures/ which is a lot easier than dragging them in a file manager. :)

Re:User friendliness

[KlomDark]

OK, then go with Mandrake 9.2. I just installed it on my laptop the other night, plugged my Sony Cybershot camera into the USB port, and suddenly a new icon appears "/mnt/camera", I go into the directory and find all my pictures!

No config changes, no file editing, nothing, it just worked!

Even my ancient Okidata OL-400e laser printer worked immediately after clicking "Search for printers" during the install. I have NEVER gotten that printer to work with any version of Linux before.

Anti-aliasing works, OpenOffice is nicely installed, most excellent. I would call the entire thing just as easy, or easier, than installing Windows!

I think a desktop-complete version of Linux FINALLY exists with Mandrake 9.2! I haven't found any problems with it!

Re:User friendliness

[jonnyfivealive]

at work, i also have a dual monitor setup with win2k and debian, using a matrox 450m. im no linux guru by any means, but i get along okay. i found it surprising that the linux drivers for the card were MUCH better than the windows drivers are. it took me much less time to get both monitors working in linux than windows.

an exception to the rule, i think, but an odd one to be sure.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is the classic soccer mom, van and all, and has been modifying config files -- DOS then and Linux now -- when you were still wearing plastic pants.

So in other words you're wife is a dorky, ugly computer geek who just happens to have found a similarly dorky, ugly computer geek to father a litter of what will surely be dorky, ugly, geeky children.

Re:User friendliness

[pyros]

sufficient desktop market share that the peripheral makers get incompatibilities straightened out before release

Apple has sufficient market share to get device manufacturers to write drivers in the first place. I think it's rather that Apple has small enough market share to garuantee a consistent platform for device manufacturers to write stable drivers for.

Re:User friendliness

[October_30th]

What's that you're saying about user-friendliness?

User-friendliness means that the device works out of box under any distribution or after installing the drivers off a CD.

I haven't seen drivers for my Sony digicam. Therefore Linux is user-unfriendly.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is the classic soccer mom, van and all, and has been modifying config files -- DOS then and Linux now -- when you were still wearing plastic pants.

Hmm, then she maybe soccer grandma, or very close to it..

Re:User friendliness

[KlomDark]

I got the same happy experience with Mandrake 9.2 and my Sony CyberShot DSC-U20 - just plugged it in and it worked! :)

Re:User friendliness

[RealProgrammer]

In 1989 the Internet was growing at 8% per month. A coworker said that in a few years, home appliances would be on the Internet. I disagreed, saying "Only geeks will use the Internet." Who thought Grandma would ever learn or want to use telnet, ftp, nn, or especially ppp?

Linux use is growing. It's going to keep growing, because using Linux is becoming easier for Grandma and geek alike.

Linux is geeky because its developers and users have thus far been geeks. Linux can be made usable by Grandma, but it can't be done without Grandma's help.

Even if Microsoft, SCO, and Matthew Szulik are right, and Linux is not for the end user, that's OK. Everyone should not run the same OS. But we should reach for the brass ring while our eyes behold it, so that most people do.

Re:User friendliness

[Zoop]

My wife is the classic soccer mom, van and all, and has been modifying config files

By definition, this is not a classic soccer mom.

If you don't believe me, get some of her fellow moms from soccer practice and give a command line and ask them to install Slackware.

Or give them a DOS prompt and ask them to do anything.

Or give them Windows and ask them to go download, install, and run Mozilla.

This will educate you in ways those of us who didn't get a geek with breasts for a wife cannot.

Re:User friendliness

[ajaf]

I have a sony p31, only plug the cable, mount /dev/sda1 and whoala! my camera is now a disk device mounted.
What's difficult with that?

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is the classic soccer mom

Hey! I saw some videos of her on Usenet!

Re:User friendliness

[KlomDark]

Uh, have your TRIED plugging your Sony camera into your Linux box? I did, it worked, no drivers needed. (Mandrake 9.2)

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying SUSE is any better as I have been using RedHat for a long time, but I just happened to try SUSE the last time I had to do an install. Anyway, I was amazed when I plugged in my digital elph (Power Shot 110) and was able to browse the pictures almost instantly the first time I connected the camera. On windows I had to install the cannon software.

I haven't tried the camera under RedHat so I can't say whether it is any different. Overall I think the Linux access was actually simpler and on top of that I had plenty of good image editing apps that came with the OS itself.

I have however always had chronic problems getting and keeping sound working under all versions of LInux but I also usually have a very recent sound card.

Re:User friendliness

[October_30th]

Ok.

Of course I could re-install Mandrake over my RedHat, but why should I? If it's free software, then why the hell is my cam not supported by Redhat?

Re:User friendliness

[banzai51]

You're clearly part of the problem, not the solution. What's the matter? Will your l33tnez go down the toliet once everyone can use Linux?

Re:User friendliness

[ebh]

In the case of some devices, like low-end printers, a LOT. All a $50 printer knows how to do is move paper and squirt ink. Everything that makes the printer useful, and more importantly, differentiates it from the competition, is embodied in the driver. Without the driver, they wouldn't sell any printers.

For the printer makers, and their razor-thin profit margins, there's not enough of a market to pay to write Linux drivers, and they're not all that eager to open the source for the implementation of their legitimate trade secrets for the OSS community to port their drivers for them.

Re:User friendliness

[CleverNickName]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par.

Does it bother anyone else that the CEO of the most widely-known Linux distro keeps downplaying Linux? Why does Microsoft need to spread FUD when Szulik will do it for them?

When Mr. Szulik made this announcement about Fedora, I wrote the following to my LUG:

While I agree that Linux is not quite there for average users, I'd say that it's definitely in the last few yards of the marathon. It's too bad that he didn't take this opportunity to encourage hardware manufacturers to make fewer winmodems or winprinters or winwhatevers.

I'm very unhappy to hear the CEO of Red Hat adding some legitimacy to Redmond's FUD, even if it's a transparent effort to showcase Red Hat's Enterprise solution.

One of the reasons I chose Red Hat is precisely because it was so easy to install and configure. A major consideration was my digital camera, in fact.

Guess what? I plug it in, launch gtkam, and there it is. I've dumped thousands of photos into my machine that way. I only had to use the cli once, and that was because there wasn't an icon in the kicker by default.

The fact is, as long as the CE-freakin-O of Red Hat Linux says ". . . we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par." Linux will stay well behind Windows on the desktop.

This is like the CEO of Ford telling people that they'd be better off buying a Toyota, because Toyota has better cup holders and spiffy digital guages, instead of working harder to make Fords more attractive to buyers.

Re:User friendliness

[milkman_matt]

What the hell kind of soccer mom is going to be using a dual-head setup anyway? Oh yeah, none. Doesn't sound like much of a problem to me. If her computer came w/ linux pre-installed she wouldn't have any problems.

You're probably right, there probably won't be (m)any soccer mom types with dual head setups.. but for the ones that do exist, it should be as easy as plugging it in in order to get a wider desktop acceptance of linux.. I want to be able to plug in my PDA or digital camera or whatnot and just have it work like in OS X or Windows..

I use linux as my desktop station at work, and I can get this stuff working, but for the people who have less of a clue, those are the people that need to be catered to if anyone wants linux to get the userbase of the other OSs.

-matt

Re:User friendliness

[pyros]

The mostly likely reason for some consumer device not working out-of-box with Red Hat is legal concerns of patent licensing (witness the mp3 fiasco). If the protocol is patented with no GPL-friendly license, or in any way encoded for content 'protection' (DMCA) then Red Hat won't touch it due to U.S. laws. Mandrake and SUSE are foreign companies and aren't subject to these laws, and Debian has a larger network of package sources, which includes foreign repositories, for just this purpose. Yes, it sucks, but Fedora has the potential to fix this. It supports third party repositories very nicely, so everyone just has to be sure and modularize packages to add the missing functionality (like the xmms-mp3 package adds MP3 support to xmms). When that happens, Fedora will have the save level of support for such things as Debian. Isn't that cool?

Re:User friendliness

[kurt555gs]

I was thinking of tryingto setup a dual monitor on my new dual G5 mac.

hmmmmm i wonder if i can plug it in, or do i have to recompile Panther????

I actually have 1/2 a dozen RH9 boxen here, and one new Debian box.

I think Debian is becomming my favorite flavor of linux, Yarro, fedora, or redhat.

Oh ..... when i work on the linux boxes, (i took the monitors away) i just ssh -X into em from the new Mac.

Best of all worlds? ..... almost .... there are still a 1/2 dozen winboxen here that give me way more problems than the linux and mac's combined.

No change in Redhat will make it case me any more grief that the windows machines i have ..... so good luck RH

cheers

Re:User friendliness

[TrevorDoom]

I don't know what kind of cracked out webcam you're using...but the "hotplug" package in my SuSE setup on my laptop and my Gentoo setup on my desktop auto-detect every device I've plugged into them thus far and load appropriate drivers.
Hell, hotplug has even IDed and installed device drivers for hardware that I never would've known which driver to load (like the IR port on my laptop).

Re:User friendliness

[Grishnakh]

Or maybe your Sony is a piece of crap because it requires special drivers to run, instead of just using the standard USB Mass Storage protocol.

My Olympus is a Mass Storage device, so I can just plug it into any Linux box with mass storage support (which is most of them these days), and it'll work without any extra drivers.

All those keychain USB drives are the same way. They wouldn't be very useful if they required a special driver to work, would they?

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is the classic soccer mom, van and all...

Well, at least, that explains her huge balls.

Re:User friendliness

[IWorkForMorons]

It's an old 3Com HomeConnect. Poor quality, but I only paid $10 for it so I didn't care. Support for it on Linux has been user-driven only, and getting the damned thing to work is very difficult. I know...I can always get a better webcam. But I bought it because I didn't know how useful it would be to me. And seeing as I'm still only playing around with it as a surveilence camera, I find it good enough for the job...under Windows only, though.

Re:User friendliness

[AJWM]

then why the hell is my cam not supported by Redhat?

Because Redhat is not a (consumer) desktop distro. It's primarily a server distro, with a token nod to the corporate desktop. Redhat's dropping of shrinkwrapped distribution is further evidence of that.

Consumer-friendly distros like SUSE and Mandrake have always been way ahead of Redhat in supporting stuff like this.

It's just as well RedHat won't be showing up on the shelves at Best Buy and CompUSA anymore, it gave desktop Linux a bad name.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

To quote a famous dog, "It's called REALITY my friend".

Re:User friendliness

[marko_ramius]

It doesn't HAVE to be so ... it just is.

Get some Apple UI developers to pitch in on the user interface and that would probably change.

mr

Re:User friendliness

[CommandNotFound]

Its a nice touch.. something worth copying a little more directly.

Haven't used KDE in a few years, eh?
:)

Re:User friendliness

[693746]

For what it's worth, in Red Hat Linux lately you can download and install programs by clicking a link to the .rpm (install file). The web browser asks if you want to open/save, and if you click open a little window pops up with a progress bar and installs it. In fact, I prefer this to the windows way because:

A) I don't have to answer a bunch of stupid questions
B) It doesn't make me close my open applications
C) It doesn't require me to reboot
D) It doesn't install a half dozen spyware/adware programs along with the application

Which isn't to say that things are perfect. It is a pain in the ass to work with digital photos. But still, the issues are being resolved one by one, like dominos.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

Is she a foul pig who turned to computers to hide her ugliness or is she hot?

If ($hot){
print "Does she have a sister?";
}else{
exit(1);
}

Re:User friendliness

[Brandybuck]

Linux desktop not pass the grandma/soccer-mom test

B.F.Hairy.D.

The mistake being made here is that Linux will please everyone. No operating system ever will. I highly suspect that your Grandma can't even handle Windows unless it's preinstalled and a geek kid downloaded into her neighborhood.

The target audience shouldn't be everyone. It should be the average user. Not below average, but average. That's doable, and I think some Linux distros are already there. And I'm not necessarily talking about the "newbie" distros.

Re:User friendliness

[vogel]

User friendliness requires a lot of coordinated effort across projects which is why I think it's going to take a while till Linux catches up with Windows or MacOS X wrt this.

Re:User friendliness

[Kludge]

I can throw 2 video cards into windows 2000 and they just.... work. No crazy editting of the config files.

No, they don't. You have to throw in the driver disk and hope that installs correctly, etc.

And, no, with RedHat you don't have to edit the config files. It does just work. You may not get the latest greatest performance, but you will if you install the drivers.

Re:User friendliness

[Brandybuck]

provided that you've installed a gphoto2-based app such as gtkam or kamera

Heck, with my Olympus, you don't even need that. Just plug it in and you're done.

Re:User friendliness

[hdparm]

Well, try installing Win2K on one of the newer Latitude laptops without using Dell's restore CD (which I have to do at work fom time to time). Bloody thing needs reboot after installing every single piece of hardware, including but not limited to, VGA, NIC, sound...

RH 9 on that box installs everything first time and after initial reboot, you are able to browse the internet (providing you're plugged into the connected network), you can create presentations, write documents and spreadsheets, use email, irc, IM, USB pen drive, mount network shares and so on.

Your definition of user-friendly, based on one particular device, is strange.

Re:User friendliness

[BalkanBoy]

It's because Apple still hasn't ported the Mac OS X GUI layer to Linux (Yellow Dog e.g.) :).

Re:User friendliness

[smaug195]

Well the nice thing about Windows XP in my experience, is generally it sees the camera, and pops up a download pictures dialogue. Very simple.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

It sure is hard to type 'mount Olympus' and 'umount Olympus' in a terminal.

And those darned up and down arrow keys that store my frequently used commands in the shell, that makes it even harder. Hmmmm, , camera is mounted.

Whew.

Gotta take time out to catch my breath now.

Re:User friendliness

[Brandybuck]

From someone without computer experience, what the hell is "mounting" a hard drive?

Mounting a drive is merely the process of making it available for the user to use. It got it's name from the old days when you literally mounted a reel of tape on a spindle, or literally mounted a disk platter on the drive unit.

Under UNIX, there is a single directory tree. There are no drive letters like C:, D:, etc. So mounting a drive sets it's location (or mount point) on that single directory tree.

If you don't have removable drives, you need never worry about it. But of course you have CDROMs, DVDs and USB devices to hassle with. The traditional UNIX means to deal with these in a "friendly" manner was an auto-mounter of some kind.

Windows also mounts drives, but most are done automatically so you never notice it. Insert a CDROM and it mounts automatically. Push the eject button, and it automatically dismounts before ejecting.

At least it was automatic until recently. Ever use a USB camera or storage device? Do to the nature of USB, Windows can't get the signal that the device has been removed before it gets removed. This is bad. So Windows make you unmount it first. But they don't call it unmounting (or all the UNIX guys would be razzing them for it). Instead they call it "stopping" the device. Before you remove it, you have to click on the USB icon with the green arrow in the systray, then "stop" it. You're only supposed to remove it when Windows tells you that you can.

Under the Macintosh (old and new), you unmounted devices by dragging them to the trashcan. Same concept.

Re:User friendliness

[WinterSolstice]

This is a really important point:

MS Says: "We have the biggest installed base in the world. Write to us or die"

Apple Says: "We have the most consistent hardware and OS in the world. Please write to us, or we'll make you un-cool."

Linux Says: "\/\/3 4r3 1337 |-|4x0r5 4|\|d d0|\|7 |\|33d u."

IMHO, if there were a seriously stable API for Linux (and it is getting better), there would be more companies including support. It needs to be brainless for them, however.

-WS

Re:User friendliness

[prisoner-of-enigma]

And this is precisely the level of condescension that gives the Open Source movement such a bad name. It's a combination of "you ought to learn how to do it the hard way, like I did" and "you don't need to be able to do that the way you think you need to be able to do that".

Doesn't sound like much of a problem to you? Could you possibly be any more self-centered? It doesn't matter one damn bit whether or not you think it's a problem or not, dammit! It matters that somewhere, somebody may think it's a genuine problem for them, and that problem may seem insurmountable enough to dissuade them from using Open Source stuff. Your desire to easily shrug this off is a symptom of a disease called elitism, and it's rampant here at Slashdot.

You want Linux to overtake Microsoft on the desktop? You'd better figure it out pretty damned quick that people want things to work, and right now most things that interest average consumers work better on Windows than on Linux. Even Matthew Szulik mentions in his replies that your average consumer seeking to get their digital camera working will not be well served by any flavor of Linux. Your answer? "Oh, you don't really need to do that." Keep it up. Microsoft needs people like you.

Re:User friendliness

[ratpack91]

Can she upload her pictures to her friend's computer? If the friend runs Windows, probably not, if the friend has a different brand of digital camera. If the friend runs Linux, and it's one of the hundreds of supported camera models, it just works.

Thats's not really true though is it. XP worked with my camera (Canon Ixus 400) without any extra software before the camera even existed whereas on Linux i had to wait 2 or 3 months for the new version of GPhoto to come out before it would work.

don't get your hair in twist about that EULA crap, the truth is that most cameras work with xp without any extra software. Having said that Linux is actually pretty good at cameras. Other stuff can be much harder than just plugin and go.

Re:User friendliness

[Jondor]

I have done user support for many years and no, most users are not morons. They just have a wrong idea about what is "userfriendly". This, together with this whole "my grandma has to be able.. " idea is what bothers me most.

Take the USB from an example above. You buy somethings, it has to be connected. Simple fact of life. Goes for a new carpet, a painting on the wall, a webcam in your computer. Non of those three things are diffictult as such. Of course not everybody has the skills to do them, but he.. we just ask a friend of pay someone. but for the USB.. there suddenly capable people lock up, get fear in their eyes.. "TECH STUFF" aaaarggghhh!
Basicly most those USB things have a cable which fits into one slot on the new device and into one slot at the computer. It's not difficult. Grantma can do it.. it just the impression that it's difficult. Actualy using a powerdrill or laying a carpet has much more chance of going wrong.

People have this idea that "userfriendly" means that you look at it and things sort out by them self. This idea, basicly hyped by microsoft, is off course completely rediculous. (and walk into a bookstore to see the long rows of "windows for dummies, windows for absolute beginners etc. etc... to prove them wrong!)

Driving a car? Not really user unfriendly, mostly standarized tools.. Just some 20 to 50 lessons..
Writing with a pen? A nice sloth of time during basic education. Etc. Etc. And a multi-purpose tool like an OS should be obviouse at a single glance? No way.

On the computer side, not logging in is userfriendly. but having trojans and virusses to deal with is not. So we need some protection which is not "userfriendly" but it's better than the alternative. Besides, hardly anybody complains about having to lock their doors again due to the alternatives: being robbed or worse..

When you're the only one you can do what you want. But the moment you start interacting (internet!, Social environment!) everybody has to learn to deal with "user unfriendly" things.

While I agree that userdocumentation can be improved. Get rit of jargon, use way more examples (Many OSS programs lack examples and demofiles to tinker with) etc.etc.
But I also think that non-technical users have to be educated somewhat on the fact that they enter a new social group/environment which, like the real world, isn't perfect and has it's own rules and sollutions.
But most of all, in my opion we have to get rit of the "users=morons" idea. They are not. They are just not interested so you fix their computer, they bake you an apple-pie..

As an related footnote, for what I blame Microsoft most is that the ruined the perception of computers as trustworthy tools. Nobody finds it strange if they get a blue screen or loose their work or whatever. It's all in a days work under windows. And then they install unix and for example an FTP server and they want something to keep a eye on it.. just to see it's still working.. Why? Because they were used to software stopping for no detectable reason.

Re:User friendliness

[kylemonger]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par.

Why, oh why must it be so?

It need not be so. Look at Apple. They sell user-friendly Unix systems. The iMac isn't even upgradable beyond adding a wireless card or more memory. You don't have to have an OS that works with every random piece of hardware. You just need a hardware/software bundle that people will pay for.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

You are sharing your root directory over samba? For shame. Or maybe that should be G:\pictures

Re:User friendliness

[ultranova]

Under Win98SE, you just unplug the USB device. No complains :).

Automounter for cd's is nice, but what we really need is automatic unmounter. At least in RH9, pushing the eject button does nothing :(. So, is there some way to catch the signal from the eject button and unmount the cd automatically ?

Re:User friendliness

[drinkypoo]

Better yet, they can just make the camera show up as multiple USB devices, one of which is a USB Mass Storage device. Then it will require no drivers, or at least, none which are specific to the device. I don't know if there is a standard USB class for video or still image transfer; all I know about is the input device, ethernet, and mass storage classes.

Re:User friendliness

[Dcnjoe60]

Not to start a distro war, but on my Mandrake system, it seems to work. I plug in the camera and I have a icon on my desktop that I click and tada -- there are all my pictures. I can copy, move, delete or do whatever.

If Mandrake (and others) can do this, then why can't Redhat?

Re:User friendliness

[Glonoinha]

No, I would guess that companies are not going to invest the time and money to get their goods working on Linux until the Linux community adopts a mantra and outlook other than 'FREE SOFTWARE! SOFTWARE NEEDS TO BE FREE!'

Ten thousand seats of installed software doesn't mean a whole lot if the gross revenue for those seats totals zero (0). Ditto 10e+06 seats.

In theory the companies (and end users) that are running Windows or Apple boxes tend to acknowledge that business software, the software that enables them to conduct their business, costs money and is seen as an investment in their company. Contrast that with a company / school / user that has decided to adopt Linux as a symbol of rebellion from the hoards of overpriced closed source software, getting free warez to run his computers - if his attitude is that his OS should be free what are his odds of paying for business packages?

As for the soccer moms, maybe if they would just offer to give up the goods while the toddlers are off at day care, geeks and hackers would be lined up to help her get and keep her machine running. I mean if an OS doesn't help you get laid, what good is it?

Re:User friendliness

[ryanwright]

No, they don't. You have to throw in the driver disk and hope that installs correctly, etc.

Not necessarily. Most video cards are auto-detected and installed for you. Depends on how new the card is vs. your version of Windows. At least you get drivers if you're running Windows. When's the last time you bought a new video card and were able to just pop the included disc into your Linux box and go? That's what I thought.

Look, I'm not dissing Linux; I love it and would have nothing else on my servers. Workstations are a different story; it's too much hassle for me. I don't mind screwing around for an hour to get some service installed on a server. But I don't have that patience for everything else. When I buy a new device, I want to plug it in and use it without the hassles of dependencies, kernel modifications, compiling, reading HOWTOs and man pages, etc. Despite Windows' flaws, most of the time it just works. I suppose that doesn't make me 3l33t enough to hang with certain crowds here; so be it.

As for the rest of the population, Linux isn't there yet. Most people are scared of the Windows control panel, for crying out loud. They don't know what a driver is or how to download one. They have a hard enough time putting a CD into their CD-ROM and navigating the setup menu. And if autorun isn't enabled, forget about it! Most people wouldn't survive 5 minutes with a Linux OS if left on their own.

Re:User friendliness

[jmorris42]

Go look at a recent Linux distro. Notice all those printers supported, including a lot of the lowball host based models? HP for one has been pretty good about making sure their products get supported.

They couldn't give a crap about the printers. All the vendors see printers as are a disguised way to get a customer to buy into a longerm committment to the vendor's supplies.

Re:User friendliness

[steeviant]

You can't seriously believe market share has anything to do with whether a company can deliver a consistent platform.

If Apple commanded 90% of the home computer market, like it used to, back in the dark ages, they still wouldn't have to deal with a mish-mash of commodity hardware like Windows and Linux does, because they basically make the whole computer and control the platform with an iron fist.

It has a lot more to do with Apple's clinging to an ancient computer-business model than it does with the amount of people using their stuff.

Works for them though.

Re:User friendliness

[zurab]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par.

Why, oh why must it be so?

Why is it so hard to have real user-friendliness in Linux?

Szulik is spewing nonsense. What's so difficult about plugging in the USB camera: if it's mass storage, the icons shows up on the desktop - you click it and see all your pictures. Then use your favorite album/file manager to handle them. If it's not a mass storage camera, it will be automatically detected by a camera app like gtkam, digikam, etc.

He is simply saying that because RH will not be providing average user product anymore, so he has to justify that direction.

Re:User friendliness

[pyros]

You can't seriously believe market share has anything to do with whether a company can deliver a consistent platform.

Not directly, no. But in order to appeal to large enough demographic to gain that large a market share, in today's landscape, they would need to have a more generic system like Microsoft. So while I don't necessarily see any causality, I do feel there is a correlation.

Re:User friendliness

[steeviant]

Thanks, but no thanks. I'd prefer to leave support for your Sony digicam out of the Debian install on my transparent proxy machine.

Re:User friendliness

[dipipanone]

I was thinking of tryingto setup a dual monitor on my new dual G5 mac.

If I recall correctly, Macs support up to three monitors without any additional drivers or software. They have done since about OS 7.5

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

...when you were still wearing plastic pants...

Watch that past tense pal, some of us are still in plastic pants.

Re:User friendliness

[mhesseltine]

They couldn't give a crap about the printers. All the vendors see printers as are a disguised way to get a customer to buy into a longerm committment to the vendor's supplies.

Exactly. You've hit the nail on the head. The cheap lowball host based printers cause the manufacturers to lose money. They don't want you to buy 10 printers. They want you to buy 1 printer and 10 ink carts.

Re:User friendliness

[blackdragon7777]

What's difficult with that?

Knowing that it's sda1 not to mention knowing how to mount things or even understanding what mounting means. From a userfriendly point of view this is horrible.

Re:User friendliness

[__past__]

Doesn't sound like much of a problem to you? Could you possibly be any more self-centered? It doesn't matter one damn bit whether or not you think it's a problem or not, dammit! It matters that somewhere, somebody may think it's a genuine problem for them,

That somebody can always fix it, we are talking about open source after all. Oh, they can't? Too bad, then he will probably have to pay someone to do that work, like RedHat, Apple or Microsoft for example. Or politely tell the OS developers what he thinks could be improved, but he certainly cannot demand anything from them.

OS developers owe this somebody nothing, and they don't owe you anything and do not have to follow your "Microsoft must die" agenda. Have you ever considered that maybe some people really do not care about Linux overtaking Microsoft on the desktop? There are already plenty OSes for Joe Sixpack, what's wrong with having some for hackers too? And perhaps, just perhaps, the requirements for a average-user-friendly OS and a hacker OS simply don't go well together - so what? Maybe Linux will never get "ready for the desktop", but most likely Windows will never get ready for the tinkerer's home LAN either.

You critizied your parent poster for being arrogant. Let me critizise you for wanting to force your political agenda on people who have better things to do with their life.

Re:User friendliness

[77Punker]

Try Mandrake. Pop in the CD and everything *just works*, no common sense required.

Re:User friendliness

[Dysan2k]

Boy, now you hit the nail on the head right there. Something that a lot of OSS packages could REALLY benefit is people who understand layout and can actually draw "pretty pictures" so that the applications LOOK usable. If it were just to functionality, heck we'd probably all be fine with Lesstif and/or Tk widget sets.

Red Hat has done some work along these lines in the past per the Gnome apps. 'Course, it'd be kinda cool to start seeing projects merge somewhat or build libraries out of modules for everyone to use. (libyahoo2 as an example)

Re:User friendliness

[jazman_777]

Besides, you need to start bringing in outside people, artists, psychologists maybe, to rearrange interfaces and make stuff easier to use.

If you brought in psychologists, they'd get distracted by all the "case studies" in the Linux world.

Re:User friendliness

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Political agenda? Where in the blue hell did you come up with that? There's no politics in my post, just simple observations. The great Linux annointed feel their stuff is so damned superior that everyone should run it everywhere. After all, you never hear any damned shortage of "Microsoft sucks" posts whenever there's a problem with something from Redmond. Then follow the inevitable "Microsoft will die, Linux will rule" posts, all extolling the virtues of Open Source and how it will take over everything. What these idiots fail to realize is that you can't take over something you're not willing to accomodate, and Linux is not the most accomodating thing out there.

As for your assertion that free OS coders "owe this somebody nothing", you're again treading awfully close to elitism. On the one hand, the Open Source community claims that having billions of eyeballs on the code is a good thing because problems get fixed. But when somebody wants something that nobody wants to implement, there is no leverage. Short of learning C++, that person is SOL. Doesn't sound like a very egalitarian way of running software. It sounds an awful lot like "Hey, you're not paying for this, so shut up and enjoy whatever I give you." Yeah, that's customer service with a smile, ain't it? That's sure to draw lots of new users.

And if you're not part of that great "movement" to have Microsoft replaced with a penguin, good for you! I'm proud of the fact that you realize there are multiple OS's out there and enough choices to satisfy everyone. Believe it or not, I'm on your side with that argument. I don't *mind* Linux being kept a hacker OS so long as the Linux zealots will finally shut up about how superior they are to Microsoft. "Better" is far too relative a term to be applied when comparing OS's.

Re:User friendliness

[jazman_777]

XP worked with my camera (Canon Ixus 400) without any extra software before the camera even existed

Is this some kind of Eastern Mysticism?

Re:User friendliness

[rifter]

You're probably right, there probably won't be (m)any soccer mom types with dual head setups.. but for the ones that do exist, it should be as easy as plugging it in in order to get a wider desktop acceptance of linux.. I want to be able to plug in my PDA or digital camera or whatnot and just have it work like in OS X or Windows..

Actually, this anti grandma and soccer mom attitude reflects the myopia of most geeks. Think about it. About 5-10 years ago, how many soccer moms emailed their friends, took digital pictures, scanned documents and photos, used the internet, and burned CDs? Pretty fucking close to 0, but why? Because it was a pain in the ass to do it and they had no idea why they would want to go through the trouble. But I can promise you 99% of soccer moms with a computer do all of these things now. In fact, I have found that non-geeks do these kinds of things more often than geeks in many cases. But they do it because now you can just buy product X at comp-uselessa and take it home and it works.

Have you all forgotten why we built the personal computer in the first place? It was supposed to empower the users to do things they had not done before. It was supposed to make people's lives easier. And the degree to which it does is the degree to which it is adopted by Joe Sixpack and his wife. Now they can shoot their own family pictures and movies on digital cameras, create a dvd complete with menus, and mail it to grandma. Or they can email those same pictures and movies to grandma. This is, again, becasue hardware and software was developed to the point that ease-of-use was there.

To those who say that the Soccer mom does not use dual monitors; for shame. If they had a mac they were doing that for ages. For several years Windows soccer moms were using dual monitors. Why? Why? Why? Well first off why do *you* use dual monitors? That's right, you do it so you can do more at once, with more screen and/or desktop real estate. How many normal users have you met that did not have 5000 things on their desktop because it's easier to find there? Does it not make sense for them to have twice as much space for them to clutter just as they buy an SUV with twice as much space to clutter? And if they can do it easily, they will do it.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a PowerShot A60 (as far as I know, identical to the A70 with fewer megapixels) and I plugged it right in, opened up KDE and it has worked on Knoppix, FreeBSD, and Red Hat Linux as of recently. The problem before everything "just worked" was that libgphoto2 didn't have drivers for it. I'm guessing this is the case with the A70. Perhaps they tweaked something in the transfer between the A60 and A70. Actually, if you don't have the newest hardware, the latest version of Mandrake will probably suprise you (or rather fail to, as everything works).

Anyway, I think this is a strength for linux. It is "A Good Thing" when you can click on a "Digital Camera" entry, plug your camera in, and download the pictures and then print or manipulate them w/o installing different photo software or special drivers. This happens to linux in many areas. I buy a new printer, plug it in, and (thinking like a newbie) reboot and (the user sees that) linux has autodetected a new printer and wants to configure it as a "so and so model 50". The user lets the computer do what it wants, hits ok, and then the printer works. Then everything is already integrated and ready to use with a recent version of Linux (or any unix for that matter with GNOME or especially KDE).

Brandon

Re:User friendliness

[FxChiP]

My friend has a problem with Windows and nVidia drivers as well. As in, the nVidia drivers were recently "upgraded" by Microsoft and no longer work. :P

Yet it works perfectly in Linux. But he can't do that because the other people who use his comp would bitch.

Re:User friendliness

[Organized Konfusion]

Sony DSC cameras are all USB mass storage too.

Re:User friendliness

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Rest assured AC, I'm not sharing my / directory.

Re:User friendliness

[Brandybuck]

Under Win98SE, you just unplug the USB device. No complains

That might explain some of those random errors you've been getting :-)

Windows can get away with this somewhat because they're mounting the device synchronously. But you're still going to have problems if you yank out the drive while it's still writing. The problems won't occur immediately or all the time, but you will get them.

At my work we've started distributing new builds (internally) for embedded Win2K and WinXP systems using USB storage devices, instead of burning CDs. Costwise, this was a very good move. Quick, simple, and cheap. But we got a huge upswing in bug reports from QA. Turns out that they weren't properly "stopping" the USB devices, but just yanking them out the second the files were copied over. After instructing them on the proper way to unattach a USB device, these mysterious crashes disappeared.

So, is there some way to catch the signal from the eject button and unmount the cd automatically?

There is a way, but I don't know what it is. The Solaris volume manager does this, so I see no reason why other Unix systems can't do the same. I suspect that some of the newer automounters can.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is the classic soccer mom, van and all, and has been modifying config files -- DOS then and Linux now.

• Soccer Mom
  
• Modifiys config files
  

Pick any one.

Re:User friendliness

[ratpack91]

well an unpatched xp is was made before the camera existed.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you. If the OS community wants Linux on the desktop they will have to figure a way to solve these problems. Keeping it a hacker OS is fine, just as long as we all realize that is what it is!

Re:User friendliness

[ajaf]

What's the difference between installing a program, learn how does it works and this? I only need to mount the device and I can "browse" the pictures using my favorite graphics program. The user should learn the basics of the OS, this includes mounting a device, if he can't do that, then he should stick with windows.

Re:User friendliness

[antiMStroll]

Not everything basic just works. I'm setting a box with Fedora Core 1. The system was loaded with a CD burner on the secondary IDE master position which, once complete, was replaced with a pair of 40 gig IDEs for a RAID0. Though the BIOS recognized them Fedora refused and neither would fdisk. It took a while for me to realize the Fedora install added a switch to grub.conf, passing the kernel a parameter indicating /dev/hdc was still a CD burner, and that it didn't recognize the hardware change and remove the switch. I know how to edit an fstab but was expecting Fedora to handle it automagically.

It was a simple matter to rectify the problem by editing grub.conf, but we're well out of soccer mom territory now. The same problem would have arisen had the burner been replaced with the single drive, a normal home user upgrade.

Re:User friendliness

[mabinogi]

> By definition, this is not a classic soccer mom.

Just out of interest, for those of us not in the USA, what exactly _is_ the defintion of a "Soccer Mom"?

Re:User friendliness

[SanityInAnarchy]

Hah! It's true that plugging in a digital camera isn't as optimal as it could be -- yet. I could hack something together in around 15 mins (estimated, w/o debugging time -- the camera itself is pickier than the software) that would detect a digital camera being plugged into USB, provide support for it, and figure out where the user is (which X server is the active vt), then launch gtkam. Some more advanced users would find this a bit obtrusive, but more advanced users can just not use my hack.

I won't do it now, of course -- I'm in school, and I've got lots of other demands on my time (making money*, slashdot posts). However, the point is, Linux is structured in such a way that I don't see too many of these hacks being required to get it where people want it. For example, I created a launcher on my dad's box to launch Quicken2k through Wine -- if I hadn't told him, he wouldn't have known the difference.

There are all these very useful tools out there that are 5 inches from the grasp of "normal" users. Either someone (like me) needs to hack more insanely simple automagicness and GUI frontends (as simple as GNOME launchers), or normal users have to stop having aneurisms when they see the commandline.

By the way, it's not as bad as you think. I'm using Gentoo, but it's actually easier elsewhere. I compiled my own kernel, and when I did so, I decided to install the drivers for the USB HID. A distro maintainer (say, RH) could easily create their own kernel and enable enough drivers to support any configuration under the sun. Here are my commands to set this up:

# install the userland program
emerge hotplug

# start it when I next boot up
rc-update add hotplug default

# start it now because I don't want to reboot first
/etc/init.d/hotplug start

Following this, I took my Logitech PS/2 mouse, took off the USB to PS/2 adapter it had (which had made it a PS/2 mouse in the first place), which had been working on my desktop for awhile. I plugged it into a mac USB keyboard, which I then plugged into my laptop. Both keyboard and mouse worked instantly.

For my next trick, I took the USB 2.0 Mass Storage device that was my external DVD/CD-RW drive, plugged it into the other usb port on my laptop, and opened up a terminal and typed "mount /mnt/cdrom". It showed me the cd in the drive. Next, I typed "eject", and it obediantly ejected. I put in a blank CD, found a CD image I'd created earlier (Nero, at least, is a Windows GUI that can save ISOs) and typed "cdrecord -dao dev=0,0,0 myimage.iso". That last command may not have worked everywhere, but it would not take that much scripting to make a more universal command. For me, even with this hotpluggable burner, it worked!

Sadly, UDF packet writing didn't work quite as expected, and I had to download a kernel patch and set up a somewhat rigid system to actually work with a rewritable UDF formatted CD, without burning the whole thing over to change a single file. But even this could be user-friendly. The distro maintainer could add one more boot script and kernel patch, and there would be a /mnt/cdrw for rewritable CDs!

So Linux can be user-friendly -- more so than Windows. I have only gotten the BSOD as a screensaver -- how does automagically installing a digital camera w/o commandline help if the thing crashes?

And also, if you have an admin-type person to help you out (or your friendly distro guy), major changes he/she/it makes to the system can be entirely transparent to you. The implication here is that the system can become even more user-friendly than ever, yet without the admin giving up any of his/her/its own flexibility.

On Linux, if you want to, you can watch packets flow through a router, and pretty much know anything you want to know about the system. But you can also know almost nothing and still work. All Joe has to remember is that his files are in

Re:User friendliness

[nelsonal]

It's a euphemism for Joe Sixpack (or more accuratly his wife). It came from the 1992 election. The dirty secret of American politics is that there is a reasonably large group of voters who are lower middle class and don't belong to a political party. The men are more socially conservative, and group is more than average fiscally liberal (more than average and occasionally embrace a cause that goes against those generalizations). This is the group that generally votes for the winning candidate in an election (its about 40% republicans (conservatives) and about 40% demacrats (liberals) with 20% in the middle. Well the political stratigests can't say go after the poor dumb people, so each Presidential election we have a new name applied to them (Joe Sixpack and silent majority came out of the 60s, Reagan Democrats from the 80s and one of Clinton's stratigests (Morris or Stephonopolus, I think) termed their wives soccer mom's and successfully woed them paving the road to victory.
The shorter answer is a middle aged married woman who probably gave up her career to raise her kids. The play sports and she drives a minivan ferring them to and from school and sporting events or other kid focused activities. She was supposedly more socially liberal, and attracted to Clinton in at least a small romantic sense, they campaigned him as a dashing worldly fellow, who was still a regular guy.

Re:User friendliness

[Kymermosst]

He is talking about the symptoms of a greater problem. I can throw 2 video cards into windows 2000 and they just.... work.

You must not use Windows, if you think it's that easy.

Would you name the cards you tried, what driver you used, etc?

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think this is a very good answer.

Soccer moms are not lower middle class. They're upper middle. They have a mini-van, kids who are involved in lots of after-school activities, and they work.

The phrase first appeared in the 80s, and reached a boom in a Clinton election year, but not 1992. 1996 was when it became a popular phrase. Please see http://www.wordspy.com/words/soccermom.asp

Re:User friendliness

[acidrain69]

Voodoo 3 3000 as the secondary and Geforce 2 MX 400 as the primary. The V3 is a PCI card and the Geforce is AGP. As for the drivers, I think I used the Final revision from 3dFX, and one of the more recent Detonator drivers for the Nvidia. I also used to have a dual setup with the Voodoo3 and an ATI All in Wonder Pro 128, but someone lent me the geforce, which is faster.

Re:User friendliness

[skookum]

It's called being realistic. Just because you had no problems with whatever you were doing doesn't mean that's the universal experience. No one is claiming that Linux or RedHad isn't CAPABLE of doing all these great things. Instead he's being frank and honest and saying that for the average user that's used to the Windows way, using and especially installing Linux can be very hard and confusing. If you disagree with that I think you've spent too long inside your vi window. Pretending that Linux is happy and fuzzy and easy to use is not going to do anyone any good because it's simply not true. There are still tons of problems that are frustratingly difficult to solve.

Pretending that these don't exist is not going to help anyone, and frankly it gives Linux advocates a bad reputation. "Everyone! You can use a free OS! What are you waiting for? There's all this great desktop software, and it's so easy to use!" And the crowd responds with "-But I can't get Flash to display in Mozilla. -And my video card is in the 640x480 mode! -My Cardbus network adaptor won't show up." Your response in this situation is either "It's very easy really, just post on this newsgroup and search some HOWTOs, come on, what's your problem?" or it's "Well maybe Linux isn't that easy to use for neophytes." If you opt for the former you are in denial.

Re:User friendliness

[packetgeek]

IMHO you are correct that a user should understand the basic operations of their computer/OS. However, it has to be usable enough for them to work on it so they can learn these things.

One more point that seems to be overlooked in this discussion, Linux is a powerful flexible OS. That being the case it should be trivial to make entry level tasks follow some default behavior that is simple and direct. This way it will "just work" for entry level users and more advanced users can invoke options to get what they want.

Re:User friendliness

[bushboy]

If I could mod you down right now I would.

Down to "imbecile"

Re:User friendliness

[Kahm-Hime]

Bit of a strange concept of "just working". Downloading and installing drivers from Nvidia (which, AFAIK, requires a reboot), and tracking down drivers from a defunct company for a now unsupported card.
Mandrake 9.2 saw my two GeForce cards and asked if I wanted to use them both and how I wanted to set them up.
Don't get me wrong - I run two dual head ATI cards in my windows box and I had to D/L the Nvidia driver to get all 3 monitors working on the linux box (via the dual head AGP and a single head PCI), but downloading and installing two seperate driver sets to get your two monitors working is hardly plug in and go.

Re:User friendliness

[TaranRampersad]

With China and the rest of the Far East moving to GNU/Linux - all the people who actually *build* the H/W - it's apparent that GNU/Linux will have less problems with drivers in the future. Szulik didn't know this when he advised the UK to use Windows for a desktop, apparently...

And isn't it strange that nobody queried Szulik on that?

Re:User friendliness

[frekio]

This is one of the dumbest highly moderated posts I've ever seen... who decided to moderate this up??

Re:User friendliness

[Compulov]

Look, I'm not dissing Linux; I love it and would have nothing else on my servers. Workstations are a different story; it's too much hassle for me. I don't mind screwing around for an hour to get some service installed on a server. But I don't have that patience for everything else. When I buy a new device, I want to plug it in and use it without the hassles of dependencies, kernel modifications, compiling, reading HOWTOs and man pages, etc. Despite Windows' flaws, most of the time it just works. I suppose that doesn't make me 3l33t enough to hang with certain crowds here; so be it.

Exactly. I'm a sysadmin and Linux is all I'll touch for our servers, however, it got to the point where I just got sick of playing with it at home, especially after I got my first Mac last year and had a chance to use OSX. Now that's the best of both worlds. A really clean, easy to use GUI with all the tools you need, but sitting on top of a BSD backend, complete with command prompt if you want it. Ever since then, I've relegated my Linux desktop box to file server/email duties, for which it works flawlessly.
My question is this: if apple can stick a new-from-the-groud-up GUI on top of a BSD kernel, why can't someone else do it? I would imagine that X itself is probably half the problem. Why not just dump X and come out with something new. Maybe do what Apple did and stick a compatibility layer in there, but have it as just another app in the gui, vs. the gui itself.
Sorry if I sound like a Mac zealot (and frankly, I hated Macs before I tried OSX last year), but it just frustrates me to no end that we have such a rock solid OS available, but only some horrifically outdated GUI (just about as old as I am). KDE and Gnome help, but I just don't think they can fix the inherent problems with X.

-Leigh

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

boo hoo.... its not a good answer. go cry to mummy

he took the time to respond and it got the point across so stop yer bitchen

Re:User friendliness

[bigox]

I'm not saying all graphic desingers and photographers are clueless. They love their Macs. I love them too, but I can't afford them. I don't mind having to manually mount my USB camera, but they would.

Re:User friendliness

[jonadab]

> I can throw 2 video cards into windows 2000 and they just.... work.

Wow. That's awesome. Maybe I should recommend a Win2k site license at work,
so we can migrate all our Win98 and WinXP systems to it. Because in Win98 and
WinXP, you're lucky if *one* video card works when you plug it in; usually,
after each Windows reinstall you have to spend fifteen minutes or so (if you've
done it a lot of times before -- it can take a newbie an hour) getting the
graphics card to work in anything but 16-color mode at the minimum res and
60Hz refresh rate. That's if you know the manufacturer and model number of
your graphics card (or motherboard for onboard video); if you don't, you're
pretty much totally screwed.

Re:User friendliness

[jonadab]

> It is really a shame that someone like Canon does not create some linux
> software and include it with their cameras.

This is silly. Doing that, you have to deal with different configurations
on the user's PC, and then when you go to write Windows and Mac interfaces
you have to start over from scratch.

Much better to just embed a web server in the camera/scanner/whatever. This is
no harder than creating interface software for any one platform, and it gets
you all platforms, and as an added bonus, it gets you a user interface that
nearly everybody already understands. Given the price of NE2000 network cards
these days, you can bundle one and a short crossover cable for roughly the
same cost as the packaging, just in case the user doesn't have a LAN setup
already. Embed a DHCP server on the camera and Bob is everybody's uncle.

Re:User friendliness

[acidrain69]

What's so strange about it? Yeah, windows sucks in that any little change requires a reboot, but it still takes less time than setting up X correctly for dual setup. Or it did since the last time I installed X (which admittedly has probably been more than a year).

Tracking down the drivers for 3dfx cards is a no-brainer. 20 seconds on google leads you to.... who'd have guessed? www.3dfx.com, which links to www.voodoofiles.com for old 3dfx drivers and nvidia for newer stuff. Defunct, but still pointing their customers in the right direction.

As for installing 2 driver sets, you still had to download X, or install it from teh CD, and if you installed it from a CD, it probably isn't current, or won't be for long. What's the difference if I install it from a CD or go grab it from the web?

Re:User friendliness

[acidrain69]

I've been searchign for drivers for years. A few minutes inspecting the chipset and FCC id numbers usually yields a manufacturer. I wasn't exactly using obscure hardware though. A voodoo 3 3000, a ATI All in Wonder Pro 128, and a NVidia Geforce 2 MX 400.

If you're using junk hardware, expect to have to do some work to get it running. I'm not dissing junk hardware. Half of everything I own is junk that I salvaged and put the time to make it work. It's a badge of honor for me.

First of all, windows98 sucks shit, and you usually end of reformatting it after a while anyway. I don't know why you are having issues with winXP.

I have had issues with ONE video card in particular, I just recently bought 2 identical budget boxes for my family, and couldn't get the video card to detect in win2k, but that's what I get for trusting a budget $30 motherboard in windows. Actually, I can't remember if it was the onboard video or the modem. The win98 drivers worked fine. The sound drivers that came with the system (on a CD-R no less.... it was a barebones system) didn't work either. I had to boot it up under knoppix and get more chipset info using lspci, go online and then I realized it just needed Intel AC97 drivers.

While all this seems extremely simple to me and most anyone on slashdot, remember that they DO give certifications for this kind of knowledge, so not just anyone off teh street understands this. I appreciate the sarcasm. But really, how hard is it to get drivers for 2 very well supported chipsets and throw them into an OS?

Nvidia is a little difficult because they are a chip source, as opposed to 3dfx and ATI, who (AFAIK) were the only source of cards bearing their chips. No worrying about different vid card functions not working or hosing your setup. I have an old Elsa sporting a riva 128 chip with Vid in/out. It will work with NVidia drivers, but then the video in/out won't work. Of course the Elsa drivers were always several steps behind the NVidia driver releases. It was a lose-lose situation.

Spend the extra $10 on whatever it is you're buying, and buy brand name; or at least somewhere that has a decent website. IE, not some freaky looking acid-trip OEM box from taiwan that you can't find the manufacturer name on. If it doesn't have a website address on the box, you are probably going to spend too much time getting it working. This is fine for home use, but sucks when people are breathing down your neck to have something working for them.

Re:User friendliness

[jonadab]

> The console commands are confusing to those without experience with them

Well, duh. Dude, it's the eighties. Err, nineties. No, wait... well,
anyway, it's not the seventies anymore, and all the end users are using this
new-fangled underpowered type of interface with graphics, where they point
at things with a mouse device and, you know, click.

The commandline is for powerusers. And, for powerusers, the commandline in
Windows (current generation; bring this up again in 2006 and we'll talk) is
pretty vastly inferior to the 1975 state of the art in Unix command shells.
When I'm on Windows, I find myself having to use a GUI file manager (Explorer
or some equivalent) for certain things, even though it's clunky, because
doing them from the command line, as I would normally do on any POSIX system,
is difficult or impossible. (Yeah, yeah, cygwin, but if it was a system I
was going to use on an ongoing basis I'd just install Mandrake. We're talking
here about doing maintenance on systems that are mostly used by other people.)

> From someone without computer experience, what the hell is "mounting" a
> hard drive?

Something you don't have to worry about. The installer for any of the
major newbie-friendly distros (RedHat, Mandrake, and so forth -- as opposed
to, say, Gentoo, which is intended for people with some *nix experience)
takes care of setting up fstab automatically. If your distro includes
Supermount (as e.g. Mandrake does) you don't have to manually mount your
floppies or CDs either. (I always turn this off, but I'm a poweruser.)

It sounds to me like you've either been using a quite old version, or a
distro that wasn't intended for newbies.

> Where do you put your pictures? Not in "C:\pictures", but in
> "/mnt/users/username/home/pictuers" or somesuch.

You click on the little picture of a house on your panel, and a window opens
up (that's your "home folder" inside your computer, where you keep all your
stuff; the equivalent on WinXP is "My Documents") and then click on the
"Pictures" folder. That's where you keep your pictures.

> Hey, how about "How does someone with no Linux experience install things?"

Under the foot menu, click on "Configuration" and then "Install Software".
The Software Manager (technically known in geek circles as rpmdrake, but
you don't need to know that) will come up. Checkmark the packages you want
to install, and click the "Install" button.

What, you mean *download and install*? End users don't do that, under any
OS, generally. They get someone like me to do it for them, or (you're going
to think I'm kidding here, but I've seen 'em do this for office software)
they go buy a computer that has the software in question installed on it.
(*That* can get expensive...) They're either afraid to install software
(because it might mess something up or possibly give them a virus) or else
they just plain don't know how. If you're comfortable installing software,
I'd classify you as at least somewhat a poweruser (though, of course, there
are a range of abilities among powerusers; I'm more toward the high end of
it myself, pushing the boundary between poweruser and developer; I don't
actually write software that anyone uses besides myself, unless you count
CGI-based database frontends, but I know and use Emacs lisp, understand
algorithm analysis, and can think in Perl... so I'm *almost* a developer.)

Just having the *desire* to install software that didn't come preinstalled
on your computer betrays a poweruser tendency in your mindset: you want to
make the computer do more, add capabilities to its feature set. End users
don't think that way; they don't even want to learn to use the features
they've already got, except for the smallest subset they need to get their
stuff done. (Learn ways to get it done better, faster, and easier? No
thanks, they haven't got time for that. They're busy, after all, and they
have other things to do than sit in front of a computer all the time.)

Re:User friendliness

[jonadab]

> I don't know why you are having issues with winXP.

In fairness, most of my problems with WinXP have been directly related to
identifying the model of the video card so as to locate the correct driver
on the manufacturer's website. After that, you install it and reboot a
couple of times, and then it will generally let you change the video
settings to something reasonable. Still, the whole process takes a few
minutes, so the other poster's "it just works" charactarization is a bit
on the optimistic side, IMO.

> But really, how hard is it to get drivers for 2 very well supported chipsets
> and throw them into an OS?

Not too bad, once you identify the chipsets. (It's not always obvious which
chip to read the numbers off of...) But letting HardDrake do this stuff for
you is easier, and I've yet to see it fail to detect a video card. (Some
other kinds of hardware are another matter, granted.)

> IE, not some freaky looking acid-trip OEM box from taiwan that you can't
> find the manufacturer name on.

Actually, my *worst* problems have been with big-name systems, where I had to
reinstall Windows for one reason or another, and the specific model name is
nowhere on the system (it just says, e.g., "Deskpro", which is roughly as
specific as identifying a nursing home resident as "the one with glasses"),
so you don't know which softpaq to get. But then, too, my worst problems
have been not with video cards but with NICs. In two cases I ultimately
gave up and bought replacement NE2000 cards (and later put the old cards into
Mandrake systems, where HardDrake configured them automatically, and all I
had to do was tell it what IP settings to use).

Mind you, I'm not saying that hardware support is universally better in
Linux. (It's not. Some hardware isn't supported at all.) What I'm saying
is that it's not universally "it just works" in Windows, as the other post
seemed to be claiming. That's a significant exaggeration.

Re:User friendliness

[acidrain69]

Not too bad, once you identify the chipsets. (It's not always obvious which
chip to read the numbers off of...) But letting HardDrake do this stuff for
you is easier, and I've yet to see it fail to detect a video card. (Some
other kinds of hardware are another matter, granted.)

Well, for a video card, it's usually the one with the heat sink/fan on it :) At least nowadays it is. Older ones you could tell by the manufacturer, and if you're still stumped, a simple serch on the chip number usually reveals it. Eg, Trident, Cirrus Logic, Oak, Hercules, NVidia, ATI, etc etc etc.

Actually, my *worst* problems have been with big-name systems, where I had to
reinstall Windows for one reason or another, and the specific model name is
nowhere on the system (it just says, e.g., "Deskpro", which is roughly as
specific as identifying a nursing home resident as "the one with glasses"),
so you don't know which softpaq to get.

There was your second mistake, dealing with Compaq. :) I hate their softpaq system. And they can't even name the files something descriptive. What is that all about. Seriously, they are below Gateway on my list. Their only redeeming quality was some of their higher end stuff, which has now been folded into HP. No loss. Their desktop machines were shit. The FIRST time they pissed me off was right around when win2k came out, and I was trying to upgrade my then-girlfriend's PC. Compaq decided not to release any win2k drivers for their home machines because it would bite into their office market. Bastards. Maybe they shouldn't be screwing the office segment of the population and it wouldn't be a problem.

As for NIC's, yeah, they are harder to pinpoint, but not as hard as modems. Modems are the worst to identify. NIC's I usually just pull up lspci and the Linux Ethernet Howto from tldp.org, which has a lot of info on network cards.

Besides, in the previous post, I WAS limiting it to video cards. For me, video cards pretty much do just work.

Re:User friendliness

[einhverfr]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par.

I have had extremely good experiences with Gphoto2 in this regard. The exception is, interestingly enough, cameras that are USB Mass Storage Class devices. In this case, you have to mount as SCSI, and this either requires root or requires an FSTAB entry. Perhaps I can write a shell script that installs the necessary entries, directories, etc. and adds a launcher. If anyone has a better idea, let me know ;-)

Re:User friendliness

[einhverfr]

This will educate you in ways those of us who didn't get a geek with breasts for a wife cannot.

My wife is hardly a Geek. Nor is my mother. However, both are reasonably comfortable using Linux, and both are willing to LEARN.

Here is the problem-- People here seem to think that most people are too lazy to learn about computers. The real problem is not laziness-- after all they learned how to drive, program a VCR (something I have not found valuable enough to learn yet ;)), etc. The real problem is that most of these people are too scared to try to learn. Most are afraid that they will screw somethign up, that they will break the computer, and will be humiliated by tech support. I know-- I used to work at Microsoft's Product Support Services division....

Believe it or not-- I think that most people I have met would be willing to put forth reasonable effort to learn a new operating system, etc. if they felt that:
1) they could
2) they wouldn't break anything.

THis is where Linux is much better than Windows :) Only root can REALLY break things.

Re:User friendliness

[nelsonal]

His response was not rude, provided a useful link and useful information, no harm no foul.

Re:User friendliness

[ryanwright]

What I don't get is this: Why can't Apple release OSX for non-Mac hardware? I'm sure this has a lot to do with their sales figures - plenty of people buy Macs for OSX, and if they could just load it on their PC, they would skip the new Mac.

But still, I can't help but wonder if this isn't a viable business opportunity for Apple. Charge $100 or so; I'd switch in a second. I know Mac hardware is big business for them, but I really think it's holding them back in some areas. I'll never buy a Mac, but I would buy an iPod, and OSX, and use iTunes, etc, etc...

Re:User friendliness

[Compulov]

Heh, I was thinking the same thing. I can see them not wanting to erode their hardware sales. Also, there is something to be said about having standardized hardware. It probably makes it much easier to keep the system stable. Not to defend MS, but I do imagine it's hard to keep the OS as stable as it is (which, with XP I'll admit is stable enough), especially with the sheer volume of hardware it has to support, along with some dubious drivers from the various manufacturers.
Jobs has either been quoted (or maybe hinted at, I don't recall my source) that OSX could easily be ported to x86 if they wanted (or were forced) to. I just wonder how well it would work with a much broader set of hardware to deal with. Then again, the Linux kernel works well enough, but people would expect more Multimedia support (and I would imagine that's the hardest set of equipment to support -- graphics drivers, sound drivers, and to some extent tv and other multimedia hardware)... not to mention having to port the existing applications over to a new architecture (though with Cocoa, it seems like it should actually be pretty easy as that support's the x-platform frameworks held over from Next).

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

Geeks with breasts! Whoopieeee!!!

Re:User friendliness

[robhancock]

HP's cameras can be configured to operate as either a digital camera device or as a USB mass storage device. I was not able to get my PhotoSmart 620 to work in Linux in digital camera mode, but I was able to mount it as a mass storage device..

Re:User friendliness

[robhancock]

You can get away with just unplugging the USB device in Windows, as long as the device didn't have anything open on it. I think in the event it did have open files, Windows becomes rather annoyed with you: "The volume that was removed had open files on it. Next time please click Safely Remove Hardware before removing the device." or something like that.

If you have a mass-storage device mounted under Linux, it's not going to be happy with you if you pull it out without unmounting first, either. The file system model isn't really designed to handle surprise removal of the device..

Re:User friendliness

[e3wah]

So, I am assuming that nobody other than me has tried Lindows? Or are you guys still paranoid over any linux company that actually knows how to run a business?

I haven't had a SINGLE problem yet with Lindows and USB devices... I plug in my digital camera, and in about five seconds (it is slow 233 box) the USB mass storage icon pops up on my desktop, mounted all nice and pretty for me. Same thing with my friend's USB pen drive- I had no problem at all using it. The only thing that could be considered unsuitable for the average user would maybe be the unmount warning if you unlplug it hot, but considering how well it works on that distro, I will forgive it.

Really people... in many ways, you get what you pay for. Though desktop linux is not ready for the average computer brain-dead people out there, it is getting closer thanks to companies with huzbah (forgive my ignorant spelling) like Lindows. If you want to see Desktop linux succeed, buy yourself a CNR subscription and lend your knowledge to the boards Lindows boards.

...and no, Lindows.com did not pay me to say that.

((e3wah))

Re:User friendliness

[strombrg]

If some camera vendor released binary only software for their camera, and I could use gphoto2/gtkam/sane instead, I'd probably chose the latter.

If some camera vendor released opensource software for their camera, the other camera vendors would benefit from it (ooooohhh, shudder, horrors).

I'm happy to stick with gphoto2, I just want them to mention it on the box as supported software.

BTW, my powershot A60 seems to work ok with gphoto2. I've been attributing the need to powercycle, to the battery-saving autoshutoff I turned on in the camera.

Re:User friendliness

[KlomDark]

I dunno, ask RedHat, not me... :) Sorry you picked RH instead of MDK!

Re:User friendliness

[another_mr_lizard]

What kind of cards are these? I really find it impossible to believe that you take 15 minutes to configure a windows display driver. Maybe you should find a windows tech who actually knows his stuff?

I upgraded 30 desktop PC's with various cards in them (Matrox G200/400, ATI Rage/Rage Pro, Nvidia Vanta, etc) to XP over the weekend - all of the boxes were ghosted using an image that was set up for the Vanta cards. On the first boot of each machine the correct graphics cards were detected and configured. Only the Rage Pro's required a reboot, oh and my dual monitor machine - an aging PCI Trident and an AGP vanta.

Re:User friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

By "user friendliness" you mean what exactly? For me the command line is more natural that pictures. When I get faced with a whole bunch of pictures its a struggle to figure out what is going on. Most of the time I just try and search for some way to get a CLI so I can get something to work! Sure, if I was an ancient egyptian then maybe all those funny pictures would mean more - but I'm not. Same way as I am typing using words right now, what icon would you use to express your comments?

"User friendly" is in the eye of the beholder...

All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[nberardi]

Well it looks like the world of Red Hat on the desktop is going like the over zelouse dot-com's. I really think this is sad, because all that it does is make Linux more eliteist, beause now there is no brand that people really associate with Linux. In addition this pushes Microsofts Desktop further, because Microsoft is a brand, Linux isn't, and the most recongized brand in Linux has just folded up shop for the Desktop.

I see this as a trend and Red Hat is trying to compete with IBM on the server market. If you notice every year IBM offers less and less in the desktop hardware and everybody is moving twords the enterprise servers to pick up money. This allows Microsoft to suck up more of the market share on the desktop. In addition the way things are going now, with .Net and webservices, Microsoft is going to dominate even the server market, because if they can convince you to buy their servers and program applications on *nix in Mono to take advantage of that, they win.

Because like it or not Exchange and SQL2000 are far more advanced than anything Linux has to offer. And now that their are interfaces, people are going to try and put out applications in *nix with Mono. Only forcing companies in the long run to buy Microsoft Servers and might as well buy Desktops too, because .Net will be .Net where ever you go.

All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[nberardi]

Why is that, tell me, I am curious? Or do you hate Microsoft so much that you can't see a simple stradegy forming?

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[Tony]

Exchange? Hardly: you have Lotus Notes, which is much more flexible and powerful, and much more secure. SQL2k? Oracle blows it away, as does IBM's DB/2, both in capability and speed.

Your comments about .NET are spot-on, though, as are your thoughts about desktop Linux and brand-name recognition. Without a significant Linux desktop presence, Microsoft will use the desktop to eliminate the server competition.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[Salsaman]

Because like it or not Exchange and SQL2000 are far more advanced than anything Linux has to offer.

More advanced than Oracle ?

And now that their are interfaces, people are going to try and put out applications in *nix with Mono. Only forcing companies in the long run to buy Microsoft Servers and might as well buy Desktops too, because .Net will be .Net where ever you go.

Personally, I never plan to develop with mono. Gtk+ works well enough for me. And I don't know of any other Linux developers who plan on using mono either.

Besides, if RH are pulling out of the desktop market, that just leaves more room for the other distro's.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[Azghoul]

Yes, because they've been so successful at wiping out the server competition to this point.

Oh wait... that's right, they're not "wiping" out anything in the server room, even though they've enjoyed 90%+ desktop share for how many years now?

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[nberardi]

You have to look at price in the comparison. You can usually buy 2-3 SQL2000 servers for the price of one Orcal.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot because you've obviously never heard of Oracle. Or maybe you've heard of it, but don't know it runs on Linux. Or maybe you knew that, or thought SQL2000 was better. If that's the case, you're an imbecile.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[Dcnjoe60]

This could also be a great opportunity for some of the other distros. Like you said, Redhat is the Linux company with name-brand recognition, but they never really supported the desktop very well. Now with them stepping aside, maybe one of the more desktop oriented distros (is anyone listening at Mandrake?) will step up and fill the void.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Because like it or not Exchange and SQL2000 are far more advanced than anything Linux has to offer.

DB2, Oracle, RedHat Database. What does exchange do that open source mail servers can't do, save for calendaring? If calendaring is the only thing, I wouldn't say that's "far more advanced". Or do you need a GUI?

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[CryBaby]

And you can buy three Honda Civics for the price of one BMW M3, so what's your point?

They occupy different markets and are not considered competitors by most DBA's. MS SQL is fine for low-traffic business apps but it simply does not compete at the high end. That may sound simplistic but, in fact, the transaction processing capability and scalability gulf between the two is so incredibly vast that they truly are entirely different products.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[groomed]

Oracle is neither free nor libre, so it's not a particularly good example of open source software beating proprietary software. It's just a case of one proprietary package beating another, but that's not very interesting.

The issue isn't UNIX vs. Microsoft, it's open source software vs. Microsoft.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[drinkypoo]

I don't see why using Mono (or any other .NET implementation) is going to drive you toward buying a Microsoft server. There is no reason whatsoever that you couldn't have your database on any operating system you want, on a separate machine from where you are running these .NET binaries. Most complicated systems are spread out across multiple servers already. You could have your web services written in C# for .NET running on Mono on a quad Opteron running Linux while your database is DB2 on AS/400. Remember, we have this thing called a network, that allows computers to utilize nonlocal resources.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[antiMStroll]

You completely ignore the fact that Linux share of the corporate desktop is on the upswing. Exposed to it at work, many will want it at home, as happened with Win 3.1 and 95. You also ignore the escalating cost of a complete home Microsoft solution and the ever decreasing possibilty of MS warez due to activation. In fact, your entire chain of reasoning hangs on brand recognition of the RedHat name. Seems thin to me.

Re:All hail Microsoft, the Marketing Genious.

[Anonymous Coward]

uh? PostgreSQL runs cricles around SQL-Server; Firebird and SAP DB are at least at the same level, all 3 are FREE.

And yes, I have done quite a bit of work with SQL-Server, and it's a frking *JOKE*
(not as bad as MySQL though, that isn't even funny...)

And please, wake me up when SQL Server runs on a *sane* and *useable*(I wont even mention *secure*) Operating System

\\K

APT?

[bucketoftruth]

I still don't know what I'm going to do about apt. I have, let's say, 100 servers running rh8 and 9 and I use apt-get exclusively to keep them up to date. Can I switch to fedora and expect apt to still deliver updates in a timely manner? Will rpmfind.net still have endless versions for me to choose from? This is what concerns me more than anything about redhat's changes. I'm just afraid that the wealth of rpm packages out there is going to dwindle away leaving me having to maintain 100 distinct servers via tar-balls. Arrhhhgggg!!

Re:APT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno, but freshrpms now supports fedora, that's an awfully good sign.

Re:APT?

[Anonymous Coward]

you want an answer...

simply TRY to install Fedora...

it's a fight as the installer is a broken piece of junk they hosed badly.

fedora will become a major failure.

Re:APT?

[bogie]

He answered that in the first question.

"Users continuing with RHL9 past the end of its maintenance window will be interested in the Fedora Legacy Project, a community-driven continuation of updates for RHL9 and RHL7.3."

Based on the talent involved with the Fedora project I see no reason as to why updates won't work well and in a timely manner. To doubt that is to cast doubt on every single other community Linux project such as Debian, Slackware, Gentoo et al. Ther are a lot of users in your particular situation. Nobody has a desire to make things more confusing. I'm absolutely positive that by the time official support ends next year that a great replacement will be up and running for the countless Red Hat users out there. Red Hat 7.x through 9 is likely to be supported for years to come. So no, hopefully tarballs won't be in your future.

Re:APT?

[jbn-o]

I have, let's say, 100 servers running rh8 and 9 and I use apt-get exclusively to keep them up to date.

apt-get will continue to work it does now for as long as the APT repositories exist and distribute compatible software. This is true for any APT repository distributing software for any operating system.

Can I switch to fedora and expect apt to still deliver updates in a timely manner?

According to Szulik's response, up2date in Fedora Core works with APT and YUM repositories. This would suggest you won't need the apt-get CLI program merely to update packages you already have installed. You might find it handy for other tasks (as well as the other APT programs).

Will rpmfind.net still have endless versions for me to choose from?

The only reason reason why this would go away is if a lot of people buy into mostly unwarranted fear of what FC has to offer and no longer choose to package software for FC GNU/Linux. I don't see how this ties into your APT questions.

Re:APT?

[Darth_Burrito]

For Red Hat 7.3, my understanding is updates will end in one month on December 31st. Is Fedora Legacy going to be ready by then? I can't find any substantial documentation on the legacy project, pretty much just the mailing list. What are the alternatives for stretching the life of RH 7.3 for say another six months on a production server?

To doubt that is to cast doubt on every single other community Linux project such as Debian, Slackware, Gentoo et al.

Is it? I'm an outsider to distribution internals, but it would seem to me Debian, Slackware, and Gentoo are all reasonably established community driven projects that attract certain community oriented people. Meanwhile, Fedora Legacy is a new and untested attempt at community support of a previously corporate sponsored distribution. For me it seems natural to question the Fedora Legacy project, especially if you presently use RH in a production environment.

Re:APT?

[IFF123]

Nobody has a desire to make things more confusing

You obviously never met any system programmers...

Re:APT?

[bogie]

I think its healthy to question it, but my advice to you is get on the Fedora mailing list and explain you concerns. Like I said your not the only person in this situation. Talk to the others and see what's going on.

Also and I can't find the link right no, but there is a company that for reasonable pricing is going to be providing updates for 6.2 till 9. If I can find the name I'll post back, but ask around.

Here is the list address
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fe dora-lega cy-list

and the annoucement
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora -devel-list/2 003-September/msg00287.html

painehope...

[herrvinny]

Painhope, my view of reasonable and your view of reasonable might be different. And I would like to take you up on your offer. Send me an e-mail and we will take you up on your offer. Keep in mind that we do not sell licenses. We sell subscriptions where the value of the bits are integrated with service levels.

How much is Redhat going to ask for per CPU? painehope gave an example of $50 per CPU for a 512 node machine, $35 per CPU for a 1024 CPU machine, etc. How much is his 4000 node machine going to cost?

All in all, a good interview. Szulik even runs a Linux cluster at home! very nice.

Re:painehope...

[kiwimate]

I would guess that, on that scale (totally hypothetical, remember), his machine is probably going to be around $25 per CPU. Not hard to multiply that out to $100,000.

Re:painehope...

[Anonymous Coward]

your "guess" is totally baseless; Szulik dodged the question as has RedHat Corporate ever since the they rolled out RHEL3. RedHat is not making a quick decision on HPC cluster license costs... the verdict is still very much out.

Re:painehope...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont think it was a good interview at all. Szulik provided the most undetailed, short answers I have ever seen in an Ask Slashdot. They answered the question, but not with the passion that others have answered in the past. Also the fact that he didnt answer most of the points in the education / cluster licensing question. I know he is not a native english speaker, but it looks like he put very little effort into these answers.

Re:painehope...

[orionbelt]

I disagree. I think this was one of the worst interviews that I've seen on slashdot. I think this would be a great opportunity for RH to set some things straight and to fix the recently-tarnished image of RH in the tech community and he more-or-less blew it up...

The disinterest in universities is particularly striking... And it's not just universities: Can I, as a university member, have my home or laptop Linux covered under the university's policy? If not, then I am one more of the sorry-but-we-do-not-cover-you-any-more victims, along with the home user... And what about other tech-savvy people who need a *working* system (no Fedoras please!) but cannot afford an Enterprise license?

I found it disconcerting that he thinks that "for the 'average' reader of Slashdot, the Fedora Project is the ideal Linux distribution"! I need a system that *works*, I don't want a system to experiment with, which seems to be what Fedora will mostly be about! And I think there are many other such /. users in a similar position. And RHEL is *not* an option!

Somehow, until this came out, I thought I was having a bad dream, that RH could not be shooting itself so foolishly. Now, after reading what the RH CEO thinks, I am disillusioned... I just hope there are enough people affected by this, that some folks more savvy than me will be able to put some robust security- and bug-update system in place without any major upheavals, and let RH go the way it came (sadly...)

Moderation Limitation?

[VernonNemitz]

Perhaps for Interview questions, the moderation system might be modified to remove the limit of +5?

Re:Moderation Limitation?

[beacher]

Heh.. Just seeing the question

Are you waiting for Microsoft to buy you out? (Score:45, Flamebait)

would make my day

Re:Moderation Limitation?

[Hell O'World]

Perhaps for Interview questions, the moderation system might be modified to remove the limit of +5?

I've been thinking about that for a while now, but I've realized that to do it right it would really require a separate system of "interview only" mod points. This is because there needs to be a bigger pool of points when the interview questions come out, and having them in the same pool would dilute their value.

It's not clear to me how well this would work, but there is definitely a problem with the +5 limit on interviews. Did he really answer the 10 that people wanted to hear? Just trying the experiment of lifting the cap might be informative. Perhaps trial and error could find a solution. After all, that is apparently how the Slashdot system was developed in the first place. The concept of user moderation is great, it appeals to my sense of democracy and free speech. There are so many variations on this theme of user moderation, and slashcode works pretty well for most things. But I always wonder if there could be a new twist to solve the little problems and make it better.

Re:Moderation Limitation?

[yarbo]

just because the highest score shown is +5 doesn't mean that some people haven't been given more points than others.

Re:Moderation Limitation?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, it does. If you ever get a hold of some mod points, try to mod up a +5 post.

Re:Moderation Limitation?

[mooman]

In geek terms, this is like an electrical circuit hitting an upper voltage rail and "clipping". If we have 32 questions that all get +5 scores, then we clearly are "overdriving" the process of selecting the 10 best ones.

So the two solutions, both electrically, and with Slashdot, are to either:
1. Reduce the amplification (cut down how many people can vote [intrinsically undemocratic] or only let them assign 1/2 points at a time.)
2. Raise the rails (make it so the scores can hit +/-10 or something. I doubt all 32 questions would have. For that matter, why set any limit, and just pick the top 10 that received votes.)

I'm just pointing out via metaphor that we apparently have a flawed system but there are some pretty common ways to fix it...

Re:Moderation Limitation?

[SeanAhern]

I think the +5 problem applies to more than just "interview" articles. See my journal entry where I discuss the problem and characteristics of a posssible solution.

(I wouldn't be surprised if we all got modded down "Offtopic" as always appears to be the case when people discuss moderation in an article thread.)

Re:Moderation Limitation?

[yarbo]

try clicking the comment number next to the time, you can see how many points they were given. This can exceed 5.

Confidence

[Space cowboy]

"Nothing. Three critical events occured during 1997-2000 ... These were matters of when and not if."

That's a powerful statement from any company exec. Hope it all pans out for them as they think it will :-)

Simon

He skipped the Edu questions...

[zoomba]

I like how he totally breezed over the educational institution questions, which were of particular interest to me as a net admin at a big 10 univ who also has RedHat machines to maintain that will soon be completely unsupported. I need to maintain a lab of computers that dual-boot to Linux and WinXP, and RH9 is the best desktop Linux solution out there currently. I don't have the budget to get the Enterprise edition, so what am I supposed to do when the support runs out?

-Mike

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[TedCheshireAcad]

I still can't fathom the idea of paying for Red Hat software. Are they skirting the GPL? Can I download the Enterprise Linux for free? I don't need support....I will support myself.

Now where is my ISO?

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Erwos]

Buy the acadmic version of RHEL. You can get a site license for $2500 and install it on as many computers as you want, AND get support. A good deall, it seems.

-Erwos

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[i.r.id10t]

There was a posting here on /. regarding educational pricing and educational versions. $25 for the WS version and $50 for the ES version, with more CPU support than the regular ES version.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to read the GPL which you are so fond of using as a club. It allows charging for access to software and nowhere does it state that ISO's must be available. Do yourself a favor and actually read the document. That way you won't look so greedy and foolish.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[(H)elix1]

I need to maintain a lab of computers that dual-boot to Linux and WinXP, and RH9 is the best desktop Linux solution out there currently.

SuSE also was doing educational pricing on the Desktop Pro version - which has the crossover thing bundled with it. Worth looking at if you have a mix of software. Not the same as the free 8.2 download.... but as long as you _have_ to pony up cash, it is a thought.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, maybe instead of constantly whining about it, you could do something wacky like solve the problem, shut the fuck up, and get back to work. It'd take about the same amount of time and energy.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there are some formatting issues with questions 10a/b/c. It looks like his answer at the end of 10a, but it is still italicized.

Also, he was open to providing negotiated contracts at a reduced cost to universities. Read what he said, not what you wanted to hear to make the problem seem worse than it is. If the RH sales rep you talked to was not helpful, ask for their boss, and tell the manager that Szulik said he would work with universities. I'm sure very few people who read slashdot take one no for a final answer when trying to solve a problem. Treat it like a tough coding problem; i.e. stay latched on until you find the right person to talk to. Just don't expect a completely free ride on red hat unless you use fedora.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[dash2]

But presumably it is perfectly legit for cheeplinux or someone similar to buy one copy of RHEL and then redistribute it for $5 a pop... so are any firms doing this?

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[love2hateMS]

Red Hat just announced very low pricing plans for .edus. I don't have the URL available, but look into it. I was quite surprised how inexpensive they were.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to be that on the educational side of things RedHat has missed the boat. Look at any major university. You will see in them swimming in Microsoft products, which they get a low site license price. Why does Microsoft almost give away software to universities? Becuase, if the university uses MS products, provides to and in some cases requires MS products to be used by students, the students will graduate knowing how MS products work and expecting to use them in the workplace. These students go out into the real world and create a market for MS.

Both RedHat (and Apple) need to realize the worth of this model. I am amazed that for so long we have been unable to get RedHat entitlements on a site license basis. Now it seems like RedHat is ready to give us a site license for $2500. Companies like RedHat and Apple should be bending over backwards to help Universities with software and even some equipment needs. Eventually, they will get a return for their efforts in more students graduating that prefer their products over those offered by MS.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[zoomba]

Has it ever occured to you that I am actively working on that problem (among many others currently)? I was making a comment regarding his interview response, and looking for some suggestions from people who have already dealt with this problem.

Part of solving a problem is knowing when to ask for help

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

MS makes available to universities a program named MSDNAA (see http://msdnaa.com/). Under this program, $700 per year buys unlimited access to most MS platforms and tools, MS Word and Excel being the prominent exceptions. The software can be used in academic labs and freely distributed to students. However, it cannot be used to provide administrative functions.

A flat $700 per year is quite a bit more favorable than $25 (WS) or $50 (ES) per copy, or a flat rate of $2,500 for unlimited distribution of WS, as offered by Red Hat. Moreover we teach students to install and configure servers. Red Hat has not yet mentioned making ES available to students on a discounted basis.

So, even under RH's recently announced more generous pricing terms, our university is likely to begin using more MS product and less Red Hat product. As a modestly sized, private university, we can't financially afford to do otherwise. Red Hat continues to price themselves outside our range of affordability. Everybody but MS loses under this scheme.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Jesse Becker]

You are leaving out two very imporant parts of that $2500 site license:

1)Iit only covers student workstations. It does not include faculty or staff workstations. As to where cluster nodes fit...that's anyone's guess.

2) The only support you get is in the form of packages, not telephone/email support aside from the usual free stuff available to anyone.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Synn]

Yes you can download it for free, it's called Fedora.

With the Enterprise stuff you're paying for the Red Hat Trademarks(branding) and the support. If you don't want or need either, that's what Fedora is for.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Jagasian]

Debian is an inexpensive and reliable Linux. My point is that you should consider other distros than commercial ones.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that this site license is for WS, not ES. Do you want to run, or learn about, DNS, DHCP, etc? Those packages aren't in WS. And, I've seen no provision for a discount on ES other than the $50 per copy made available to schools, not students.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[pyros]

Maybe because they announced educational/volume discount licensing a week ago. Granted, he should have mentioned it, but as someone with such "particular interest," you can't have been paying too close attention.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[ahodgson]

Well, not really. Fedora will change fast and won't be supported for very long. Which means you either upgrade every 6 months or you will have trouble getting security patches (from RedHat at least). That's problematic in an environment where stability is important.

I do expect though that the community will provide longer-term support for Fedora releases, which should alleviate this problem.

I totally understand why RedHat is doing what they're doing - they have to make money. However, if your requirement is a cheap(or free) distro RedHat may no longer be a good choice.

RedHat's a lousy desktop distro anyway. Great server distro though. If I change distros I'll miss RedHat kernels a lot.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Naturally it's legit. But you still don't get the support, which is all you're really paying for in the first place, so I don't really see the point.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually, it was a pissy little whine, nothing more. "What am I supposed to do now?! Wah! Wah! Wah!"

And if you were *really* working on those problems, you'd know better than to ask a place like Slashdot. There are much better technical resources out there than here.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Eraser_]

I work in the school district that shares this small california town with ~7 other colleges, and one of the admins at one of the colleges is now looking for alternatives to RHEL since they are being effectivly cut off.

FreeBSD so far is on top. :)

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[ron_ivi]

If you're an .edu, why would you want support.

It's as valuable an "education" as any for the CS department to support an OS across their enterprise.

Would I rather hire an OS guru who'se experience was "yeah, I learned how to call RedHat's tech support number" or "I learned how to support the OS across the whole campus"?

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Jason Earl]

If Fedora moves too quickly, and you can't afford Red Hat's support then you need to join up with the folks that are banding together to support older Red Hat distributions (Szulik mentioned this).

Or you could just use Debian. Most folks ridicule Debian Stable for being too stable, but it sounds like just what the doctor ordered in your case.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Bourbonium]

Well, you don't really have to pay Red Hat for the software. Anyone can download and install it for free. What you are paying for is support. This is important in a large corporate environment, but not so much for the casual home computer hobbyist. That's why I was somewhat surprised to see him say that the shrinkwrapped retail copies of RHL were profitable, because I don't know anyone who has bought Red Hat through that channel.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Kyouryuu]

When my college needed to update its Linux lab, we went from Red Hat Linux 7.2 to 9.0. We basically set up a fully updated Red Hat Linux 9.0 install on a single computer and then flashed it over to all of the others. Painless.

Because they make the ISOs available for free on-line, I don't see where the trouble lies or why one would be compelled to pay for the Enterprise or other Red Hat editions other than potentially "moral" reasons.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[hdparm]

I'm a bit surprised that there are still people out there who haven't at least started eval of various options - it's been a good few months since Red Hat announced the changes.

From what I've figured so far, the least painful one will be to start seriously looking at and deploying Fedora Core 1. The first release looks pretty impresive and from what I can see on various FC1 mailing lists, there are lots and lots of smart people, including some prominent RH employees, determined to make Fedora a very successful product.

Switching from RH 7, 8 or 9 to FC1 presents far lesser risk than any Windows upgade I've done since 95 came out.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[hdparm]

Question is, for how long will this be available before Novell introduces something similar to Red Hat's stuff?

I see this whole situation as a long awaited clarification for everybody. At their disposal, Red Hat have open source software and tools to do what they do. Anybody else in this world does, as well. While Red Hat's move may and I think it will slow Linux addoption considerably, they have every right to ask money for all work they do to make their customers' lives easier. They want to make money and they don't have to give anything for free to the rest of us.

So, choice is ours - either pay for expertise and stability, move over to distro provided for free or use that same free code and build your own OS, as you are pleased. We'll have to consider 3 factors to make that move as painless as possible - money, time frame and our ability to do something on our own. It is about time to stop practicing hipocrisy.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly it seems like RH is shooting themselves in the foot with Fedora. Being able to setup your own repository and have it all work through up2date means as sys admins, with hundreds of fedora desktops for our users, we simply throw together one rpm, test it on our test systems, and then drop it in the repository. With up2date being able to be run from the command line, you can have it take a look every night automatically with the crontab.

Smart admins get the tighter control that they want, and all for free.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[molog]

Zoomba... You didn't happen to play on Valhalla MUD back in the late 90's did you?

Ed

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

problem is, we didn't wire the campus simply to provide a learning experience for the CS student

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Tony-A]

Honestly it seems like RH is shooting themselves in the foot with Fedora.
Not at all.

It's a strange ecology. To stereotype and oversimplify, it is composed of big business aka the enterprise and the hackers. Again oversimplifying, they do not understand, appreciate, or have any use for each other.

Again oversimplifying, there is no money to be made from hackers. (Despite the media's inability to understand it, "hackers" is the correct terminology.) Hackers are accustomed to making do with what they have and not getting tripped up by minor obstacles, all without "adequate" training or education.

The money comes from enterprise users who want to pay for support that they will never need, but is there if they ever do need it. It is to the enterprise's advantage to somehow pay so that they do not need to use the support they have paid for. (Tortuous syntax, but so is the idea of the enterprise subsidizing hackers;) From the enterprise's viewpoint, they get a horde of alpha and beta testers to weed out the worst of the bugs. From the hacker's viewpoint they get to play with and use the latest cutting/bleeding edge technology. If it isn't bungled badly, both sides pretty much get something for nothing.

One thing worth understanding is that Linux is not a cheap OS. It can be had and run as cheaply as you want, but it's Microsoft Windows that is cheap, not Linux.

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

but surely your university trained _someone_ well enough to provide support? didn't they?

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[orionbelt]

It's a strange ecology. To stereotype and oversimplify, it is composed of big business aka the enterprise and the hackers.

I think you are oversimplifying too much!

There's a whole range of users between big business and the hacker, even excluding the home user, whom RH has "officially" abandoned.

These are the tech-savvy users (scientists, engineers, hobbyists even) who do NOT want to EXPERIMENT with their computer system but be PRODUCTIVE with it, and they can certainly NOT afford to pay for the RHEL!!!

Most of these users loathe having to "change version" of their linux system every 6 months, when it's well-known that for every new version, one has to wait for several months to get a number of non-distro packages up in sync. I'm talking about different packages that different folks use --be it the Real player binary, audacity or something else.

I am not saying that RH should be obliged to support these users, although I'd think that they *would* benefit from their advocacy... At any rate, these users have now been abandoned by RH, period, for better or worse.

In fact, it's easier to say who *will* be supported by RH from now on, rather than who will not: Big Business is, the rest of us are not.

The rest of us are left figuring out what the heck is behind the various code names and acronyms: Fedora, FreshRPM, FBT2SORHD (Folks Banding Together to Support Older Red Hat Distributions), other distros....

The end of the innocense, I guess...

Re:He skipped the Edu questions...

[Tony-A]

I think you are oversimplifying too much!

These are the tech-savvy users (scientists, engineers, hobbyists even) who do NOT want to EXPERIMENT with their computer system but be PRODUCTIVE with it, and they can certainly NOT afford to pay for the RHEL!!!

I agree completely. It should be possible to load something reasonable and then essentially forget about it. Get enough of it running around and methinks some sort of solution will pop up. I can hope, anyway.

figuring out what the heck is behind the various code names and acronyms
I violently agree!

Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[cioxx]

It seems to me than rather addressing the issue and assuring customers that educational instutution strategy and licensing will be prioritized, Szulik goes on to pitch a deal (on slashdot, no less) to the person asking the question.

And I would like to take you up on your offer. Send me an e-mail and we will take you up on your offer.

I'm not amused. Clearly, Red Hat isn't doing enough to accommodate educational facilities with discounted volume licensing.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Mr. Slippery]

Clearly, Red Hat isn't doing enough to accommodate educational facilities with discounted volume licensing.

Clearly, you didn't RTFA very carefully:

Keep in mind that we do not sell licenses. We sell subscriptions where the value of the bits are integrated with service levels.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. But - academia is where RH had least penetration anyway, in my experience, almost all academics go Debian or Slackware.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Ed_Moyse]

Hmm. Not in my experience in the UK. Also, CERN (the biggest physics laboratory in the world) uses RH.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Anonymous Coward]

What can be more *discounted volume licensing* than the GPL?!?!?!?
They are selling support, not licenses, get a clue, the licenses are *FREE*

M$ "discounted licensing" only includes that, *licensing* costs,
which for RH and Linux in general are *FREE*

Not to mention the "discounted" M$ price ends up at >$50K per site

\\k

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Zak3056]

I'm not amused. Clearly, Red Hat isn't doing enough to accommodate educational facilities with discounted volume licensing.

If by "not enough" you mean offering discounted volume licensing I'd agree with you.

But you probably don't mean that. :)

FYI, Slashdot covered this a week or so ago.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[GigsVT]

Not quite. Due to the EULA, if you increase the number of installed servers, you are required to increase the number of support seats.

The EULA says it doesn't overrride the GPL, but do you really want to go to court with Red Hat to sort out wether that part of the EULA overrides the GPL or not? Why would they put a part in that is clearly incompatible with the GPL if they didn't intend to enforce it?

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[GigsVT]

It might as well be a License. The EULA says you can't install more servers than you have support seats for. That sounds a hell of a lot like a license to me.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you point where does it say that? That makes absolutely *no* sense, to add extra restrictions to something distributed under the GPL would be a very clear breach of the GPL, and I'm sure the FSF and many others would sue RedHat immediately.

Hell, even I would sue RH, as there is some GPL code I contributed in some apps they distribute...

If you are going to make such exceptional accusations, you better provide at least some proof.
Or do you work for M$?slashdot is starting to stink of astroturfing...

And anyway, why not use Debian instead if you don't want the support? hell, or even that Fedora thing...

\\k

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Mr. Slippery]

The EULA says you can't install more servers than you have support seats for. That sounds a hell of a lot like a license to me.

Such a EULA would be forbidden by the GPL. If true, RedHat would be in big legal trobule, so I'm curious about what exactly it says. Can you quote the revelant section?

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[GigsVT]

Sure thing:

REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System. During the term of this Agreement and for one (1) year thereafter, Customer expressly grants to Red Hat the right to audit Customer's facilities and records from time to time in order to verify Customer's compliance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

Red Hat EULA

Now before you say "But that's just the support agreement!", note that it's impossible to purchase RHEL without agreeing to it. You can download src.rpms and compile it all yourself, but if you purchase even one single copy, you are subject to that agreement, and then couldn't increase the number of installed servers even by downloading and compiling clean src.rpms. This obviously violates the GPL, if enforced this way. Another section of this agreement says that "nothing here should be taken to override the GPL", but if that's true, why do they even say the first part at all?

I sure don't want my company to be the test case in court to see if the agreement is unenforcable or not.

Here's an article about it:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/11/10/HNr edhat balk_1.html

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[GigsVT]

Here

See the reply that is higher up in this thread for more details. You can't buy RHEL without agreeing to this.

I am moving most of our servers to Debian now because of this Red Hat fiasco.

No, I don't work for MS. Hell I even own a little RHAT stock. I really like RHAT, I just want people to be educated so we don't see the next big story "Red Hat sues company X for support agreement violations".

Ideally I'd like Red Hat to remove the obnoxious parts of the support agreement. I'd be a hell of a lot more likely to buy some RHEL server support seats.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Pros_n_Cons]

Why is this the second +5 I've seen talking about no education deals, maybe Matthew Szulik assumed slashdot readers pay attention to slashdot news.

He must not be aware nobody here can RTFA.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[bigreddog]

I went to redhat.com. I did not find any links about educational pricing at all! Yes, if I search for it I find it but that's pretty crappy marketing considering the widespread educational use. Where is the support for the core user base?

And all this talk about Licenses vs. Subscriptions...you can't download Enterprise Linux for free and even if you could you can't update it. So call it what you want, but you must pay for the service to use the OS.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Minna Kirai]

REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System,

That document doesn't appear to be internally consistent, as scrolling down to Appendix 1, Section 1 gets to this:

the license terms for the components permit Customer to copy, modify, and redistribute the component, in both source code and binary code forms.

It goes on to mention a few specific files not redistributable (basically providing a recipe for "Pink Tie" groups to do their work)

The only way to reconile the appendix statement with the apparent contradiction in REPORTING AND AUDIT is to take it that the "Installed System" as mentioned there applies only to systems under the service agreement. This viewpoint is not at direct odds with other parts of the document, particularly the initial definitions.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[GigsVT]

But it is still inconsistant even if you view it in that light. If they intend "Installed Systems" to mean "Installed Systems that have seats paid for under the support agreement", then the whole section is pointless, because then by definition you can never increase the number of installed systems past the number of installed systems you have support seats for, and the reporting, audit, and penalty sections are all moot.

I don't think there's any way to view this agreement in a way consistant with the GPL, without making the assumption that the REPORTING AND AUDIT section is completely unenforcable. By virtue of it being there, it implies the intent for Red Hat to enforce it. As I said, I don't want my company to be the one to fight Red Hat in court to find out what their intent really was.

Speaking in the Pink Tie sense, I don't think they could even use trademarks in this case, I don't think it's against the law to copy, distribute, or display a trademark within your own company. It wouldn't be like you were selling a product with the Red Hat trademark on it, so there's absolutely no chance of market confusion or dilution. I just don't see any legal grounds whatsoever for Red Hat to base this agreement on.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[gillbates]

I think the response says a lot more about Red Hat's perspective on the enterprise market than anything else. In the enterprise market, the contracts are an order of magnitude larger than the desktop market. From a financial standpoint, the desktop market produces the least return on investment for the vendor.

Vendors like Microsoft simply don't understand what being an enterprise level vendor means (Not to flame - I'm just using MS as an example because most people are familiar with them). IBM can still sell vastly overpriced mainframes* simply because they care about the customer. We can get an IBM rep onsite within a day. Our mainframe system vendors are on a first name basis with our technical teams. They come on site to "check up" with us several times a year.

I've yet to see a Microsoft rep. Yet several times in the last few years, our mainframe systems vendors have brought the price down on much needed hardware. We weren't in the financial position to spend a lot of money, yet they accommodated us.

And this is what I think Szulik is doing. Maybe he is just after the money, but either way, he's taking care of his customers. If Red Hat builds personal relationships with their customers, Microsoft will quickly become a fringe player in the corporate world. (Think about this - in spite of cpu cycles on an Intel server costing about 1/1000th of a mainframe's, they still haven't managed to convince IT shops to give up their expensive mainframes. If one compared performance numbers alone, it would seem that Microsoft couldn't lose a corporate sale.)

* - A 500,000 dollar mainframe today has about the same computing power of a Windows2003 server. While a fully configured mainframe will give performance that can't be had on an Intel platform at any price, the entry level machines are frequently configured with only one 767 MHz processor and 2 to 4 IO channels.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Mr. Slippery]

Very interesting! Thanks.

Re:Odd response to questions 10a/b/c

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that is clear how to read that agreement, And probably it might be un-enforceable...

Anyway, I agree that the "agreement" sucks, but you are still free to use Fedora, which is not very different AFAIK...

Glad to hear you are moving to Debian though ;)

\\k

Digital Camera Comment

[DG]

Oddly enough, my main home machine is a RedHat 8 Athlon 2100+

My wife has a digital camera, and it Just Works. Plug in the camera, start "Digital Camera Tool" from the Gnome start menu, download pics. No shell window required.

My non-techie wife has no problems with it at all.

Now getting the Espon C82 printer to print photos with any sort of colour fidelity was a weekend of build-CUPS-from-scratch HELL - but the camera was a no-brainer.

The RedHat desktop user experience is nowhere near as bad as it is made out to be.

DG

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[NineNine]

Now getting the Espon C82 printer to print photos with any sort of colour fidelity was a weekend of build-CUPS-from-scratch HELL - but the camera was a no-brainer.

The RedHat desktop user experience is nowhere near as bad as it is made out to be.

A weekend of trying to make a color printer work properly is "nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be"? Your comments are right in line with my expectations of RedHat (which is why my company doesn't use it).

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

I've spent full days getting printers and scanners running on windows systems, I recall upgrading to 2k and having to replace several peripherals.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[aussersterne]

I agree. The "sub-par" comment infuriates me when I have moved many friends and relatives over to Linux over the last year or so (oddly enough, most of them women). Many of them also own Digital Cameras. I've even had great experiences moving someone to gimp-print (which comes with Red Hat) using a USB Epson Stylus Color 740; no additional configuration work was needed. I've also pointed a few of them to tuxgames.com with good results.

The things my "crowd" has liked the best:

1) Konqueror. Tabs, split-window, and previews-as-icons top the list. Nearly to a one, they commented on the document, html and image previews and the great properties information.

2) Theming and eye-candy. It turns out that end users *do* like eye-candy... even if they aren't very skilled at changing it. Several times I've been told how cool it is to have a Johnny Depp wallpaper in the file manager windows, or about this really cool icon theme they found online that has a monkey as the K-menu.

3) Panel configurability... Applets, multiple menus on a panel, multiple panels on a desktop, etc. It turns out that people like to be able to control their environment.

4) Every one of them has commented on the stability of Linux+KDE vs. Windows 98/2k (haven't switched anyone from XP). They've also commented on better and more descriptive error messages that they can then call me about or search for on Google, as opposed to Windows' error messages ("This program can not work. [OK] [CANCEL]")

So far, the response has been overwhelmingly "Oh, this is cool and impressive and I use it a lot! As soon as I get a little more comfortable with it, I'll stop dual-booting and just use Linux!"

That's a far cry from "sub-par user experience."

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[ThrasherTT]

I'm sorry, but it sounded to me like you just contradicted yourself! The comment he made about digital cameras not "just working" makes the desktop user experience out to be bad. OK, so you go on to tell us that you didn't have a problem with that, but you did have a hellish experience with something else that might even be considered related to digital camera usage on the desktop. Then you tell us that the desktop experience isn't as bad as he is making it. Um, wtf? "build-CUPS-from-scratch HELL" doesn't sound like a good desktop experience.

I'm not saying that other OSes don't have their problems, but in my experience (I use linux at work, at home, and on my laptop), and in the experience of my linux-using (not as in drug-using) peers, the desktop user experience of RedHat leaves something to be desired.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky you.. How do I get my Panasonic VDR-M30 DVD-RAM camera working?

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had nightmares just as terrible and sometimes worse trying to get modern hardware working in Windows.

NO system is truly secure.
Er, I mean, perfect.

I haven't owned a Mac in ages so no comment there.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[derF024]

A weekend of trying to make a color printer work properly is "nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be"? Your comments are right in line with my expectations of RedHat (which is why my company doesn't use it).

And I suppose your company just doesn't use printers or something? Getting printing working in any OS requires tons of time and effort. I have a lexmark 3 in 1 printer/scanner/fax hooked to my Mac OS 10.3 machine that came with a macOS icon right on the damn box. It took me the better part of a day to get that thing working properly. Install drivers, Uninstall drivers, reinstall drivers, tweak OS X system settings, drop to a shell and clear out the print queue, uninstall again and reinstall, keeping in mind that you just *can't* print while you've got two users logged in at once. My parents have an HP officejet hooked to their Windows XP machine that took way longer to get working. Install the stock drivers and it prints, but the machine reboots itself every 10 minutes. It turned out that the standard HP drivers would use 100% cpu under windows XP for no apparent reason. I had to hunt around on google for a while before I found "reduced" drivers that did only printing for the officejet, and didn't destroy the machine in the process.

Printing is a nightmare no matter what OS you're under.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? I use WinXP at work, and when I needed to add a printer, I just went to the Add Printer wizard, and typed in the path to the printer. Done.

Oh, yeah, and if I wanted, I could search for the printer based on building/floor as well, which is the way I added the color printer. Done.

Both printers work 100% perfect, required no tweaking, and installed their own drivers. Why? Because the print server has the drivers.

Oh wait, sorry, this is a 100% Microsoft shop. That makes my point invalid on /. .

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[BenjiTheGreat98]

Didn't you just kill your own point there? The average user can barely set up a printer in Windows. Much less in Linux. That's what he is talking about. It is fun for me to work on setting up a printer in Linux, but I would never, say, give my mom a printer and a Linux PC and say "have at it!" She wouldn't even know where to begin and she is very computer literate (ex. understands email, web browsing, and how to operate Windows explorer. And of course, play freecell.) As much as I, someone in the computer industry, enjoys running and using Linux, I have always agreed that it is not ready to totally compete with Windows as far as desktop usability goes.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[malkavian]

Troll, to be sure, but I'll rise to the bait.
At work, you search for the printer based on building and floor.. Well, that's great. Sure your feet will be tired afterwards, but what on earth does that have to do with drivers? You can do that with Linux from the location settings of discovered drivers.
I tend to use Mandrake as a desktop these days.
I want to add a printer? For all the ones I use (epson colour 640, and laserjet 6p), I click the buttons, and it 'Just works'.
Both printers work 100%, no tweaks. Why? Because they're set up correctly on the server!
Now, speaking as one of the techs who, long ago used to have to set up those print queues in the first place, so the tech clueless only had to press a button to install things and have them 'just work', those queues could be a nightmare!
You've just shown the current corporate misconception that just because you don't have to spend hours making hardware or software work, it just 'magically happens'..
By the way, I use Linux (debian, slackware, redhat and Mandrake), Windows from 3.0 to XP. Server and Desktop. Commercially.
As far as printer support goes, I'd say Linux is just about on par with Windows. Both work pretty well..
Being in a 100% MS shop doesn't make your point invalid, just you showing that you don't have much to compare with, and not actually doing the hard stuff yourself makes your point invalid.
XP can mess up as well as the next OS. As can Linux and MacOS at times.
Horses for courses. Choose what's best for the job.
That's why I know how to use and maintain a whole slew of Operating Systems.
Only when you're familiar with the range, can you really make an objective decision about how good it really is compared to something else.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[derF024]

What are you talking about? I use WinXP at work, and when I needed to add a printer, I just went to the Add Printer wizard, and typed in the path to the printer. Done.

Ok, great, I can do the same thing under linux. In fact, gnome will automatically detect every printer on my network and set them up without me having to search for, or install, anything. Network printers are, and always have been, insanely simple to set up on the desktop. But we're not talking about network printers, we're talking about USB or parallel inkjet printers hooked to a single stand-alone machine. That's a pain in the ass no matter what the OS.

Companies like Lexmark, HP, or Cannon love to make obnoxious drivers that never work and screw up all sorts of things, because then they can charge you for tech support. Under linux, you may get stuck with a printer with no drivers, but if they exist, they're built well.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[carn1fex]

Yea but how much did you help these people to get them to the level that theyre happy with whats going on? Honestly, without a guru around, no one can make much headway with linux. Sure its neet, but the user experience is also vastly dependent on installing software and hardware. We put mandrake on my g/fs computer and she thinks its really neet, then she downloads something and tells me "it says some error thing about GTk??" theres no way she would figure it out by her lonesome. Can i hand even a savvy windows user a linux cd and off they go no more help? nope. What makes linux great for developers is what makes it tough for civilians: the mass modularity and the number of things that can break in the chain between double clicking your mp3 and it comming out your speakers.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[ahodgson]

That's true of any OS. Users new to Windows are just as lost (or worse). Future Shop doesn't have a computer support department because Windows is easy for people to use.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what the big deal is. I run Gentoo and it was very straight forward to setup and use. Digital camera works fine, network works fine, desktop works fine. The only problem I've had is trying to get a printer on a Windows machine to work, but that's only because I didn't think it was fast enough - it still worked.

We all know from experience that Windows wasn't always easy to set up. It finally got it's fabled "easy installation" after a few dozen hardware manufacturers make a number of specalized installations for common hardware and then told MS about the settings and drivers they used, until it finally because user friendly.

Remember USB on Win 95? Remember Plug n Play? Hell, for that matter, remember ATi Windows drivers from 1 year ago. Maybe IRQ's ring a bell.

We don't need a big name consumer Linux distribution. We need a few Linux Gurus; who have flawless installations; to manufacturer identical PC's and ship them with an image of his working PC. Get enough of these hardware/software vendors to make money and they can support development of install software just to make it easier for themselves to add new hardware lines.

Hey, it worked for Apple.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[FooBarWidget]

I spent a weekend trying to get my Epson C82 working under Windows XP too! Don't think Windows is perfect.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[Pros_n_Cons]

Now getting the Espon C82 printer to print photos with any sort of colour fidelity was a weekend of build-CUPS-from-scratch HELL - but the camera was a no-brainer.

now even more irony my HP psc 2210 ALL in one printer was fun. I have a duel boot RH 9/XP box and kept rebooting cause Windows needs that for drivers, and I couldn't get it to work some icon just kept poping up saying hardware found but it was empty so on the 6-9th reboot I accedently hit RH9 and guess what I see? Kudzu knew my exact model and worked like a dream ever since..

for those lookng for an ending, my XP still doesn't work w/ the printer and I've only used it on RH 9 for the last 6 months heh.
Everyone has thier own stories I guess but what I think is going on is RH is downplaying the desktop to avoid the enormous support costs of "can you help me configure outlook on RH 9, I can't find it". But one day, probably in the next two years RH will make thier move with a gnome 2.8 and kde 3.6. Linux will get there but lets not get ppl to hate linux now so they don't try it later when we really _are_ ready for everyone.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[spaceyhackerlady]

My wife has a digital camera, and it Just Works. Plug in the camera, start "Digital Camera Tool" from the Gnome start menu, download pics. No shell window required.

I use my digital camera on my Slackware 8.1 system all the time. It's really very simple:

modprobe usb-storage
modprobe sd_mod
modprobe uhci
mount /camera

If this isn't user-friendly, I don't know what is. :-)

...laura

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[SweenyTod]

I switched my desktop to XP because I couldn't get my digital camera to work via the serial cable on Linux. I've since switched back, but I need to either dual boot or use my wife's laptop to get the pictures off.

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[steeviant]

It seems odd that you didn't take into consideration whether the device you're buying would actually work on your computer before buying it.

The problem is that you bought because of the price or on impulse, not that Linux doesn't support the device you bought.

Think of it this way;

"I bought this cheap set of tyres from the Daewoo dealer, and they don't fit my Ford Explorer, stupid Ford! stupid Daewoo!"

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to do
mount /mnt/sda1 /mnt/camera

but I have it as a clickable desktop icon now that also starts nautilus looking at the camera dir. :)

Re:Digital Camera Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

A more fair analogy would be that there are no snow tires available for my new Ford Explorer. So it woul dbe silly to sell my Daewoo, and start using a Ford Explorer. Unless you can show me a DVD-RAM/DVD-RW camera with support for Linux. And by support, I mean supported by the manufacturer, not just "the tire happens to fit." Actually, it doesn't matter, neither levels of "support" are available.

Its not a purchase on impulse, or cost - it costs $600-1500 depending on where you purchase it, and I spent months researching this - there is no equivalent product supported by Linux. So its quite a good example of a digital camera not "just working," as described in the original post.

perfect English

[benjonson]

[U]nlike many CEO responses, Szulik's answers to the selected questions are his own, not PR-generated. (One clue is that they are not in perfect English, as interview responses or articles that are 'laundered' by PR or media relations departments almost always are.

Ah. If you speak well, you must be insincere?

Re:perfect English

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you DON'T speak well you MUST be sincere.

Re:perfect English

[dash2]

If you speak well, you are usually not a computer geek.

Re:perfect English

[reallocate]

So, English-speaking geeks are illiterate, and correct use of the language is evidence of deception.

Sure...

Re:perfect English

[Angst Badger]

Ah. If you speak well, you must be insincere?

It's a variation on the "never trust anyone over thirty" thing. Only with Slashdot, it's "never trust anyone who can spell ridiculous correctly."

Re:perfect English

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Ben:

Thank you for your recent post on Slashdot entitled "perfect English". As you know, we here at Anonymous Posters International value every comment placed in the Slashdot system, including yours. We read, research, and reply to over 400,000 posts per day. We hope you find our service useful as thousands of other Slashdot users do. No wonder we're rated #1!

To reply to your question, no, absolutely not. Based on our experience, over 89% of well-written marketing copy is, in fact, sincere. We believe that speaking and writing well helps us deliver the best experience to our customers, yielding a high retention rate across all demographics.

For example, did you know:

* According to Advertisting Age, insincere advertising copy leads to a decline in response rates of up to 30%?

* A recent study of Slashdot posts (commissioned by our organization) found that 78% of posts modded "+5 insightful" had a strong "sense of sincerity" and "high believability index" as indicated by our proprietary metrics?

As a final example, consider the letter you're reading now. Doesn't it seem well-written? And don't you find it absolutely sincere? Of course you do.

And now would be a great time to remind you of our Anonymous Posting Premium service.. only $14.99 per month, and guaranteed high-modded replies to all your posts... plus if you act before December 31st, you can get our ModdingChoice(tm) service, which lets you specify Insightful, Funny, or Interesting! Now that's Freedom(tm)!

Sincerely,

Anonymous Coward

Re:perfect English

[NaugaHunter]

It comes from the fact that most PR statements are reviewed by multiple people who can catch each others' mistakes. The brain thinks faster than it types and has a tendency when rereading a passage to read what it meant to say instead of what it wrote*. As such, little mistakes like repeated words are missed, and run-on sentences are recognized.

*As an example, before I click Preview I had written 'and has a tendency when rereading a passage to read what it meant to say instead of what it meant to say'. I almost didn't catch it. I can easily accept that in an answer set as long as the one given little slips like this will exist and show that it probably wasn't reviewed by another. He almost certainly reviewed himself but with how long it was it would be easy not to notice small slips.

Re:perfect English

[Anonymous Coward]

the truth is if you dont use caps or punctuation then geeks will believe in you.

it follows that if u speek 31337 then u 0wn da MAN & u r g0d. all will follow ur steps.

Re:perfect English

[drix]

Uhh, somebody needs to look up the definition of converse logic. That was neither said nor implied. Nor insightful.

Re:perfect English

[skookum]

No, it's just that Slashdot editors couldn't possibly fathom a person actually having proper grammar and spelling without a team of advisors going over every word. It's really like asking a lifelong blind person to describe a sunset, you know...

Re:perfect English

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck 'ridiculous', never trust anyone who can use 'their' correctly, or 'lose'.

Re:Interview Summarized For You!

[Anonymous Coward]

are you refering to ISOs that are available for FREE download???

if Redhat did not approve of ISOs for FREE download then why did Redhat make them available in the first place???

Hardware support will help a great deal

[yerricde]

"Real user friendliness" with respect to mass-market peripherals requires the support of the manufacturer of each peripheral. Until we see a SANE driver next to the TWAIN driver on the CD that comes with a scanner or camera, there is little that the community can do, especially if a manufacturer refuses to disclose its peripherals' wire protocols to the community.

Academics...

[erik_flannestad]

I find myself in exactly the same situation as PseudononymousCoward. Was the last paragraph of his question Szulik's response? If so, I've found no information about this on RedHat's site.

Time travel?

[mikeophile]

If you could go back in time with the knowledge you have to day, and live the dot-com years for a second time.

Darl McBride, you have been scheduled for termination.

A bit obsequious, no?

[Otter]

And unlike many CEO responses, Szulik's answers to the selected questions are his own, not PR-generated. (One clue is that they are not in perfect English, as interview responses or articles that are 'laundered' by PR or media relations departments almost always are.)

That seems a bit obsequious to me given the actual information provided. Except for a few tidbits about discounts for continuing support customers, was there a single piece of real information in there?

It's not like he was offering answers like Marcelo Tosatti's -- the fawning "No marketing here!" comment seemed a bit excessive.

Re:A bit obsequious, no?

[HiThere]

Actually, it was rather clear in some ways. E.g., his clear answer was that if you used to buy either the Personal or the Profession Edition, you should switch to Fedora. I don't think I'll make that choice, but that *was* his answer. He didn't dodge much at all.

RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[ewwhite]

But my main question wasn't answered. I wanted to know about the shadiness surrounding the Red Hat Enterprise, Professional Workstation and Academic versions. The latter two seem to be rebadged/repackaged versions of Enterprise WS.

My original comment from the Q&A article.

Why isn't Red Hat actively marketing their Professional Workstation Product? Apparently, this is a newly-released offering that hasn't been receiving much attention. It's odd, because it's not even displayed prominently on their site.

However, a Google cache of the page shows the relationship of Professional Workstation to the rest of the RHEL line.

The Red Hat Professional Workstation isn't available online, or through Red Hat, but through a few selected retail channels. Buy.com has it for $82.57, which includes one year of up2date service. It's the same product as Red Hat Enterprise Workstation. I purchased it from my local Microcenter for $99. Here's the RPM list.

It looks like this product was a last-minute addition.... Apparently, it's not crippled or relabeled.

Given my previous rants on Slashdot about the Red Hat shadiness, this looks like a good option.

Even more interesting is the fact that Red Hat didn't put much effort into product differentiation with this Professional Workstation product. I opened the box and the CDs were labeled "Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS". Well, only the first CD was labeled as such. The other CDs are identical to the Red Hat Enterprise AS/ES offering and include the same RPMS/SRPMS. SRPMS build cleanly in every test case I tried. So, buying this and using Enterprise 3.0 SRPMS for future updates is entirely possible. The same RHEL patched 2.4.21 kernel is there, too. Nifty.

Another issues that bugged me about the Red Hat Enterprise Linux move was the poor upgrade path. Reinstalling the OS on production servers that are running Red Hat 7.x or 8 ain't pretty. So, my final test with the Professional Workstation was prompted by a half-page paragraph in the manual that came with the box set.... It stated that in-place OS upgrades were only available for Red Hat Enterprise 2.1 -> Red Hat Enterprise 3.0 systems (via "linux update" at boot)...... however, you have the option of booting the install CD with "linux updateany" to relax the restriction "in case your /etc/issue file is damaged". Hmm.... No version-checking, eh? So I performed a test in-place upgrade on an existing Red Hat 8.0-equipped Proliant server...... It totally worked without a hitch!

This, along with the education and bulk-pricing deals leads me to believe that the Red Hat marketing department is working hard to appeal to the people it alienated with its announcements over the past few weeks. But it may not be enough. How can enyone plan for the future when Red Hat seems to be a moving target? We'll see what happens come December 31.

Re:RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[Anonymous Coward]

"It stated that in-place OS upgrades were only available for Red Hat Enterprise 2.1 -> Red Hat Enterprise 3.0 systems (via "linux update" at boot)...... however, you have the option of booting the install CD with "linux updateany" to relax the restriction "in case your /etc/issue file is damaged". Hmm.... No version-checking, eh? So I performed a test in-place upgrade on an existing Red Hat 8.0-equipped Proliant server...... It totally worked without a hitch!"

But will it come next version? Hell will there be a next version?

"Features not available with Red Hat Professional Workstation (but standard in Red Hat Enterprise Linux) include:

* Renewable Subscriptions -- Customers looking for supported environments or deployments for longer than 1 year should consider Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

* Additional Support options -- Customers needing support beyond basic installation should look to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

* Upgrade paths to Red Hat Enterprise Linux -- Professional Workstation is not a subscription product. We recommend that customers looking for the benefits of a annually renewable support and maintenance contract look to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

* Hardware and Software Certifications -- Not available with Professional Workstation. For environments where certified hardware and software functionality are key - Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the recommended solution.

* Open Source Architecture Integration -- Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the necessary components and support for integration into a managed corporate desktop infrastructure. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be the core platform of the Open Source Architecture."

Hmm guess FUD isn't just for Microsoft and closed source companies anymore but at least one of their Open Source counterparts too. Tis a shame.

pingmeep

Re:RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[ewwhite]

When I registered the machine running Red Hat Professional Workstation, I was given a subscription to the Red Hat Enterprise WS up2date channel. Perhaps it will be deactivated in a year, like the quote on their page indicates. Maybe it won't. It's the same product as RHEL WS, so I'm not too concerned.

The widely-available SRPMS for Enterprise Linux build just fine on Red Hat Professional Workstation, so as long as RHEL 3.0 has updates, the Professional Workstation product will be usable and and have an upgrade path..

Re:RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloody hell you stupid loser! It's linux, okay? You don't need to run Redhat to be running all your little software doo-dads. Just bloody install Debian and be done with it!

Support this, rebadged that! OF COURSE they're all just rebadged versions of the same stuff! What the fuck did you expect? I can't believe people get conned into thinking that they're actually paying for something other than hot air, when they pay for Redhat.

For pete's sake, stop visiting the Redhat website, stop looking at prices, and just use your stupid Linux. It doesn't have to be Redhat.

GOOD GOD MAN!

Re:RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[ewwhite]

I'll never understand the Debian-zealots. It's a good distro, but I don't think it's the best match for my hardware situation. If I were running a set of servers on commodity hardware, I'd go that direction, but I have about 100 HP/Compaq Proliant servers that run value-added management software that relies on Redhat. Try installing Debian on a G3 Proliant ML370. It's not optimal.

Re:RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[BlackBolt]

DJ Ed White, I like you -- you're a troublemaker. I remember from the old days how you kicked Apple's ass around a bit in public for selling you a flakey TiBook, and now you're making sure that Red Hat stays on the straight-and-narrow. Good for you. Most people just give in and accept whatever the big companies shovel into their faces and tell them to eat. We need more people like you, and a lot less "Yes-Men" here on Slashdot.

Re:RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[Wesley Felter]

* Renewable Subscriptions -- Customers looking for supported environments or deployments for longer than 1 year should consider Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Considering that renewing costs the same as buying a new copy, just buy a new copy.

* Hardware and Software Certifications -- Not available with Professional Workstation. For environments where certified hardware and software functionality are key - Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the recommended solution.

Considering that Professional Workstation is identical to RHEL WS, if something is certified on RHEL WS then it will work on Professional Workstation.

Re:RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[evbergen]

The hardware is managed by the kernel, and the same kernel is available to all distros. If distros make modifications, they must be GPLed or they are illegal. Distros supplying their own closed source drivers don't exist to my knowledge; most seem to fear (and rightly so) that they would become the risee of the linux community.

Userland software that doesn't manage the system as a whole, shouldn't depend on any particular distribution. If it does, it's badly written, as simple as that.

A properly written application runs on any unix. If you can't make your app run on any version of linux, with the same API for crying out loud, you're one hell of a lousy programmer.

So, next time, instead of saying, yes, compaq, I'll buy Redhat, compaq, next time express your distaste of their product if it only works on Redhat.

Re:RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[ewwhite]

You're right. The hp/compaq drivers should be open-source. But the reality is that I need to use them. Maybe this will be a wakeup call for HP/compaq. Red Hat's unpredictability may force them to support more distributions with their drivers....

Re:RHEL/Pro/Academic Product Differentiation

[evbergen]

The point is, especially closed drivers should work on any distro's kernel, as they are only allowed to use the public kernel API.

So, it can then only be a shoddy installation procedure that prevents the driver from working on any distro.

and the loooooosers are: academics!

[dummkopf]

yet again it seems that academia bites the dust. redhat seems to have moved over to corporate servers, yet they do not want to offer a "service-less" product for academia. we do not need service from redhat, we need a GOOD and STABLE OS for a REASONABLE price -- and updates, of course.

So please, RH, think over your policies. Academia is a big market and we like redhat, so do not take us away from you.

As a side note: I called RH UK last week Thursday. I am still waiting for the promised email from Mrs. Alonso regading my questions about RH Professional Workstation, which seems to be the answer academia is waiting for. All I need to know is if RH is willing to sell their RHEL WS software with access to up2date for a reasonable price and what the licensing conditions are. Can we buy more RHN subscriptons and get just one package???

Re:and the loooooosers are: academics!

[ewwhite]

See: my comment above

The $99 Red Hat Professional Desktop (available from CompUsa, etc.) IS Red Hat Enterprise WS. They didn't even bother to relabel the product. I don't think the EULA is as restrictive as the Enterprise versions, so I bet you can install it on as many machines as you wish. I've also been able to perform in-place upgrades to RHEL from Red Hat 7.3 and Red Hat 8.0.

Re:and the loooooosers are: academics!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't find academic discounts anywhere, then try Professional Workstation (may have to dig to find it). Its a less than $100 version of RHEL and includes 1 year of up2date subscription.

Re:and the loooooosers are: academics!

[gordie]

Why stick with RedHat if you feel abandoned by them? If you "need a GOOD and STABLE OS for a REASONABLE price -- and updates, of course" there is Slackware which is noted for it's stability. For updates to Slack, there is swaret and slapt-get (check freshmeat.net to find them). Then of course you could always go with Debian and apt-get, or try a different distro. Take a look over at Distrowatch.com! and see all the choices out there! Just because one vendor is dropping out of a market, that does not mean there is are no replacements!

Wow

[un4given]

Painhope, my view of reasonable and your view of reasonable might be different.

I must say, I am floored. If RedHat's view of reasonable differs from its customer's view of reasonable (which it obviously does), then this is going to be a disaster.

As a consultant and long time RedHat user who has brought RedHat into many companies with no Linux presence, I can no longer recommend them. RedHat's primary advantage was its low cost for a fully supported product. Now, that advantage no longer exists.

Sad too, because RedHat was really starting to gain some brand recognition. Now, it's going to be known as the Linux that's too expensive to use.

Re:Wow

[Libor Vanek]

RedHat's primary advantage was its low cost for a fully supported product

That's probably the reason why they left RedHat Linux - too much of support (equals skilled manpower equals lot of money) for low cost.

Re:Wow

[Gunfighter]

I upgraded six RedHat servers (versions ranging from 7.3 through 9) to Gentoo 1.4 for a customer recently. He couldn't be happier.

Re:Wow

[rhavyn]

Actually, it depends on how many customers views of reasonable it differs with. Of course it differs with all the people that want to be able to download a supported distro for free forever. But Red Hat doesn't care about those people because they aren't actually Red Hat's customers (as much as they'd like to think otherwise). They can also differ with people like academics who are running huge 1000 node clusters. I highly doubt that Red Hat deals with many of those potential customers every day. Hell, how many potential customers is that anyways?

What matters to Red Hat is if they keep the people who bring their primary revenue happy. If those customers aren't happy then Red Hat will fail. Otherwise, much to the unhappiness of many /.ers, Red Hat will continue to do fine. They don't care if they're known as the Linux too expensive to use if all of the Fortune 500 companies are paying for their annual subscriptions every year.

Re:Wow

[Syberghost]

If RedHat's view of reasonable differs from its customer's view of reasonable (which it obviously does), then this is going to be a disaster.

Are you saying that all RedHat customers have the same view of reasonable for EVERY licensing question, or just for this one particular case?

Re:Wow

[warpSpeed]

That's probably the reason why they left RedHat Linux - too much of support (equals skilled manpower equals lot of money) for low cost.

I find that hard to believe. They have a fixed cost to churn out patches and test them. The only cost that would scale up is bandwidth with more clients subscribing.

If they signed up more clients with RHN, they would make more money. Now that they have raised the price of using thier product by 600% it is no longer cost effective.

If they wanted more subscriptions they could have had the RHN server reject the "free" reconnections more often. I had many of my clients sign up for RHN since they wanted to get the packages as soon as they were avaiable. It was priced just right, now I can no longer recoment RedHat either.

My puny number of scubscriptions may not be worth RedHats time, but I'm sure there are many many people out there in my position.

Re:Wow

[Jason Earl]

Are you kidding? painehope wanted RedHat to support a 4000 CPU cluster for the price of a few lousy RedHat Linux boxed sets. That's just insane.

RedHat's support is still far less expensive than any commercial competitor. With Windows support is also separate from licensing. The difference is tha t with RedHat licensing itself is free.

If you want you can switch to SuSE (pretty much the only other Linux choice that is supported by a commercial company), but don't expect to pay any less for actual support (not to mention the fact that YaST2 is not Free Software).

Personally, I use Debian, as I am not interested in commercial support, but I can't blame RedHat for trying to get a fair price for their support. Engineers don't come cheap.

Re:Wow

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Someone MOD parent up.

sri

Re:Wow

[demachina]

As you suggest I'm pretty sure Red Hat's new strategy is fatally flawed. They failed to appreciate that the success of the Enterprise edition is pretty intimately tied to the success of their brand and being a leader. Their boxed set is an integral part of their brand whether they like it or not.

I was really floored by his comment that the box set was profitable, it just wasn't profitable enough. That is a classic example of an exec who has been taken over by Wall Street analyst mind control. Wall Street is constantly pushing companies to jack up their margins and grow explosively even though it often leads to very unsound long term business strategy.

Matthew please come to your senses and undo your company's idiocy in recent months. If you dont want your company to die you have to support a full Linux distribution, maintain your leadership and maintain your brand.. If you want to improve profitability scale back putting boxes on store shelves and focus sales online. I can see that putting boxes on shelves must be really expensive especially when a new version comes out and all the old stock instantly turns to garbage.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Impressive. Most people would be saying "What have you done?! I had Linux 9 on there this morning, and you installed Linux 1.4 over it?!"

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow a sensible post on the Red Hat issue. And you mentioned you use Debian as an alternative without being preachy.

Nice to see a post by an Adult here.

Re:Wow

[Swanktastic]

As you suggest I'm pretty sure Red Hat's new strategy is fatally flawed. They failed to appreciate that the success of the Enterprise edition is pretty intimately tied to the success of their brand and being a leader. Their boxed set is an integral part of their brand whether they like it or not.

A lot of people have responded this way to RH's recent strategy. I'm kind of on the fence. No one has ever done a good job backing up their arguments, either Red Hat or Slashdot posters...

Is there any data out there to show that shrink-wrapped boxes translate into enterprise sales? I know RH is making big inroads into the financial community. Do the bigwigs there make their decision based on the brand equity of the desktop distro? If they do, aren't they shirking their responsibility to make a rational decision? I certainly don't have any good numbers pro or con, but i'd like to hear them if someone has them...

If anything parallel comes to mind, it's MS trying to penetrate the server market. The general crappiness of Windows for the desktop made it more difficult for them to get into servers-- buyers & executives would have flashbacks to that BSOD they got at home trying to help their kid load up a game.

Re:Wow

[Pros_n_Cons]

must say, I am floored. If RedHat's view of reasonable differs from its customer's view of reasonable (which it obviously does), then this is going to be a disaster.

I want a $2 steak from red lobster, reasonable? damn them! what do you mean I can't choose my own prise what kinda business is this!

Re:Wow

[Pros_n_Cons]

I find that hard to believe. They have a fixed cost to churn out patches and test them. The only cost that would scale up is bandwidth with more clients subscribing.
They were already the single largest bandwith user on the east coast, would you like them to shoot for largest on the planet? And btw, nobody was buying except of course everyone on slashdot who bashes redhat, they were all good summaritans who payed $60 a year for something they could get for free. but 97% of everyone else just sucked bandwith
If what you say is true and it was working for them and making them money, Mind explaining to me why a BUSINESS doesn't want money?

Re:Wow

[Jason Earl]

Wow a sensible post on the Red Hat issue. And you mentioned you use Debian as an alternative without being preachy.

Nice to see a post by an Adult here.

And a compliment from an Anonymous Coward. Heck, I better hurry home, it's likely to start raining pigs any moment :).

Re:Wow

[HiThere]

Umnh...schools is where students learn about computers. The OS they know is the one they will feel comfortable with. That's the one they will later use at home and recommend at work.

MS may not need to care about schools any more, because it has it's OS pre-installed on nearly all computers. Everyone else needs to worry. And that included Red Hat. Of course, this isn't a thing that will show returns in the next quarter, or the one after that. But it will influence things over the years and decades.

Re:Wow

[HiThere]

I'm not at all sure. He could have been asking for that...but it isn't clear.

Personally, I read the Enterprise license, and decided that it was unacceptable to me. No big deal, I'm currently using Debian, but I checked out Mandrake and SuSE...and saw no big advantages. OTOH, I was a Red Hat customer, and I bought my boxed set for most releases (not all, I admit). Some I skipped, in favor of investigating something else. I haven't been able to convince myself that Fedora (or whatever it ends up being called) isn't really Rawhide, and while I don't mind running testing, unstable isn't my cup of tea. (I know Red Hat says I should use Fedora. That doesn't make it truth. And the mail list is full of problems that are quite reasonable if I think of it as unstable, but unacceptable if I think of it as testing [or as my system].)

OTOH: Note the bit about the Fedora version of rpm being able to download from either yum or apt repositories. That could imply something quite interesting for the future.

Re:Wow

[clacour]

Are you kidding? painehope wanted RedHat to support a 4000 CPU cluster for the price of a few lousy RedHat Linux boxed sets. That's just insane.

I think you misread what painehope said. He did not say he wanted it for $50 for 512 servers -- he wanted it for $50 each for 512 servers, $25,600 total. (And $35,840 for the 1024-node example.)

Since almost every server in the cluster is identical (by design), this is going to be about as hard for Red Hat to support as one box. (They will strongly tend to all have exactly the same problems.) In a few cases, you're going to have issues between boxes, and a few boxes will be different from all the rest (admin server, control point, managing node, that kind of stuff.)

I would assume they have a small test cluster (8-10 boxes) for working out bugs, especially the between-systems types. When the problem is solved, you install exactly the same thing on all 512 (or 1024, or 18 gazillion) machines.

He was even willing (even eager) to provide a caching RHN server (or perhaps he meant buy one, since RH does sell such a beast.)

So from Red Hat's perspective, this is going to be like supporting 10 or 15 different boxes (and I'm being pessimistic -- the equivalent of 4 or 5 is probably closer) and the RHN bandwith of ONE, for $25,600. That's actually a pretty sweet deal for Red Hat.

Painehope's problem is that Red Hat isn't interested in this. They say he should pay them $179,200 for 512 nodes. (Or $358,400 for 1024.)

The upshot of this is almost certainly going to be that people using the really big clusters (all the ones that make the "New supercomuter record!" headlines) are NOT going to be Red Hat.

Re:Wow

[rhavyn]

First of all, if that was true the entire world would be using Macs. Next, I'll point out that I was talking about academics building clusters and whatnot. Those aren't exactly what normal students or companies are doing with Linux boxes. I wouldn't think that Red Hat would have a default policy for handling things like that. As for the rest, Red Hat has academic pricing available. You might need to buy Red Hat through the school, similar to the way Microsoft's academic pricing works, however.

Re:Wow

[Jason Earl]

I actually see Fedora as a return to Red Hat's roots. A community lead distribution with plenty of paid help from the Red Hat staff should make for a pretty interesting beast. Debian, for example, is great, I love it, but it could use some of the fancy dan stuff that Red Hat contributes. I think that there is at least some chance that Fedora could become a better Debian than Debian.

Either way it is hard to fault how Red Hat has handled this. They aren't a charity, but they do make all of the source code that they write available. I see nothing wrong with trying to make a buck selling service and support. The folks that used Red Hat before, but who can't afford the new service agreements, still have plenty of options. If SuSE dropped support for their distribution folks would have to move away from their proprietary YaST2 installer. Red Hat gave their tools away.

Re:Wow

[Jason Earl]

Good luck finding a vendor that will support a 512 node cluster for $50 a node. Supporting a cluster is *not* the same as supporting just one box. painehope can wish all he wants, but that doesn't mean that some vendor is going to magically fulfill his wishes at a price that he is willing to pay.

Fortunately there are plenty of alternatives in the Linux world for people who can't afford support. Fedora is likely to be one such alternative, Debian is my personal favorite, and other swear by Mandrake.

At the end of the day Red Hat is entitled to set their own prices, if you don't like their prices, then there are plenty of other choices. That's part of the beauty of Linux.

Re:Wow

[painehope]

painehope wanted RedHat to support a 4000 CPU cluster for the price of a few lousy RedHat Linux boxed sets

RTFQ ( Read The Fine Question ). I didn't say that I wanted that at all, and I even proposed a sliding scale for large numbers of machines. And the last time I talked to Redhat regarding clusters, they wanted to license them the same as desktop workstations, which is outrageous. The hypothetical situations posed by others, who brought up nightmare customers ( like the one who said that a customer might want a team of RHCE's out to install a 5000 node network ) is handled by licensing terms. Who'd have fucking thunk it?

All what I would want out of an official support contract would be a direct update line ( so that I could have a caching update server on my network, which my machines would hit ) and a per-incident support rate. This is mostly me wanting them to get something more than a boxed-set compensation for the excellent work they have done, since updates I've already automated on my site, and bugs myself and the rest of my team track down.

Re:Wow

[Jason Earl]

All what I would want out of an official support contract would be a direct update line ( so that I could have a caching update server on my network, which my machines would hit ) and a per-incident support rate.

That's the rub. Red Hat doesn't want to be in the per-incident support business, and who can blame them. If they are going to go through the expense of hiring expensive Linux cluster engineers they want a guaranteed cash flow. You've seen the Maytag repairman commercials. Red Hat doesn't want to have to have engineers on the payroll whose primary job is to sit around and hope someone's Linux cluster breaks.

As for Red Hat's licensing terms, well, they don't have any licensing terms. Unlike commercial software vendors Red Hat doesn't charge you for the privilege of using the software. Instead they charge for service contracts.

That leaves Red Hat cluster customers with three choices. They can either pony up for Red Hat service contracts, they can support the Linux cluster themselves, or they can find another vendor that is willing to provide support at a price they can afford. That's a lot better deal than commercial vendors offer.

The fact of the matter is that Red Hat's subscription service is doing very well, and they are significantly above their projected targets. There are lots of other folks that are falling all over themselves to pay Red Hat's service fees. That makes it a seller's market. Red Hat has a limited resource (engineer time) and others are willing to pay Red Hat's price for their time.

Re:Wow

[robhancock]

Back in the days of Red Hat 7.2 or so, they used to put out updates with up2date that actually were an updated upstream version or had significant improvements, but of late the only updates available have been for security flaws or major bugs, which leaves things pretty stagnant between releases. Which is fine for corporate users or others that don't want to risk breaking things, but for those that prefer to stay closer to the "bleeding edge", I think Fedora's approach is better. There's choices there too - by default only "released" updates will show up in up2date, but you can edit the config file and turn on update notification for "testing" updates as well..

As well, Red Hat has a good motivation to keep Fedora's development vibrant because it's what RHEL is ultimately going to be based on for future versions..

What I don't like about Opensource.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Redhat wants us to develop and test fedora for free, turn around sell it to enteprise for big bucks. That is obvious, not redundant you crazy moderators. What I'm trying to get at is, that I don't see this as a good thing, but it must be the model for development if OSS is to thrive. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't want to develop for free. Linus took quite a gamble that sorta paid off for him( not big, but he will always have plenty of job oppertunites).

What about a model where OSS developers get paid for the quality of code they check in? I guess that would be freelancing,which we would still get the stick in terms of benifits ect. But, that would be better than the current state of affairs. I bet a company that set up a simular structure could do well if it didn't burn up its cash first. On second thought, the GPL would allow any competitor to just take the source the company just paid for. It would have to be an industry wide thing. I'm sure there are many other flaws that other posters will point out. Well, have at it.

Camera ?

[phoxix]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par.

I guess he has yet to try SuperMount

Sunny Dubey

Re:Camera ?

[NineNine]

So downloading and compiling an additional program to try to get accessories to work properly isn't "sub-par"? In this day and age, if I plug a standard device into my PC, and it doesn't work right away, that's sub-par. It would be back at the store *long* before I tried to download some kind of intermediary program. In my mind, that's totally unacceptable.

Re:Camera ?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my mind, that's totally unacceptable.

Thats why you use windows! In my mind it's similar to having to download a driver update which is the first thing anybody with a clue does as soon as they get some new hardware.

Re:Camera ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So downloading and compiling an additional program to try to get accessories to work properly isn't "sub-par"?

It is sub-par, but I think the parent meant that Red Hat should install and configure Supermount by default. Mandrake does, but I don't know how it works for cameras.

Re:Camera ?

[Brandybuck]

What world have you been living in? When I plug a standard device into a Windows system, I cross my fingers hoping it will be recognized. Most of the time I have to *install* drivers for it.

Even those these drivers come with the hardware in the form of a CD, it's still a far cry from working "right away". I took my camera home when I visited my mom, and forget to bring along the CD. Even though it was a standard USB mass storage device, it didn't work "right away" on her Windows system. I had to go download a driver for it.

Re:Camera ?

[flacco]

I guess he has yet to try SuperMount

the point is that the home user shouldn't have to know that supermount exists, or go to sourceforge, download and install it.

i think virtually all of the elements of a successful end-user distribution exist, it's just a matter of getting it all tied together, making sure that applications interoperate, and then TEST TEST TEST on clueless guinea pigs, and tweak accordingly.

Re:Camera ?

[TopherC]

Even with supermount, one still needs to set up the appropriate entries in /etc/fstab to get things working properly. Supermount mounts on demand, but it does not detect hardware.

When I connected a camera to my laptop (running Mandrake which comes with supermount), I still had to search google/hotwo's to realize that it would connect through /dev/sda. This was no big deal (took me a couple minutes), but I don't call that "just working." In Windows XP, you plug in the camera and the dialog pops up asking if you want to view the files, etc. Most USB storage devices don't need special drivers in XP.

Now I'm running gentoo, and discovered that supermount was not in the default kernels. Again, no big deal if you're used to using patch, compiling the kernel, etc. But not everybody thrills to that prospect.

Licensing, support and updates: Debian

[debrain]

It seems like the three main issues that I identified are:
Licensing, particularly for educational institutions,
Support, especially for the soon-deprecated RH9 series, and
Updates, and the continuation of the up2date network.

Many of the users of Red Hat seem understandably confused and upset about the direction that the company is taking. I would like to, humbly, suggest that none of these issues are pertinent to the Debian distribution. I would personally encourage users in a situation where they feel tramelled to do some research in this respect.

I think it would be inappropriate, in the context of posting to this interview, for me to suggest Debian as an alternative to Red Hat Enterprise edition. However, I do believe it to be a substantial alternative to the soon defunct consumer Red Hat series. In time, Fedora may also be a valid alternative, but at the moment its capacity to act as a valuable, low risk distribution has not been substantiated.

Re:Licensing, support and updates: Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there commercial support for Debian (i.e., pay somebody for updates and a web-based system like Red HAt network). Seriously, I'd love to use Debian (or Gentoo or FreeBSD) but the lack of commercial support is not a good selling point.

Re:Licensing, support and updates: Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Licensing, particularly for educational institutions, Support, especially for the soon-deprecated RH9 series, and Updates, and the continuation of the up2date network.

I would like to point out that in the article suprisingly, answers were given to these questions. up2date == same thing, new servers
edu == new pricing posted on slashdot 3 days ago along with SuSe
rh9 == new support plan was announced _before_ RH9 came out. Debian which you seem to suggest gets updates from the community, why cant RH users do the same? they can, infact they are. Fedora-legacy plans to support 7.3, 9.0 and Fedora after official support has ended.

Re:Licensing, support and updates: Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

all of these questions were answered in the article have you no shame? Or did you just not read it?
you pointed out it is low to suggest a distro when the article is about another, yet you went on to do it anyway. On top of that the reason for your 'suggestion' was answered yet you still get a +5, LOL i swear slashdot is something else.

Re:Licensing, support and updates: Debian

[ISPTech]

Pssst. Debian Project Servers Compromised

Bad timing.

Re:Licensing, support and updates: Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just sounding off, but I've gotta vent this somehow...

I am one of those consultants who have fought tooth-and-nail to get RedHat into my client companies. I've been a passionate Red Hat supporter and advocate since RH5.2, but I am deeply concerned (and dissappointed) by these recent moves by Red Hat. My clients do not have budgets for cost of Enterprise licenses and my time to migrate their production servers to a different version. Now I have egg on my face when they ask me what to do. (Damn!)

This post is being made on my Dell laptop that had RH9 on it yesterday, but now is running Debian. I'm not only impressed with Debian, I am encouraged. Now all I have to do it figure out how to use apt-get (or whatever) to keep myself all patched up and I'll be all set.

And RH can keep the balance of my two paid RHN subscriptions. I won't be needing them any more.

Still don't know the answer...

[edubarr]

The questions were good, but I think that something is missing...

What about stable releases for fedora?? Since it's gonna be the "bleeding-edge" will it ever be a clear distinction between stable and development? Will the security bugs be worked out and patches made available or will people need to upgrade all the time?

I'm not a red hat or fedora user (long live slack!) but I've got some friends that barelly know their way around RHL. Putting something full of holes in their hands will only frustrate them. Well, I guess I'll have to talk them into something like Mandrake or Debian.

Re:Still don't know the answer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thre will never be a stable release of Fedora, they will supply 'patches and errata' for 2-3 months after each release, after that you need to update to the next fedora release.

Re:Still don't know the answer...

[Crispy Critters]

"What about stable releases for fedora?"

I have not been able to find an explanation of what a Fedora "release" will be. Will each release break binary compatibility with the previous one, like a jump from RHL 8.0 to RHL 9? Will the releases be more like snapshots, so a completely updated X.1 is identical to X.2?

Lastly, how can Red Hat expect anyone to treat the Fedora Project seriously unless these questions are answered?

I have corresponded with people with various personal and professional interests in RHL, and truth be told they are in a panic. They are angry at RH (which is unreasonable) and they feel they have to figure out now how to migrate their systems without enough information to make an informed decision (true). RH needs to start giving better answers.

Re:Still don't know the answer...

[Wesley Felter]

I have not been able to find an explanation of what a Fedora "release" will be. Will each release break binary compatibility with the previous one, like a jump from RHL 8.0 to RHL 9?

They'll break binary compatibility if the upstream packages do.

Will the releases be more like snapshots, so a completely updated X.1 is identical to X.2?

No. My impression is that updates will only provide bug fixes and new versions will provide new features.

Re:Still don't know the answer...

[Crispy Critters]

"They'll break binary compatibility if the upstream packages do."

Er, upstream packages don't usually contain binaries. Binary breakage mostly has to do with libraries and compilers and linking. Binaries of complicated programs are going to depend on specific versions of libraries, for example. Certain changes in libraries mean binaries have to be rebuilt.

If the Fedora Project is going to break binaries every 4 months, no one will use it except for testing and development.

Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[wackybrit]

Okay, perhaps someone here can fill me in. I'm not too au fait with the business models used by these companies, and just stick to my pet distros.. but he said this:

Keep in mind that we do not sell licenses. We sell subscriptions where the value of the bits are integrated with service levels.

This sounds fair, considering Redhat is just a bundle of open source software, with a few pieces of free, but closed source, technology.

But does this mean I could legally get a copy of RedHat Enterprise Server, and install it on as many machines as I want? That is, I don't pay for any support or ongoing upgrades, but I get the benefit of the new Redhat product. Then, for support and upgrades, there's always the community.. or, as I'm sure will happen, a 'free' community effort to keep RES patched against the major problems will spring up.

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[aled]

This is the same question that I have, and then: can I manually download the updates without subscription?

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[rhavyn]

The license that comes with RHEL says all the software is GPL, but by subscribing to this license you have to have a valid subscription for every machine that you own. What that basically says to me (IANAL or a Red Hat sales person) is that if you buy one copy and then explicitly tell them that you have no interest in their subscription, you can install it on as many machines as you want.

Why would you bother tho? You can download the SRPMs and recompile those. Or use fedora, an actual, community supported distro. Cause, honestly, there doesn't seem to be a lot of community support for RHEL.

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[Roadkills-R-Us]

We've pushed and researched, and come to the conclusion (supported by an admission by a cornered RH person) that yes, you can do this. As someone else noted, you may have problems with the support license. The other thing to be aware of is that RH *does* include some non-GPL'd software. You can *not* freely distribute that, and it's up to you to determine which pieces those are. Maybe someone has done this and documented it; I don't know.

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[miniver]

The license that comes with RHEL says all the software is GPL, but by subscribing to this license you have to have a valid subscription for every machine that you own. What that basically says to me (IANAL or a Red Hat sales person) is that if you buy one copy and then explicitly tell them that you have no interest in their subscription, you can install it on as many machines as you want.

Why would you bother tho? You can download the SRPMs and recompile those. Or use fedora, an actual, community supported distro. Cause, honestly, there doesn't seem to be a lot of community support for RHEL.

Because what you're buying from Red Hat is corporate support not software. Red Hat is in business to return value to their stockholders; they do this buy selling support contracts for software.

I do not understand what the controversy here is, I really don't. If you want the latest and greatest software, with all of the latest bells, whistles and patches, download and install it yourself. If you want something that's easy to install, and has people actively investigating and fixing bugs for free (ie: as time permits), download and install Fedora Linux. If you want something that's stable and well-supported with a guaranteed, many-year support window, then buy a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and pay the support costs each year for each of your servers. If you want support for dozens of servers, but you don't want to pay Red Hat's fees, then buy your support from someone else at a price you prefer, if you can. It's not like anyone has a gun to your head requiring you to use Red Hat...

I've been dealing with Red Hat's distribution and their support since 1996, and I have found Red Hat to be an honorable business with a well-thought-out business model. That they're still here after the ups and downs of the dot-com boom/bust speaks highly for their management.

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[clacour]

Keep in mind that we do not sell licenses. We sell subscriptions where the value of the bits are integrated with service levels.

Then somebody at Red Hat is lying. My account rep (who I'll be nice and not name for now)told me yesterday, when discussing this exact subject, that we WERE buying (well, renting) a license, and that we most emphatically could NOT install it on multiple machines. (Which is 180 degrees from what a different account exec told me 6 months ago.)

This is the major gripe I have with the new scheme. If I want to put Linux on an unimportant box (say, an X station for the operators), or a temporary box, I must pay Red Hat $350 (absolute minimum) AND I must wait a week to ten days for them to process my order and send me the boxed set. (That statement is per the aforementioned account rep.)

Here's the way I'd like it to work:

You could install it as many times as desired, but get no support at all (not even RHN) for free

For a reasonable price (say $100), you get RHN only -- no support at all.

THEN get to the $350 if you actually want any kind of support

What we've got (per the account exec I mentioned) is item #3 as a option, and ONLY number 3.

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[HiThere]

I don't understand the upset among enterprise customers. And except for the question about academic licenses there may not be any. Among professional customers, however, there's every reason for upset. Red Hat has basically cut them off without upgrade path. (Fedora may eventually develop into something reasnable...but there's a better than even chance that it won't.)

Basically Red Hat has said "We're supporting the hobbyists with Fedora, and the Enterprises with our Enterprise editions. So be happy." But there are a lot of people who were in the middle, and they aren't particularlly happy. I wouldn't be if I'd committed to them. Fortunately, though I'd used Red Hat for much of the time, I *wasn't* committed to any of their system specific features, and haven't had any trouble moving over to Debian (LibraNet, actually)...though choosing which way to jump has been a bit entertaining.

If I'd carried though with my original plans, and gotten an RHCE, or even a RHCT, though, I'd feel quite upset.

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[HiThere]

There's a library in North Carolina that has come out with a "White Box Linux" which is basically just that. It's a bit more complicated that you suggest, but if you're interested you might google for them. (They've already been hit once by a link here, why hurt them twice.)

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[miniver]

I think a lot of people are selling Fedora short. I've installed it and am using it as my primary desktop at home (and I expect to be upgrading my servers to it by year's end). Based upon my past experiences with Red Hat Linux (every release from 3.0.3 to 9) Fedora feels just like I would have expected from Red Hat 9.1 (or Red Hat 10). The only difference was that I downloaded ISOs and burned CDRs instead of buying CDROMs in a red box with printed documentation.

I don't know how you characterize professional, but I consider myself a professional software developer (20+ years) and I wouldn't hesitate to deploy Fedora in a small organization or a large enterprise (with adequate testing of course). Perhaps the problem is with the term 'hobbyist'?

For that matter, I don't understand why people feel a need to specialize (after all, Debian and Red Hat have more in common than, say, Solaris and HP-UX)...

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[HiThere]

By professional I meant those who had be the purchasers or the Red Hat Professional Edition. Sorry, that was clumsy phrasing.

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[GigsVT]

How are you going to explain to your client that you need to come do a full OS upgrade every 8 months? Bear in mind that there's currently no supported upgrade option other than rebooting into the installer. apt-get upgrade and such are not guaranteed to work, and I don't think anyone's working toward making them work either.

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[miniver]

What about using Red Hat Professional Workstation? Ok, so it isn't a path to their Enterprise line, but it is supported.

What's Included

Red Hat Professional Workstation is a complete suite of tools for the power desktop user.

• Supports up to 2 processor x86 workstations
• Includes applications and services power desktop users demand
• Bluecurve, Ximian Evolution, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla
• Web Server powered by Apache
• Samba, NFS, CUPS
• GCC 3.2
• Includes one year of Red Hat Network updates
• Includes 30 days of phone and web installation support

What's NOT Included

Red Hat Professional Workstation is designed for the advanced user requiring a single Linux desktop deployment with limited support and management capabilities.

Features not available with Red Hat Professional Workstation (but standard in Red Hat Enterprise Linux) include:

• Renewable Subscriptions -- Customers looking for supported environments or deployments for longer than 1 year should consider Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
• Additional Support options -- Customers needing support beyond basic installation should look to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
• Upgrade paths to Red Hat Enterprise Linux -- Professional Workstation is not a subscription product. We recommend that customers looking for the benefits of a annually renewable support and maintenance contract look to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
• Hardware and Software Certifications -- Not available with Professional Workstation. For environments where certified hardware and software functionality are key - Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the recommended solution.
• Open Source Architecture Integration -- Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the necessary components and support for integration into a managed corporate desktop infrastructure. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be the core platform of the Open Source Architecture.

Re:Redhat doesn't sell licences?

[HiThere]

I want to install it on 3 machines, and I tend to abide by licenses. (That's one reason I moved to Linux.) So I find their licenses, as I understand them, unacceptable. Also, I'm cheap, and they've quadrupled their prices.

That said, another factor is that I don't see their advantage over Debian, now that I've looked at the competition. (Well, administration is *slightly* easier. But KDE is better supported on Debian. (Bluecurve broke things for me...I did eventually find out that switching to another theme fixed them again, but it was awhile before I knew what the problem was.)

Huh?

[Lumpy]

so most questions are unanswered.

I was very interested in his answer to the license arena and he completely ignored it with a "call me" attitude and intentionally did not answer the questions...

why is he afraid of simply being frank with us and telling us the truth... be it, "that redhat products are NOT for us, please dont buy them, try to use fedora instead." or "oops, our bad, yes the license language is stupid and we are looking at fixing it."

no answers, just typical CEO speak.... Great...

I thought...

[jav1231]

RH was losing "millions of dollars" offering a shrink-wrapped RHL? Not their words, mind you, but many justifying their abandonment of the desktop. According to Szulik, it was actually "profitable." Which means, they DID just say to hell with that sector. I'll go back to being terribly disappointed in them, thankyouverymuch!

Re:I thought...

[rhavyn]

If it was profitable by $100,000 but by dropping it they are profitable by $1,000,000 which do you think is the better choice? Remember, all the resources sunk into the RHL product was resources not going into RHEL. And competing with yourself (why should I buy RHEL when I can just get RHL) is not a good place to be.

Re:I thought...

[ewwhite]

Yet they still sell a shrinkwrapped box.... They just don't market it. Weird.

Re:I thought...

[reallocate]

I live wthin shouting distance of Red Hat's home office and, even here, you've had to beat the bushes to find a store that sold Red Hat. What you found were a few dusty boxes of the current release on the shelves at Best Buy and CompUSA, sitting next to a few dusty boxes of the current SuSE release. Big-box booksellers might have one box of each on their shelves.

AFAIK, vendors like Red Hat buy shelf space in stores. It's always been my impression that all those dusty unsold boxes meant Linux vendors were wasting their money.

The Implication of this Statement

[sielwolf]

(One clue is that they are not in perfect English, as interview responses or articles that are 'laundered' by PR or media relations departments almost always are.)

Is this to mean we're to trust the /. editors because they treat English grammar like a bad child? So that's why they do it! Baad spleling is know a assurans of kwality!

Not PR generated?

[blanks]

" (One clue is that they are not in perfect English, as interview responses or articles that are 'laundered' by PR or media relations departments almost always are.) "

Any good PR Person knows when talking to computer people, to throw in bad english, random swear words, and to ramble on for no reason on subjects that dont really matter, (or have nothing to do with the topic).

I'm downloading Debian right NOW

[AwesomeJT]

What can I say.... I loved RedHat but then RH said go take a flying leap! Basically, Fedora is the same as Debian, but Deb as been around for years and successfully community driven. RH keeps changing their tune every so often. I paid for RHN and now I get robbed of my money -- upgrade offer isn't good enough for me. I honestly don't think WS or ES will be around -- eventually they will also be EOLed which forces everyone to pay $$$ for AS. Why shoot a profitable business? Even if it doesn't greatly grow your business -- at least you have name recognition -- other distributions would do ANYTHING to have the RH name recongition. You can't buy Good Will!

Re:I'm downloading Debian right NOW

[rhavyn]

Would you like some cheese with your whine?

You got an offer of an upgrade to something more expensive then what you had before but, thru paranoid delusions perhaps, you've decided that WS and ES are going to go EOL. Why? Who knows. The fact that there is a promised (contractually none the less) 5 years of support seems to mean nothing to you.

Hey, go use debian and see how much support you get from them.

Re:I'm downloading Debian right NOW

[stonewolf]

At this point I'm planning to switch to Debian too. RH sold me a support contract that was good for a year. Turns out it was only good for 6 months. The offer of an "upgrade" is of little value to me. In fact, under the new rules it would cost me less to by a copy of Windows XP for each of my machines than to upgrade to RHEL.

The real answer is, of course, that they lied once, and kept the money. So, what possible reason do I have to ever trust them again?

Stonewolf

Re:I'm downloading Debian right NOW

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to Debian as well. I'm somewhat of a Linux newbie. When I was choosing a distro for the first time I was told that they all have pros and cons, but that RH was the most popular. I thought that if it's the most popular then it must be pretty ok, besides i really like the logo. Well, trying to be a good OSS supporter, i went out and paid for a box set RH9. Now i feel, well, betrayed by RH as a home desktop & server user. What's my next best distro choice? Debian? ok but i'm gonna hate taking that totally cool looking RH sticker off of my truck :(

Re:I'm downloading Debian right NOW

[rhavyn]

How exactly have they cut your subscription short?

And how exactly is $179 (price of RHEL WS) less expensive then XP (which is > $200 for the non-upgrade price).

Seems to me that the only one here that is distorting the truth is you.

Re:I'm downloading Debian right NOW

[stonewolf]

I bought 1 year subscriptions for my RH 7.3 server and RH 9.0 desktops. They have decided to stop supplying the service less than 1 year after the date I purchased the subscriptions. Read their press releases Red hat Network support for Red Hat Linux ends 12/31/2003 for Red Hat 7.3 and in April for RH 9.0.

The price you quote for RHEL WS is the *yearly* price for the support service. So, in the first years RHEL costs $179 and Windows XP costs $200. The second year I still have WIndows XP but I have to pay another $179 for RHEL. So, from an expense point of view over the next several years Windows XP looks to be cheaper than RHEL WS. Not to mention the sad sad fact that it is easier to install and upgrade OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, GIMP, and even GCC on Windows than it is on RHL.

The thing that really makes me mad is that I decided that going with a paid service from Red Hat was safer than using Debian and counting on volunteers to provide patches.

What an Idiot I am. Debian is still there and sure looks like it is the easier, cheaper, and more reliable choice. So, Debian wins.

Stonewolf

Re:I'm downloading Debian right NOW

[AwesomeJT]

What can I say, I complain when I get cheated. No, the upgrade is not an option because I don't consider it an upgrade. RHE is RH9 with a few tweaks and more testing -- why would I want to pay more for something I already have? What has happened is they want more for their subscriptions. Also, according to RH, the WS version is not for anything besides small desktop/small server applications -- and does not include/support certain very needed server applications -- which means you need the ES version -- oh, and if you actually want *support* for your OS -- well that will cost too. And the prices are yearly -- which makes it more expensive than Windows by far. I'm not sure when EOL will occur with WS or ES of RHEL. I'm not in a position to trust them anymore. Newsgroups, chat, email, countless websites -- Debian support is fine for me. I'm guessing free support via website and/or newsgroups will start to drop now that RedHat charges. I've never called RedHat tech support -- I've only used RHN to keep current on errata patches. Also, I don't see Fedora being as strong as Debian anytime soon. Perhaps in a few years (if they keep their name). Also, Debian has gained a bit of solid reliability over the years of the project which Fedora doesn't have yet. Eventually, I'm sure that will change. And, yes, if you have bit of Wensleydale, that would be just smashing.

Re:Interview Summarized For You!

[Anonymous Coward]

you are full of shit.

post a link to the AS ISO files you big fat liar.

Answers, paraphrased

[pjrc]

I wasn't very impressed. Maybe I'm just bitter about having to migrate from RH9 to "something else"... which will probably be Debian rather than Fedora (due to Fedora's very short maintainance schedule).

Here's roughly how I read his answers:

1) Your fully paid RHN subscriptions for RH9 will be worthless. You can't have a refund, but you can pay even more for a (discounted but not complementary) upgrade to the enterprise version, to keep using your already-paid RHN entitlements. And yes, we can almost admit the SSL problem that broke RHN was our fault, but rather than appologizing, it was actually due to our excellent security policy.

2) No actual recommendation for small business. Dodge the question by babbling about what a small business is, and something about "Differentiated services skills" during the transition from proprietary to open source deployment. Yeah, sure Roblimo, that's not PR speak! I've got a nice bridge for sale too. Wanna meet in Brooklin to see it?

3) Slashdot readers should be content with Fedora, but everyone who works for a living should pay for various versions of Redhat Enterprise Linux. Non-technical home users should use Microsoft.

4) Redhat decided only to focus on enterprise. Hint that WS is meant to be a client, but ultimately dodge question about advantage of offering "full package" including both desktop and client.

5) Redhat has never made a mistake, even in the dot-com days.

6) Promise to stay with GPL and collaborate with open source community.

7) Hardware support won't come until a large user base demands it. Fedora is supposed to build that user base. Dodge the question about discontinuance of RH9 affecting growth of hardware demand.

8) Shrink wrapped product didn't make enough money and couldn't grow (but no admission it was unprofitable, despite the well-known fact that Redhat was always in the red all those years).

9) Matt user linux and gnome at home.

10) Call us regarding your educational discount... because we won't say anything specific in public.

Re:Answers, paraphrased

[rhavyn]

1) He said it's complementary for the duration of your RHN contract and there is a discount available for after that. And they did admin, and apologize for the SSL issue.

2) Umm, ok, who cares if they don't have a product for small business.

3) How exactly is that wrong?

4) WS includes server software. Go look at the package list.

5) They're still in business, aren't they? The couldn't have made any really big mistakes then.

6) All their software is already GPL, they can't take that back.

7) # of users of Linux affects growth of hardware support, not number of users of Red Hat 9. You do know that there are other distros besides Red Hat 9? And that sooner or later, Red Hat 9 was goign to EOL with or without Fedora?

8) If it couldn't grow then getting rid of it is a good business decision. Red Hat is a business right?

9) ...

10) Go to their website, the educational discount pricing was released a few days ago. Or is their website not public enough?

Re:Answers, paraphrased

[Tack]

10) Go to their website, the educational discount pricing was released a few days ago. Or is their website not public enough?

Care to point out where? Because I called Red Hat sales and was told to keep checking the website over the next couple of weeks as they would have some sort of formal announcement there.

Indeed, all the questions about educational discounts were seriously dodged in this interview. There were 3 separate questions posted and basically a one-liner by Szulik saying "Hey $50k sounds good, give me a call and we'll take your money" without any regard to the real questions.

Jason.

Re:Answers, paraphrased

[rhavyn]

I'm not sure where on their website it's listed now, but here a news story listing prices: http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5107941.html and here is the price list according to a university: http://acs.ucsd.edu/unixsupport/linuxhints.html.

Re:Answers, paraphrased

[pjrc]

Nice of you to appologize for Redhat. They certainly need some appologists. But I have some problems accepting some of these things....

1) He said it's complementary for the duration of your RHN contract and there is a discount available for after that.

No. He said "For those in this position, entitlements to both Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES and WS will be made available for the remainder of the subscriptions". But he did not say you'd get a complementary copy of Enterprise. He did specifically say "discounts are available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to any RHN customer".

So, if you pay a fee (admittedly discounted) for Enterprise, you can continue using your existing RHN entitlements (which you've already fully paid). If Redhat really is offering current, fully-paid RHN customers a complementary copy of any version of the Redhat Enterprise Linux, please point out where they specifically make such an offer. If you do, I will admit that you were correct and I was mistake. But after re-reading his answers again, and also checking the email I received (I paid for RHN), I have seen no such offer.

He also said Fedora will have a similar up2date utility. But the subject of Fedora's continuance of updates for 2-3 months after subsequent releases was of course not mentioned.

2) Umm, ok, who cares if they don't have a product for small business.

Small businesses probably care. You know, the ones who have found RH9 a good product and until recently believe they could depend on Redhat to continue it.

5) They're still in business, aren't they? The couldn't have made any really big mistakes then.

It is arrogant to refuse to admit ever having made any mistakes. It is foolish to believe they've never made any unwise decisions.

In the dot-com days, sortly after their very successful IPO, Redhat went on a spending spree and purchased several small companies. Not long thereafter, they basically discontinued those products and laid off the employees. One example as HKS, makers of CCVS (credit card verification system), which was open-source. Thanks to Redhat, CCVS no longer exists, and there isn't really an open-source credit card processing software package anymore.

.

But more than any one specific point, Matthew's answers were evasive. He dodged the certral point of most of the questions.

Re:Answers, paraphrased

[Haeleth]

Regarding 2, you are misrepresenting what he says. You read it as, "So, if you pay a fee (admittedly discounted) for Enterprise, you can continue using your existing RHN entitlements (which you've already fully paid)."

But what it says is:

For those in this position, entitlements to both Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES and WS will be made available for the remainder of the subscriptions. in addition , discounts are available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to any RHN customer. (emphasis mine)

You edited that "in addition" out when you quoted it, but that's the crucial thing. He is separating the two issues. For those whose entitlements exceed the life of the product, they will let you have the enterprise version for the rest of your entitlement. In addition, you can upgrade to the enterprise version at a discount - that is, if you want to continue with Red Hat after that.

If you had to pay extra to use what you'd already paid for, he would have said that. He does not say that. I do not know what your beef with Red Hat is, but please do not twist his words to try to make them sound worse than they are.

Re:Answers, paraphrased

[drinkypoo]

Basically, RedHat is showing us what Microsoft would be like if the code they made their living with was GPL-licensed. They have no choice but to continue development on the core operating system under the GPL, which is to say, all the stuff that all linuxes tend to have in common - the kernel of course, and almost most of the command line.

Microsoft and RedHat alike have been using their customer base for beta testing all along. The difference is that Microsoft is big enough to get people to pay for their betas under the guise of a release version. RedHat knows they can't do this, so they have relegated their beta test version to redheaded stepchild status, and called it Fedora. It's not even called RedHat Linux any more, they want to segregate it as much as possible.

The only thing that can save RedHat now is the LSB, because they simply will not have the identical operating system on the desktop (Fedora) as they do on the server and workstation (RHE). If both offerings follow the LSB religiously then there will not be significant administration problems, but even so, things are just going to be of different versions. In short, the benefits of running Red Hat Linux have decreased.

I asked #4 specifically because running the same OS everywhere lowers TCO. Of course Microsoft isn't running the same OS everywhere now, what with XP on the desktop and workstation, and 2003 Server (I mention only the latest, current offerings) on the server, so they have already removed the benefit I mentioned in their own OS for the most part; However since Windows works on a model of binary drivers, and they have a fairly well-abstracted driver interface now, and a well-abstracted interface to shared libraries (When's the last time you had to care about a MFC version? Mostly it just means that your apps use the old file dialog, which is annoying but hardly a dealbreaker) which largely eliminates that drawback. Linux really doesn't have this, you frequently find major changes between minor versions of a shared library.

You have definitely called the bull :) when you say that RedHat doesn't care about you any more, unless unless you're a major corporate user. This can only harm them. Only Microsoft and people who offer a complete solution (HW+SW) can afford to take this stance, because RedHat frankly offers little over other distributions. It's not like they're the only guys who are going to provide you clustering services, or failover tools. If you're going to end up with different software offerings on client and server, why pay for the privilege?

Re:Answers, paraphrased

[skajake]

>> Shrink wrapped product didn't make enough money and couldn't grow (but no admission it was unprofitable, despite the well-known fact that Redhat was always in the red all those years).

Actually it was under this business model that RH pulled itself into the black.

My question

[etymxris]

I know I missed the original interview. But this is what my question would be. I'm of the opinion that Red Hat is not Free (as in speech) Software. Why? They will only sell the software with a subscription that directly contradicts the GPL.

Consider some scenarios:

1) I sell you GPL software, and say you must give me a constant sum for every copy you install. This clearly violates the GPL.

2) I will sell you GPL software only with a dongle. While you might be able to circumvent the dongle's protections, the EULA (on the dongle, not the software!) clearly forbids this. To install more copies of the software, then, you must buy more dongles. This, too, would be against the GPL.

3) I will sell you GPL software, but only with a support contract. The support contract requires, among other things, that you buy another support contract if the GPL software is installed on any more machines. It seems to me that this is clearly against the terms of the GPL. And yet this is exactly what Red Hat is doing.

Thoughts?

Re:My question

[rhavyn]

They can sell you GPL software with any strings that they want attached as long as they do what they have to under the terms of the GPL. The GPL doesnt say that you can't offer support contracts. It also doesn't say that you can't demand that every machine it's installed on has a support contract. You can buy it, get your support contract voided and then do whatever you want with the software (it's clearly labeled that the distro as a whole is under the GPL). If you want the support contract, however, you have to have a support contract for every machine it's installed on. Notice that you're still free to give the distro to someone else, you still have the source to the entire thing, you can still modify it and redistribute it, etc, etc.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

1) I sell you GPL software, and say you must give me a constant sum for every copy you install. This clearly violates the GPL.

The vendor can require a constant sum for every executable binary. Once you have the source, which the vendor must provide if you buy the software, compile it yourself to install as many times as you want. Don't want to compile it? Then pay the vendor for each executable. That's not hard.

2) I will sell you GPL software only with a dongle. While you might be able to circumvent the dongle's protections, the EULA (on the dongle, not the software!) clearly forbids this. To install more copies of the software, then, you must buy more dongles. This, too, would be against the GPL.

If the software that uses the dongle is GPL, change it to not use the dongle. The EULA of the dongle cannot restrict GPL software. Once the software does not use the dongle, you don't need the dongle's EULA cause you are not using it. If the dongle software is not GPL, then it doesn't violate the GPL. (A lock dongle with GPL software doesn't make sense anyway.)

3) I will sell you GPL software, but only with a support contract. The support contract requires, among other things, that you buy another support contract if the GPL software is installed on any more machines. It seems to me that this is clearly against the terms of the GPL. And yet this is exactly what Red Hat is doing.

This is the same scenerio as in 1. If you don't want the support on the next install, compile it yourself from the source they had to give you when you bought the first executable. Red Hat's plan is contrary to the expectations of the Free Software community but it is not against the GPL.

I wish our CEO knew what our products did...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a medium-size software company (~300 employees), and all our CEO knows about is how to read financial statements. It strikes me that the RHAT CEO really knows about his product and how people use it. I think this is an exceptional point when considering where to invest. I sure wish they were hiring in my area.

Have you tried Mandrake?

[Idou]

I think you RH desktop users should take a look at Mandrake. Not only is it rpm based, but most of its revenue comes from the a club of desktop users so you don't have to worry about them dumping you for servers (there are currently 18,500 club members).

There also is a wide variety of support options.

As far as financial stability, I am pretty sure that their next financial statements will show profitability (they were very close 6 months ago).

Oh yeah, and it is MUCH easier to install and maintain then RH (imho).

Re:Have you tried Mandrake?

[aboyce]

In my (sometimes not so humble) opinion, 5 of the last 7 linux machines that have been compromised at my location (not centrally managed ones) have been Mandrake. Its either the users or the OS.. and I'm not ruling the users out... but still.

Re:Have you tried Mandrake?

[Bourbonium]

I agree with you that Mandrake is a much easier distro to install than RedHat, SuSE or Turbo (the only other ones I've played around with). Normal Windows users also seem to find it easy to adapt to the Mandrake environment. I need to spend some time playing around with LindowsOS to do a real comparison, though.

Re:Have you tried Mandrake?

[JanneM]

I'm sure Mandrake is fine for a lot of people. For me, however, the two main drawbacks is that Mandrake has a (in my view deserved) reputation of not being the most stable and well tested distro; and that Gnome as packaged by Redhat is pretty superior to Gnome on Mandrake (or SuSE for that matter).

Proprietary software

[Petronius]

I have not used proprietary software for many years. I run a 5 node Linux cluster at home. I use Gnome.
you don't get out much, do you?

Enraged ./'ers - Debian!

[cspenn]

This will no doubt be marked as redundant. That's fine. But it's a great time to remind everyone that Red Hat is not Linux. Red Hat is one distro among hundreds. Don't like Mr. Szulik's responses? Change distros.

Personally, I prefer Debian, and I'm hopeful my hosting company will make the move very soon.

Best regards,

Chris
http://www.studentcomputerstore.com

Re:Enraged ./'ers - Debian!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your stunning insight. Perhaps no one wants to use the other Linux distributions, because they suck horribly.

Cameras shouldn't need custom drivers

[roystgnr]

My years-old Canon, and every newer USB camera I've ever seen, supports the USB storage protocol. When I got the camera I added a line to autofs's config to tell Linux to put the first USB drive at /mnt/camera, and so now using the camera means "plug it in, find pictures in that directory".

The only problem from the users point of view is that (on Red Hat at least) somebody needs to set such a config up in the first place, and that somebody still needs to know what "auto.master" and "/dev/sda" and other user-unfriendly terms mean. That problem won't be fixed by hardware vendors, though, it'll be fixed by distribution developers.

Re:Interview Summarized For You!

[AwesomeJT]

GNU Lic. restrictions say they must provide their distribution for free -- what they are charging for is the RHN yearly service and a really expensive installer program. :-) They never provided ISOs or RPMs for free just for the heck of it...

I guess technically, as long as you purchase on copy of the install disc, then you can install on as many systems as you want as long as you don't use their RHN for updates. But most folks willing to pay $$$ for RHEL are going to want the updates -- which is what RH is banking on -- provided their brand name doesn't get trashed in the process. Remember -- you are paying for a "service" not a "license".

Can't wait for FreshRPMs to carry the RHEL RPMs too.

camera:/

[neves]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par. I have a "camera:/" as personal toolbar bookmark in Konqueror. To download my digital camera images I have to: 1-select bookmark 2-select subfolder with images 3-select images and drag'n drop them to the desired location No terminal involved.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[ksheff]

They are charging for support, not the code. In the 80s, RMS mentioned this as a way for people to make money with GPL'ed software along with providing source and/or binaries on portable media, hardcopy documentation, etc..

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to develop for free

Then don't

Answers less than clear? Questions poor?

[theolein]

I don't know if it's only me but I found his answers to the less than good questions poor. Apart from the questions about up2date and the educational issues (10a/b/c) , I found one big question missing that had been modded up to 5, and that is the question about what will happen to RedHat's image due to leaving the non commercial space.

Many people were wondering why RedHat did this, since the non commercial space is where most people got to know RH in the first place. My personal reaction to this is that I went out and bought a Mandrake subscription, as I felt that RH had sort of "betrayed" it's most loyal users. I see no real difference between Fedora and Gentoo and I felt that the one company left supporting non commercial users, Mandrake, was worth supporting. I see an image problem for RH in gaining new geek advocacy in future. It remains to be seen what becomes of SuSE's non commercial efforts.

As for the questions about educational institutions, I found his answers very poor. Why did painhope have to wait this long to get a reply? Why were RedHat sales teams so ignorant of educational pricing from Microsoft that they neglected customers like this, until it got posted on /. for the world to see?

To me, It sounds like RH has a very disconnected view of some important issues in the real world. Number one is lack of perception from customers' point of view and number two is an incredible lack of perspective and proactive action on RH's part: If the desktop was profitable, and considering the fact that this was RH's public image, then why not keep it for simple reasons of good PR. If there are so many driver issues (web cams, digital cameras etc) then why on earth didn't RH simply approach some companies in order to get a Linux effort started with those companies? The way he says it, it sounds as if he's simply too bloody lazy and disinterested in actually listening to customers.

RH8 Default Worked Great w/ my Camera

[stevesliva]

Sony DSC-P72 and gphoto... just needed to switch to PTP mode.

I actually prefer gphoto to the cruddy windows software than came with the camera... if you want to do anything more than automagically dump everything on the Memory Stick into My Documents, you've got to access the flash memory manually anyhow. Plus that automagical program dumps an icon in the system tray at startup... talk about crap.

And you know what? RH8 doesn't bitch at me when I turn the camera off like Win2K on my laptop does-- supposed to click the remove hardware icon first. This is plug and play?

I though I'd need dual-boot on my desktop with XP to use stuff like my camera and the cable modem successfully without a big headache, but I haven't booted XP since the Adelphia guy came to verify my MAC address and install some spyware on my XP partition. The bastards block port 80, but Apache's working just fine on the 32K other ports.

Re:RH8 Default Worked Great w/ my Camera

[cmacb]

When I plug my Olympus camera into the USB port it shows up as a disk drive. I just drag the pictures wherever I want and can use the thumbnails generated by Konqueror or Nautilus to reject the duds. I've never had to use Gphoto at all.

Seems to me that not only should digital cameras avoid specialized software for Windows, but they can avoid the need for specialized software in Linux as well. Scanners or Webcam devices probably need something special in that area, but cameras that just take pictures to be uploaded or music devices that hold MP3s etc should just look like a drive.

Average ha!

[IceFox]

For the 'average' reader of Slashdot, the Fedora Project is the ideal Linux distribution.

The average slashdot reader runs windows and is a little technical. They need something that can work long term to play with when they want. They don't want something they have to upgrade every three months!!! I know enough to install Debian which is the hard part. The rest is easy. It just runs and is easy to update over a _long_ period of time without fuss. I have been running stable on some of my boxes for a number of years. I am not a kernel hacker, I enjoy just playing around in Linux and don't care having to get everything up and working every three months! Back when I ran windows I reloaded it every one-three months and I remember just how much of a pain in the ass it was, so much so that I tried Linux out... Especially when you make it painfully clear that Fedora is nothing more then a beta test for the enterprise beta/release don't fill me with happy thoughts of productivity. And the idea of having multiple rpm repositories gives me the willies. In the debian world most of the package are in one place (or heading to it). Because of that they can be made sure to be compatiable and well intigrated (or hell get this... just work!) This is a good thing. What happens when repository #8 in on your box just goes off line because the guy that was hosting it moved? I tried out the apt-rpm and found myself having to spend quite a lot of extra time updating because the servers were always busy. I have never gotten a busy reply from the debian repositories. Again they just are there and work. Just wait till the first time someone updates a Fedora box and repository 1 has kernel 2.6 and repostitory has kernel 2.4 and you grab parts from each and then turn on your computer the next morning. NO THANKS! You average slashdot user wants somthing that just works and continues to work, they don't care to re-install every three months or have to worry about which pagages work with what other packages.

-Benjamin Meyer

Re:Average ha!

[HiThere]

If you choose LibraNet installing isn't any harder than installing anything else. (Actually, it's easier than installing the new SuSE...I've just done both on the same day.)

Mandrake was also an easy install, but not as easy as LibraNet.

The system that you end up with is slightly more difficult to administer...except that you can use apt-get & synaptic to manage software packages. It's reputed to simplify kernel recompilation...but I've never wanted to bother. I can't guarantee that you'll like it, but it's looking like it's the distribution I'll choose for my machines.

Common GPL misunderstanding

[Hanul]

The GPL states, that everybody can sell software under the GPL, but he has to provide the source code, if his customer asks for it. And, of course, the customer has the right to re-distribute the software (again under the GPL). You don't have any rights to get binaries or ISO images, if you aren't a customer. Red Hat is so kind to let you download the whole enterprise distro as source RPMs, but in GPL terms they only have to do this for their customers.

Re:Common GPL misunderstanding

[GigsVT]

But they aren't allowed to say "We'll sell you this GPL software, but you aren't allowed to install it on more than one server, unless you buy more support seats."

Which is what they are saying.

Re:Common GPL misunderstanding

[orionbelt]

I think this is an excellent question, which I also had. The best answer that I was offered is that they *can* say that the *RHEL* is void if you install on more machines than you bought it for, *including* the machines for which you *did* paid for!

Can someone please confirm or refute this?

I find it amazing that RH did not even bother setting up some FAQ somewhere to address these (and many similar) questions related to this "transition". I hope I'm wrong, but I think I can smell the various marketoids and MBAs putting their signature on what RH does... Why bother explaining all this when it's not revenue-producing? Sigh...

Re:Common GPL misunderstanding

[GigsVT]

I've heard this brought up before, but it doesn't seem like a likely outcome. For one, the agreement says that it applies 1 year after you no longer have any RHEL subscribed systems.

I don't think a FAQ would be very helpful, I think they need to change the agreement outright. A FAQ probably wouldn't be very legally binding. They could say one thing, and if the agreement says another they might argue that the agreement is the only thing that matters.

The real cost of updates and fixes.

[jbn-o]

I've been informally tracking conversation threads about Fedora Core. It seems to me that a lot of people are dancing around the question of how much security and bugfix updates are really worth. Apparently many people rely on Red Hat's security and bugfixes to where they will be missed if absent. But at the same time, people don't value them enough to pay (virtually anyone) for them, hence they would rather switch distributions than pay for the software improvements they've come to rely on.

Perhaps this is the watershed event that makes people aware of what a service economy looks like when people have to deal with something close to honest pricing--the end of getting Red Hat's widely-appreciated labor at no charge.

Re:The real cost of updates and fixes.

[praedor]

One should absolutely NOT have to pay for bug fixes or security fixes. These are, ultimately, coding mistakes from the developers/packagers.

Microsnot is prepping the stage to start requiring users to cough up for updates (bug fixes/security fixes). This is wrong and I doubt that it will go over well with users. It would be a mistake for any linux distro to go this route either. You imply that users should be willing to pay for fixes to broken software...

No, I am willing to pay for working software. If it turns out to be broken, then I am OWED a fix. YOU (developer/packager) f*cked up in the first place, so fix your mess. At YOUR cost.

Re:The real cost of updates and fixes.

[mbrinkm]

It would appear to me that you do not understand the nature of what a security update or bug-fix actually is, how Red Hat's plans affect the average user, or for that matter what Red Hat is currently doing.

First, lets get something straight; Red Hat sells the packaging of software, support for that packaged software, and, to some degree, a location to get updates for the software, they do not sell the software itself. Of the three that they do sell, I am willing to pay for two of them, specifically the packaging of the software and the support of the packaged software. I am not, however, willing to pay Red Hat for providing a location to get updates. Do I think that they have a quality update mechanism? Yes. Do I find it to be a valuable added feature? Yes. Am I willing to pay for it? No. It comes down to the choices available and which you choose. I could choose another distribution that offers bug-fixes and security updates for free, like Debian. Or I could monitor the bugtraq mailing list and maintain my own updates. Both of these are better options to me than paying for a place to get updates.

Secondly, the software improvements that I have come to "rely" on come from the open source community as a whole, not on Red Hat, and as such are freely available. Since they are freely available, I am not willing to pay for them. Also, security updates and bug-fixes should be freely available. If I develop a piece of software that has bugs or security issues, I would not go to my client and say 'Sorry, what I provided you doesn't work right, but I can fix it for a fee.' I wouldn't have that client anymore.

Third, this is not the "watershed event that makes people aware of what a service economy looks like when people have to deal with something close to honest pricing" because that is not what a service economy looks like. The customers drive a service economy. If the customers can find a comparable service provider at a lower cost, they will move to the other provider. A service economy is not dictated by the corporations that provide the service, it is dictated by the consumers the purchase the service.

Finally, Red Hat has changed to focusing on the enterprise and chosen to quit supporting the individual or small business at costs lower than enterprise level. Would you pay enterprise level prices for a single workstation? I wouldn't. I am willing to pay a portion of the costs of collecting the software and supplying the software, but only at the level that I plan to use it for, not at an enterprise level.

This is not the end of getting Red Hat's widely appreciated labor free of charge; it is the end of Red Hat providing a single location for the open source community's labor for the individual.

Re:The real cost of updates and fixes.

[Crispy Critters]

"Apparently many people rely on Red Hat's security and bugfixes to where they will be missed if absent. But at the same time, people don't value them enough to pay (virtually anyone) for them, hence they would rather switch distributions than pay for the software improvements they've come to rely on."

In personal communications I have had about this, the theme of "I want support without paying for it" seemed to dominate. I have no sympathy for this point of view at all.

But I realized that there was something hidden underneath it, which is more legitimate. There are people whose jobs include supporting a bunch of Red Hat Linux installations. The boss will not pay for RHEnterprise. The boss will not hire more people to support the boxes. The employees have to figure out how to upgrade, migrate, deal with Fedora or whatever while still doing everything else the boss wants them to do. These people are screwed. It is not Red Hat's fault or responsibility, but they are nevertheless screwed and angry at RH. You can say they should either quit their jobs or shut up and lump it, but they doesn't make it any easier.

Re:The real cost of updates and fixes.

[Wesley Felter]

No, I am willing to pay for working software. If it turns out to be broken, then I am OWED a fix. YOU (developer/packager) f*cked up in the first place, so fix your mess. At YOUR cost.

Great. If you pay for RHEL, you get what you want. If you don't pay (e.g. by using Fedora), then you have no right to expect updates.

The problem is that too many /.ers want free ISOs and free updates (for every version) for life.

I didn't see any question answered

[jd]

I saw a lot of talking round things, bugt Szulik lacked any specifics. For example, the SSL question was "answered" by saying that people who have payed can use the up2date for the Enterprise.

What he didn't answer was anything about compensation to customers for lost service; what kind of service Enterprise customers will even get; if manual updates of key components will happen again...

Other questions were similar. The thing about the dot com bubble, for example... He talked about some key decisions, sure, and that's interesting, but if Red Hat knew in 1997 where the industry would be in 2003, don't tell me it would have done exactly the same things!

(If nothing else, if he could have anticipated the economic collapse, he would likely have changed hiring strategies.)

Re:Unmitigated Ass

[dash2]

Uh, I think his opinion is based on Red Hat's (substantial) experience with Linux on the desktop. And as a longterm desktop user, he's right. So add me to your ass directory, ass collector.

Why, oh why, didn't they ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't they ask him in the most straightforward way possible, whether Red Hat considers it illegal to distribute ISO's of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, either for free or for a fee?

Having carefully studied whatever information RH has made available, I conclude that it is permitted under the GPL to distribute copies of this software, but that RH wants to give the impression that it is not permitted.

Perhaps the best way to put the question would have been: If I have no subscription or other business relation with Red Hat, is there any reason I may not install RHEL on as many systems as I like (regardless of how I came to be in possession of a copy of the software)?

I would really like for Red Hat to give a plain, comprehensive answer to this question!

Re:Why, oh why, didn't they ask...

[Wesley Felter]

Red Hat has no incentive to answer that question.

If they say no, people will hound them about violating the GPL.

If they say yes, people will start passing RHEL ISO images around like crazy and Red Hat will lose money.

What about Szulik's links with Microsoft

[SPravin]

How come he didnt answer as to why Windows is his suggestion over Linux for home users?
(Ref: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/11/04/2312225.shtm l)
I thought that was the question on everyone's mouth, its strange how none of the posts asking this question was modded at +5! Or did he want to leave this question unanswered, neither affirming nor denying it.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[geomon]

Redhat wants us to develop and test fedora for free, turn around sell it to enteprise for big bucks

While they paid their developers a regular salary, Microsoft was constantly testing their product on their client dime. I paid for several versions of DOS only to find that bugs were undocumented (actually, they denied they even existed). Yet when the bugs were eventually fixed in the next release, I had to pay full price AGAIN to get the benefit.

If you are having difficulty making a living on OSS, then I am only going to point to one example where individuals can make a thriving business off of other developers efforts: become the next Microsoft. They have incorporated and then licensed software from BSD developers without paying one red cent.

Great way to run a software business, isn't it?

Now that my sarcasm has worn off, you will probably find more than one person here who might have a more practical method of generating revenue from OSS.

Didn't skip, the formating is messed up

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he skipped the questions. Look at the end of 10b, this sounds like his response, but it was just displayed as part of the question:

We have rolled out an education plan which was priced between $25 and $50 for client and server quantity one for an annual subscription. I believe the pricing and service relationship will begin to address a void filled by the Red Hat Linux transition at an affordable price.

Re:Didn't skip, the formating is messed up

[Anonymous Coward]

As I recall, $25 buys a student a copy of WS and $50 buys a school a copy of ES. And, $2,500 buys a school a site license for WS. I don't recall mention of a discount price on ES made available to students. And, I don't recall mention of a site license price for ES. Even if I'm wrong and these prices are available to both students and schools, these prices significantly exceed those offered by MS in the MSDNAA program.

Yeah Right

[_UnderTow_]

"One clue is that they are not in perfect English, as interview responses or articles that are 'laundered' by PR or media relations departments almost always are"

And how would the editors at slashdot know what perfect english looks like?

Re:Yeah Right

[Wolfrider]

--Just a quick note regarding your sig - 'If you don't pray in my school, I won't think in your church'... Try reading this link. The Bereans were commended for being of more noble character *because* they examined the Scriptures (OT) every day to see if what Paul said was true. It's perfectly OK to question religious leaders if you honestly want answers to your questions, but you should try to be respectful about it.

--(Actually in my pastor's case he *wasn't* respectful about it, and got saved anyway -- he went from being a complete in-your-face "intellectual atheist" to an EV Free pastor, and has been for over 30 years!)

suprnova.org

[emil]

Saw rhas3 there a few days ago.

Re:Quit being a cheapskate and buy a copy of WinXP

[ThrasherTT]

Amen. Linux is libre, but it's only gratis if your time is worth nothing.

Granted, WinXP might cause a few headaches here and there as well, but in my experience, the only XP headaches I've had to deal with have been caused by bad drivers from 3rd party software vendors. And guess what? Those vendors don't support linux! And if they did, should I expect trouble-free linux drivers? Only if they want to become open-source software support shops, which I'm sure they don't.

I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people get all bound up over not having pre-built packages for their OS ?

Sure, it is much easier, but it is not the end of the world.

Why not build a package on one machine, and dist it over to all the rest ? Spend a day or two, and you could have your own automated solution.

Yup.

[A nonymous Coward]

A bunch of watered down answers. Most of them dodged the real question and turned it into a marketing opportunity. Nothing solid here, no meat, hardly any potatoes. And the gravy was too watery to have any taste left.

Architectural Insight.

[torpor]

When asked what he'd change, Matthew responded:

Nothing. Three critical events occured during 1997-2000. Red Hat was able to capitalize itself for the long term. The Linux kernel continued to scale in performance and application availability with each increase in performance which helped to drive the enterprise adoption of Red Hat. These were matters of when and not if.

This is a profound statement, and the buzzword prone 'scaling' issue should not be overlooked, because an extraordinary strength of Linux is its platform coverage. Very few OS'es run on as much weird/high/low/up/down CPU's and chipsets as Linux. The Linux kernel is breathing all sorts of interesting life into exotic vendor chipsets and development - while it may not 'have the desktop' (as if that matter any more) - it most certainly rules embedded, vis a vis competitive products and operating systems.

Considering this issue a little deeply (hey, positive /. moment) while reading this article, it really made me realize that Linux is a *big* thing. It is without question pushing the edge of things from a hardware perspective. And yet it is still able to keep pace in other fronts, as well, such as offiice apps, etc.

{I used Linux to help make surfboards once.}

I think it is very positive to read such perspectives - particularly strong industrial ones, and I think it ought to be said that any Linux-observer/-user/-contributor must face the fact that RedHat is not doing so bad for itself after 'all these years' for a company that started with a pretty bold vision.

*sigh* At this juncture, I imagine its time to start keeping an eye on Microsoft and their i-tron initiative ... not that I feel like it from an aesthetic bent, which is where it all begins for me in this technology...

thats the taste of bitter apple

[happyfrogcow]

Users continuing with RHL9 past the end of its maintenance window will be interested in the Fedora Legacy Project, a community-driven continuation of updates for RHL9 and RHL7.3.

So are they trying to coersce a community project together to pick up the slack (no pun intended) they left behind? Sounds like a good deal if you want to get your foot in the door at redhat, otherwise it doesn't sound so hot. "We at redhat won't help you anymore, but feel free to develope a product that we will market as our own since it includes the word 'Fedora'".

I have a bitter taste in my mouth from this whole redhat ordeal and i'm not even a redhat user.

Slackware!

Big 10?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think you should teach the students to read first, before you set them up with computers?

i beg to differ

[apachetoolbox]

Because like it or not Exchange and SQL2000...

oracle > SQL2000

Soon Novell Groupwise will be 100% on linux, which is better if not equal to Exchange.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[heffel]

What about a model where OSS developers get paid for the quality of code they check in?

The problem with this is, who will judge the quality of the developer's code? How do we determine if code by one developer is "better" than the code of another developer?

Good summary, my take also

[Spinality]

Very well summarized.

It's all a bit disappointing. If I were a RedHat executive, I hope I'd perceive that the corporation's greatest intangible asset has been a large, loyal user base that has served as the first line of the sales/delivery/support process. This new plan has basically dumped that asset, in one swell foop. Do they know what they're giving up?

This situation has reminded me of another dubious business choice; this is a long analogy but is perhaps worth repeating. Long ago, I was a developer at Sears, Roebuck, when the company went through an interesting business-wide change. They decided to get rid of nearly all their seasoned full-time store employees, and to replace them with part-time, low-cost, low-benefits employees. This was back in the 70's when Sears was going strong. It seemed like a good business/economic decision on paper; but it overlooked that fact that, more than anything else, the thing that had given Sears the edge for years was its base of fanatically loyal, experienced, skilled personnel. (Suppliers HATED dealing with Sears because they couldn't schmooze or bribe their way around quality or price issues.) In the course of a couple of years, Sears replaced that strong workforce, by creating what today we'd call McJobs. The few full-timers left were bitter and resentful. (Wallmart eventually reaped the benefit of the Sears restructuring, by doing the same thing on a grander scale.)

Like the Sears decision, the RedHat choice may in fact be the correct strategic choice. From the outside, without all the facts, it's hard to know. But each of these decisions seems to discount what, on the surface, seems to represent a core asset. I hope RedHat is taking its decision very seriously.

Re:Good summary, my take also

[echucker]

I've got news for you... Sears just did the same thing again within the last year or two. My wife was one of the seasoned full-timers that got let go. They've now got registers at the entrances to the stores, shopping carts for your goods, and now customer service people to be found.

White Box Enterprise Linux

[jmorris42]

Remember that they aren't selling a product, they are selling a service. So you need to ask if you need the service or not. If you need it you are down to talking price and if you have enough seats, which you do, you can probably call em up and end up with a deal you can both be happy with, especially with the new educational pricing options they have announced.

If you don't need the enterprise support though, but do need a distribution close enough to RH not to shock the users come have a look at what I'm up to at whiteboxlinux.org and see if it might be the answer to your problem. The idea is to rebuild RHEL from the SRPMS and following their EULA by deleting the Red Hat trademarks. Same Penguin, only delivered in a plain white box!

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are *so* full of shit, if you don't like RedHat/Fedora, do as any sane person, and use Debian or some BSD.

If you like it, use it and stop frking complaning, no one forces you to do nothing, you can be just another leecher if that makes you feel good.

\\k

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

this is when someone needs to start a new linux distro MADE for the desktop

the closest to a desktop linux distro is mandrake, which focuses on server stuff more.
too many distros aim for one goal = server.
someone needs to create a no-bullshit distro that works, doesnt srcew up, and is free.
lindows isnt a valid option. at all.

I mention ideas about a user friendly distro, and get laughed at because it doesnt include a technical or complex system. and isnt liked in the eyes of techies who prefer ncurses as their display rather than X.
bluelinux is a good idea, but needs more work and a developer who says the newest release will be released "soon" for 8 months now...
Someone needs to start an initiative (I probably will try)
so that you have a system with the just needed basics.
X (preferrably the FD.O xserver), KDE/gnome (plus some misc wm's, mplayer, wine (optional, with warnings that it may or may not work well)
a system built with just the bare essentials for a desktop user, with a 24/7 maintained package system (aka, new programs are tested for bugs, and then compiled and added) and have gcc as an optional package. server stuff can go away though, since the common user doesnt need to have the need for an sshd, or apache.
To make a better Desktop OS, you gotta think like the common joe, of what you want.
the average joe wants a system that will install, and work. to check email and listen to music without the hassle, and be able to do it without their system getting a virus every few days, or crashing.
you have to appeal to that simple market first, then you get the people you need.
then the domino effect sets in.

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

hate to tell you this, but you are NOT the first to come up with this idea...

You mistake familiar for friendly

[TheConfusedOne]

Really, why would C:\Pictures (or C:\My Pictures in the MS case) be more friendly than /mnt/users/username/pictures?

Why exactly do we consider C: == first harddrive partition (what's a partition some might ask...) more user friendly?

The "no install file" complaint is a canard as well. I ran through a rather nice install routine for CrossOver Office that was then able to run the installer for Office itself. All relatively painless.

The point is that the "average computer user" really can't fend for themself beyond stick a CD in and click and hope for the best. If things go off the skids then they come to us.

The only reason XP is more "user friendly" is that we've had 10 years to adjust to the concepts of DOS and Windows.

Re:You mistake familiar for friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason XP is more "user friendly" is that we've had 10 years to adjust to the concepts of DOS and Windows.

And how many years to "adjust" the concepts of unix

"view of reasonable" is subjective

[freeweed]

No, this is called reality.

Notice the word "might". A customer "might" want RedHat to give them install CD's, provide technical support 24-7, and send over a team of RHCE's to install the software, all at no charge, on a 5000 node network.

My view of reasonable and this fictional customer's view of reasonable are very different, and so would RedHat's be.

I have friends who think GM should be reasonable and sell their cars for under $5,000. I doubt GM thinks that's reasonable.

You can't hate a company that doesn't automatically buckle to any customer's request, no matter how silly. RedHat is just playing it safe.

So much for the RHCE

[Wokan]

I guess I can stop studying for my RHCE. I'll be concentrating on the cross-distro certifications instead.

One of the things that attracted me to the idea of becomming a RHCE was that I could use my home LAN to experiment with the concepts presented in my book and observe changes in each new version of Red Hat as it came out.

Somehow, I don't think the idea of a FCE (Federoa Certified Engineer) is going to catch on.

At my future interview: "No, sir. I haven't had any experience with the latest Red Hat ES, but I've used Fedora for years."

Of my 7 systems, 2 had been converted to Red Hat for my studies. I'm thinking I'll swap them over to other distros now. I've got Mandrake on 3 already, so perhaps a Debian, Gentoo, or Slackware.

I seem to remember owing Gentoo some updates on a shell script I wrote...

linuxiso.org?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello,
Given that it is all GPL'ed, is there any reason anyone with a CD from RHAT couldn't just rip the ISO and post it, like linuxiso.org, etc? And why can't a network administrator take one CD of RHEL and install it on multiple CPU's? Is there something in the RHEL distro that acts as a 'poison pill' that makes it difficult to re-distribute? Like everything but one package is GPL'ed (or insert-favorite-open-source-license here) . . . but that one package is the installer or something else that is not easily removed?

Re:linuxiso.org?

[cshabazian]

You have hit the nail exactly on the head here. There are a few packages which are Copyright RedHat, such as (understandably) redhat-logos, and anaconda-images (as it also has the redhat logos in it). Unfortunately, BOTH of these packages are needed by anaconda, which does the install! Furthermore, based upon my initial look at it, these packages cannot be easily removed from the distribution. Now, you CAN download the source RPM's from RedHat (which I have done), but now someone just needs to figure out how to get it installed. Hell, I'll even post it at a site I purchased called TINRHEL.com (This is NOT RHEL) ;-D

Re:linuxiso.org?

[bloosqr]

It gets a bit weird actually. Apparantly if you *buy* the license to a rh server then you can't install it on any other machine from the rh EULA agreement. However because it is GPL'd I believe you should legally be able to strip out all the trademarked pictures etc and make it "available" as an iso publically (I.E. redistribute it for free) Now everyone *but* you can install it on other machines w/out buying a per license fee. God knows what kind of mess it would be if someone modified the gpl'd stripped version and the original person "reinstalled" rhel from that.

From A W2K Perspective...

[Gettin'_Fatter]

As the IT manager for a school district I've been evaluating the cost advantages of Linux for some months now. Looking at Debian, Mandrake, ArkLinux (which I thought was COOL), Red Hat, etc. I was close to making a decision to have us wade our way into the Red Hat pool, but support is the issue, and what I'm hearing from Szulik is "Hey, if you want ease of use, go Windows!"

We've been Windows for years, and pardon me for saying so on /. but once we installed W2K Pro on all our workstations all, I mean ALL our problems went away. Our workstations simply work. I've got SUS updating all my servers and desktops, and group policies administering rights and securities automatically and it works like a charm. 95% of issues we have left are user's errors, and we'd get that no matter what OS we use. You'd have to show me some hard-core cost advantages to another OS for me to even justify it in my own mind, let alone to my mangers.

Sorry, but I don't have enough technically savvy users to justify going from an insanely easy desktop environment to use and mange (W2K Pro) to one whose fortunes seem to change with the prevailing wind. It's just me and one other guy supporting 1700 users on 350 computers with 12 servers, and I have a wife and kids- I can't sleep here. I need things to just work, and I don't have the personal bandwidth to retrain.

Yes, MS is greedy, yes they monopolize, but frankly the current state of their products is totally advantageous for our particular environment, and I don't see that changing with help from Red Hat (or Linux in general) as I'd hoped.

I'd love to drop MS if the advantages were there. Their licensing vehicle is for us exorbitant, but right now it nets us a product that is widely supported, and honestly, whose support community is a great group to work with. I've never been told to RTFM on a Windows support forum.

Linux will never catch up with MS in their niche, nor should it try to. That's not what it's about IMHO.

Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[bloosqr]

After seeing that non-response to the academic pricing, I was annoyed enough to call redhat up to see what is going on. They have not finalized the pricing but it is going to be $25->$30 a year per machine w/ some minumum number of machines. They also will offer a "proxy server" for $2500 so you can roll your own updates.

(1) The proxy server idea is stupid since apt is ported over to redhat. If we know how to setup a ftp server we automagically get a "proxy" server. Unless they are not going to let us grab the updated rpms (from
our $25 per node licensed "up2dates") and copy it to the server which if they dont as far as I can tell violates the gpl (unless they do an "endrun" by providing rpm's w/ "trademarked" pictures in it).

(2) $25 a machine/year is more expensive than windows for updates! Yes redhat is a smaller company BUT at microsoft is writing their own gui, writing their own kernel, writing their own patches,
writing their own driver specs. Redhat is NOT doing these things on their own (but to be fair they are contributing but having per machine licensing is a trick worthy of SCO not a linux company).

(3) We are in a physics dept and run "oscared" images for a smallish beowulf cluster (50 dual nodes) and have two more beowulf clusters and one public access workstation cluster in our department alone. It makes *no* sense to pay $25 a node for this since we "automirror" when things go awry. I personally will move over to debian (or wait and see what fermilabs etc is going to do). This redhat fiasco is a fiasco. Using "trademarked" pictures to do an endrun around the gpl to get "per processor" licensing is an end run around the GPL and ought to be treated as such. (This is, as far as I can tell, what they are doing w/ "enterprise" redhat to prevent me from buying one "enterprise" redhat and apt-proxying my other nodes). Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.

best regards,
-bloo

Re:Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[Anonymous Coward]

Please bear in mind that the price you cite is for WS, not ES. And, WS lacks the DHCP server, DNS server, and lots of other good stuff. The poison pill is not so much the trademarked logos as the license term whereby an organiation forfeits its right to obtain updates if the organization is found to have even one unlicensed system. The current level of security threat makes it unrealistic to forgo updates, except on closed networks. So, realistically, one must generally have licenses on all systems. Granted, RH must make available the source code for security patches (that is, errata as Red Hat calls them). But, exactly WHEN they must make those available isn't clear. A few days lag can be a big deal when a 0-day worm is on the loose. So, you gotta pay or move on to some other distro or platform.

Re:Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[wuliao]

A lot of people are peeved at per-machine pricing, which sometimes makes sense.

What I don't get, though, is why people think they are entitled to pay for one subscription and use that subscription on an unlimited number of machines? I would think that a company running 1000 copies of RHEL is deriving more value from a company running 10 copies of RHEL (perhaps not 100x the value, which is why there should be volume discounts , but it's certainly not 1:1).

Re:Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[Wesley Felter]

$25 a machine/year is more expensive than windows for updates!

How do you figure that? A new version of Windows every three years for ~$150 comes out to more than $25/year.

Re:Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[bloosqr]

Thats for commercial companies. Academic prices are much cheaper ($700 site license for the OS). The commercial "per seat" prices for redhat are quite a bit more than $25 a machine/year.

Re:Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[bloosqr]

Ahh I see. What actually doesn't make any sense to me is by putting a huge cost differential btwn "Enterprise" and "workstation", it will just convince one person to package back in the missing rpm's. So the "workstation" version will become enterprise by installing dhpcd,bind etc. The EULA is really, really weird. Basically it prevents me from "redistributing" the source to members of my own company which as far as I can gather seems to violate the GPL since I can't be restricted from redistribution of src that is available to me or doing anything i want w/ it (i.e. recompile and generate isos). But yea the EULA is really insidious. I think the trademark issue (i.e. what they "ripped" out when they generated "fedora") is to prevent the simple case that one person buys enterprise linux and makes that ISO available on the net under GPL (and "updates") to everyone else (on an apt-server) who didn't sign the eula.

We'll I find the whole thing a bit depressing to be honest. I did notice that perhaps it will be a $2500 "site" license at least for students. W/ that sort of pricing faculty/academic/cluster use will be similiar. For most schools that is in the noise and is likely what we will do. But I am annoyed enough about this that I really think I will move all my machines to debian out of principle :! (Especially as we technically have "migrate" from rh9 anyway)

-avi

Re:Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[HiThere]

Some people have in the past experienced so support from Red Hat which was equivalent to "That's not an installation issue, so we don't cover that." (This isn't actually a quote, probably, since the event occured about 6 years ago. But it's as close as I can remember.) So we have an expectation of what kind of support most users would get. Well, updates are worth *something*, but not what they are asking for. And my experience was that their help is worthless for anything else. (Granted this *was* 6 years ago, but one of their selling points was Official Red Hat Support for 3 months & news group support afterwards. I was a bit shocked at what they though was decent support. [The problem was ppp configuration...I got the answer from a newgroup while at work. I couldn't, of course, get the answer from my home machine. And their phone support was...well, I just said.])

Re:Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[Wesley Felter]

Oh, that's right. Microsoft has recognized that the educational market can't afford Windows, so they might as well just give it away for free. Too bad Red Hat isn't doing the same thing.

Re:Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[bloosqr]

Thats not quite what I meant. Lets look at the converse. The "standard" no phone support no DHCP/BIND Workstation Redhat (WS) but 1 yr of updates is $179. If you want BIND/DHCP (ES) its $379 w/ no phone support.

After 1 year, to get the updates you have to pay
another $174 per year for the "enterprise"
and $89/year for the "WS" edition.

So it is $179 1st year and $89 per year afterwards for WS.

It is $379 1st year and and $174 per year afterwards for ES.

I think its fair that perhaps I shouldnt' be bitching about the academic prices :).. BUT apples to apples cost for a standard workstation is more for redhat than it is for commercial use for companies and personal but noneducational use
as far as I can tell.

Here is the

list of prices for the updates.
And here is the list of prices for the original OS.

Also the EULA of redhat leaves much to be desired (as has been pointed out elsewhere in this /. thread)

-bloo

Re:Academic Pricing :: goodbye redhat

[Paul Jakma]

Using "trademarked" pictures to do an endrun around the gpl to get "per processor" licensing is an end run around the GPL and ought to be treated as such. (This is, as far as I can tell, what they are doing w/ "enterprise" redhat to prevent me from buying one "enterprise" redhat and apt-proxying my other nodes). Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.

You're mistaken I think. The RH trademarked stuff is all in seperate packages - eg redhat-logos and anaconda-images (and i cant actually think of any other package), see also Section 2 of Appendix 1 in the service agreement for RHEL (see URL below). The redhat network packages /might/ also be RedHat trademarked/owned, though they're not listed in App. 1, S.2.

RedHat do /not/ licence Enterprise Linux. The packages, other than the scant few with RH trademarks, are mostly GPL licenced (or other 'free' licence), AIUI, and i've read the document at http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html which, despite the URL is *not* a licence but a service agreement. So you can copy and redistribute them at will, AIUI, as per normal with GPL licenced software. The service agreement for RHEL does claim that "Red Hat and others" own all rights to the software and its components, however with the caveat of "subject to the applicable license" - which obviously would be GPL or BSD style in nearly all cases. Ie, you're pretty much free to take RHEL, strip out the few non-free packages and repackage it under some other non-trademark infringing name. (nor could you make claims to it being like RHEL, same situation as used to exist with resellers of downloaded RHL CDs).

However, what RedHat have done is to make it a condition of their support contract that you honestly report how many machines you deploy RHEL on. The support contract fee scales with number of deployed installs, obviously, and as per the service agreement you are committed to paying at the listed price (or otherwise agreed price) per installed "server", see Part II, Section 2.2 of the agreement at URL above. Further, RedHat are allowed to audit you to establish that you are in compliance with the service agreement, see Part I, S4. So, if you install extra RHEL servers RedHat are entitled to charge you for the discrepancy in the number of installed servers, with a provision for a 20% surcharge if the discrepancy exceeds 5%. If you were to fail to pay, RedHat naturally would have the option to terminate the agreement and sue you for breach of contract, as well as pursue you for the monies owed.

So (bearing in mind that i'm just Joe Random Slashdot Poster):

• When you buy RHEL, you are not paying for a "licence" to use RHEL. You are paying for a service agreement for a period of time with RH to gain services such as updates, support, etc. for your installed servers.
• You /are/ allowed to copy just about all the RHEL packages AFAICT. RH, TTBOML have *not* been sneaky and tried to 'taint' each package with trademarked material. (probably because of the potential to invalidate the licence and hence lose their right to distribute). There are a couple of packages which are not freely redistributable, and RedHat have been nice enough to point out which ones those are.
• If you have a service agreement with RedHat however, you really really should not risk installing copies of RHEL without increasing your agreed installed server count with RH. Certainly not by more than 5%, or you risk hefty penalties (in addition obviously to risking continued RH service itself, and possibly further civil action by RH against you.).
• Whether a RH customer could redistribute 'respun' RHEL CDs (ie RHEL stripped of all packages under RH licences/trademark restrictions) without breaching the service agreement is unclear. I do not see any language that disallows this, and Appendix 1, S1 seems to actually affirm that the customer /is/

Up2date for clusters

[punka]

OK, so RedHat doesn't sell licenses; they sell bits (for up2date). So why not require a local mirror of the up2date service that all the clusters look to for product updates and security patches? Would definitely save the cluster owners and RHN TONS of bandwidth.

You have the right hardware.

[Medievalist]

Hardware support is very narrow in linux as compared to Windows, and narrower still in certain areas, and narrower still in Red Hat. This is best illustrated by the Red Hat sound card support - I tried seven different cards in RH9 before I found one that worked. All seven (including the giant ISA Sound Blaster w/non-IDE CD port) worked fine under Windows 98.

You are lucky enough to have the same hardware as somebody with coding skillz, basically. If Alan Cox and Miguel de Icaza have the same camera you have, that explains why it's easy to use!

As the hardware vendors have clued in (look at how Adaptec has woken up!) this situation has gotten better for the newer hardware, but it's actually gotten worse for "legacy" hardware as the kernel hackers have gotten more affluent and better equipped. The hardware vendors have no incentive to keep old stuff working, after all - they want to sell you a new card.

Re:You have the right hardware.

[Drathos]

Out of curiosity, what were the other six sound cards?

I've had absolutely no problems with any Creative Labs product (SB16, AWE32, AWE64, and Live!) or the Aureal card I had at one point.

Re:You have the right hardware.

[Medievalist]

Mostly quite old - and I think all of them worked with RH 6.2 and possibly RH7.x as well.

Without rummaging through the basement, I know I had an fx3d, an fx3dplus (which is very different from the fx3d, oddly enough) and an AWE-32 with a wavetable plug-in on it, as well as the previously mentioned antique Sound Blaster. The others were much more recent vintage and thus less memorable, but they all worked in Win98 (which has the only non-linux OS I had available at the time).

Most of my hardware can be charitably described as "vintage". The less charitable would call it "trash", which is appropriate since I get most of my stuff from trash cans and recycling bins.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[freeweed]

Redhat wants us to develop and test fedora for free, turn around sell it to enteprise for big bucks

Test it for free?

The distro is free! They're giving you an entire operating system, plus a load of other goodies, gratis. Free as in beer and free as in speech. Try getting Microsoft to let you download free (beer only, mind you) copies of Windows and Office so that you can complain about free testing. Oh wait, we already do that for them :)

As for developers, you have a point. However, the party line seems to me to be "OSS developers do it because they like to develop", not for money. To me, I also look at the side benefits. If I was the guy who wrote the next KDE (or whatever), it'd help pad my resume to write "wrote application that millions of people use every day".

I mean, unless OSS moves to a license of "you can't sell this, to anyone, ever", this is how things are going to be. Anyone can take GPL/BSD licensed code and make money.

Re:Sloppy editing on questions 10a/b/c?

[Jokkey]

That last paragraph in question 10b looks to me like it was supposed to be Szulik's response to 10a and 10b. If so, then it seems to me that that's a decent job of addressing the issue and a decent attempt to accomodate educational facilities. The wording of the paragraph ("will begin to address a void") implies to me that RedHat is working on doing more to accommodate educational facilities.

Is it really so bad that Szulik asked painehope to send him an email? It seems that I've seen a number of companies that require you to talk to a salesperson to get a quote...

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Zeelan]

Some of the flaws that you point out seem to be something of a strangth when looked at from another perspective. From my perspective as someone that does consulting for a living the idea of putting out GNU code that anyone can copy and then have to give those modifications out is a kind of power that I(As an individual and not some faceless corporation with a CEO) can have over an entire industry.

The GNU from my perspective is about control and power. If I programed a tool that was useful... but didn't have anything really patentable in it my chances of compeating with the industry at all would be doomed. If I were to release it under the GNU my possibile market share is 100%. It also means that the next company down the line would have to compeat in a 0 sum game.

As an individual and as the original author I can sell training classes in how to use the software and can charge quiet well for the service.

Anyway... just a couple cents on the idea.

By George, I think you've got it.

[Medievalist]

...does this mean I could legally get a copy of RedHat Enterprise Server, and install it on as many machines as I want?

Yes. That's basically the Red Hat business model as it exists outside RH corporate fantasyland - remarkably similar to shareware in practice.

My employers wanted me to spend more time on making their systems better, so they purchased Red Hat's up2date service ("subscriptions") which dramatically reduced the time I was spending on patching the servers. Reduced it to nearly zero, in fact, since patching rarely requires my personal attention any more. A good deal for everyone involved, but Red Hat basically sold us one shrink-wrapped set of CDs per version the first two years. Then we reached a pivot point where up2date became worthwhile for us, and we were happy to see Red Hat profit from this, so that they'd stay in business and continue to sell us support.

The average person

[Brandybuck]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par.

Has Mr. Szulik ever used Linux? I plug in my digital camera, click on the camera icon on my desktop, and up pops a folder with all of the pictures in it.

Of course, I had to set this up myself, since this capability didn't come out of the box. But it wasn't difficult. I never once had to open a terminal window to do it. This was under FreeBSD, which doesn't have hotplug. It would would have even easier under Linux.

What Mr. Szulik is deliberately turning away people who WANT to use Linux. While I can understand him not wanting to recommend Redhat/Fedora to those who are perfectly happy with Windows, it boggles the mind that he would turn away paying customers waiting at the checkout stand. The average person who WANTS to use Linux (as opposed to merely the average user) is going to be capable of using their digital camera with Linux.

Re:The average person

[Anonymous Coward]

I plug in my digital camera [...] and up pops a folder with all of the pictures in it.

Of course, I had to set this up myself, since this capability didn't come out of the box. But it wasn't difficult

You people are so disconnected from reality. Flame the CEO man all you want, Windows does all this OOB, and he knows damn well that Linux has years to go before it gets there, so that's why he talks about people just going for it on the desktop. When Microsoft says "yeah, OO.org is great, if you compare it to Office97" they're not being smug, they're just telling the truth.

You can bitch and moan all you want, but that ain't making Linux any better than it is today, and frankly, if RH has lost interest in taking it that way, I can't see who will (unless Novell takes SuSe there, which I doubt).

So you just keep on making believe that your pet OS is ready to take over the world. It's always good entertainment if nothing else.

Re:The average person

[Brandybuck]

Windows does all this OOB

So can Linux if the distribution sets it up to do so. Today. Not years from now, but today. There is nothing stopping a distro from using hotplug to detect an attached camera, automounting it, and throwing up a new icon on the desktop or system tray. One single shell script will do this. In FreeBSD, it would only need an entry in usbd.conf.

I would be quite surprised if there weren't already some distros that have this. OOB.

Lovely

[Knights who say 'INT]

For the average person that needs to be able to plug in their digital camera without going into the terminal window, we think that the user's experience with any brand of Linux will be sub-par.

At last someone inside the Linux industry says it!

Ah, RedHat bashing

[freeweed]

I agree with your summary of his comments 100%.

But RedHat bashing is old, man. It is, or at least up till 9 was, a great distro.

Everyone and their dog told me to try their distro of choice, and I've done most of the major ones. Debian still has that horrible installer which makes vi commands seem intuitive, Mandrake is.. well, Mandrake, and Slack was huge pain in the ass to get working properly.

Haven't tried LFS or Gentoo, because that seems like a lot of work to just use a computer. Suse neither, because the thought of re-downloading a gig or 2 every time I want to install just irritates the piss out of me.

RedHat installs nicely, things play well together, and the best part, it works flawlessly on my laptop (short of certain drivers that don't exist in any Linux distro - yet).

I've tried them (in fact, RedHat wasn't my first Linux), and I can most certainly say I didn't find other distros "much better".

YMMV

Sounds like an opportunity.

[Doktor Memory]

There are, conservative estimate, probably several hundreds of thousands of RedHat 7.1-7.3 boxes in service at various semi-managed hosting facilities around the globe.

If I had, say, $1 Million in angel money to play around with, I'd be hiring QA droids like there was no tomorrow, in order to put together a replacement for up2date to keep those boxes usable.

Would you pay $150/year/box to avoid having to migrate to Fedora or RHEL3 for another few years? I bet you would, and so would a lot of other people.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Lets try this again...

[Gettin'_Fatter]

The moderators must not have liked the pro W2K slant to my comments, but I'll try again. Karma shmarma...

As the IT manager for a school district I've been evaluating the cost advantages of Linux for some months now. Looking at Debian, Mandrake, ArkLinux (which I thought was COOL), Red Hat, etc. I was close to making a decision to have us wade our way into the Red Hat pool, but support is the issue, and what I'm hearing from Szulik is "Hey, if you want ease of use, go Windows!"

We've been Windows for years, and pardon me for saying so on /. but once we installed W2K Pro on all our workstations all, I mean ALL our problems went away. Our workstations simply work. I've got SUS updating all my servers and desktops, and group policies administering rights and securities automatically and it works like a charm. 95% of issues we have left are user's errors, and we'd get that no matter what OS we use. You'd have to show me some hard-core cost advantages to another OS for me to even justify it in my own mind, let alone to my mangers.

Sorry, but I don't have enough technically savvy users to justify going from an insanely easy desktop environment to use and mange (W2K Pro) to one whose fortunes seem to change with the prevailing wind. It's just me and one other guy supporting 1700 users on 350 computers with 12 servers, and I have a wife and kids- I can't sleep here. I need things to just work, and I don't have the personal bandwidth to retrain.

Yes, MS is greedy, yes they monopolize, but frankly the current state of their products is totally advantageous for our particular environment, and I don't see that changing with help from Red Hat (or Linux in general) as I'd hoped.

I'd love to drop MS if the advantages were there. Their licensing vehicle is for us exorbitant, but right now it nets us a product that is widely supported, and honestly, whose support community is a great group to work with. I've never been told to RTFM on a Windows support forum.

Linux will never catch up with MS in their niche, nor should it try to. That's not what it's about IMHO.

Re:Lets try this again...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must work for a public school district. I have been doing a bunch of deployments in private and religious schools. These people have to pay out of pocket for their software , hardware etc. It takes me all of 15 minutes to sell a linux solution to them. All of the schools I have done in the last few months I have done free of charge.

Your lack of initiative to learn something new to provide cost savings and reduced taxes to your district is very typical of the public school system. I suggest that you continue with your use of Windows and unwillingness to learn anything new.

Eventually I will have you and your partners jobs, thank you for using Windows.

GET a PR Officer already!

[SlashDread]

I can totally understand the move, first get Linux recognized as great phat iron OS, succesfull in the server market will automagically mean in a year or two (around the K.O. to sco...) some stable desktops will be around, and in the picture too.

He should actually GET the PR officer thou, unlike the statement in the intro I might add, I believe even these answered needed it.

My MOTHER told me today "Oh leenox, thats now not gratis anymore eh?"

This "no desktop" thing should have brought slower and more carefull, and in complete different wording, we should have been told RH Desktop was now "free", not "not there", and Fedora should have been pushed way better and earlier. FIRST you present alternatives, THEN you rip out a product.. Stupid, stupid.

"/Dread"

translate the biz speak

[Anonymous Coward]

one of the responses was:

Differentiated service skills around Open Source software will be in demand based upon the large transition which will occur over the next 10 years as businesses transition from proprietary to commodity hardware and open source software.

So, the answer to the question "what other business would you get involved in" is "another business that does Open Source service/support"?

Or do I still not speak business properly?

These idiots are abandoning their bread and butter

[Anonymous Coward]

Look before the company ever ran RedHat it ran on my desk first for years. If is was not for the fact that I had a nice desktop distribution they would have not sold it in my company period. I would also assume this is the case with most of the linux deployments. His remarks about the desktop only serve to piss me off even more. They have become to large and for some reason are quickly loosing sight of how they got to where they are today. The simple fact is they cannot operate in this fashion and I will no longer install their distro on anything. The desktop distribution is what put them on the map and they for some reason think they can drop it without reprecussions, that is just plain RETARDED.

Re:Interview Summarized For You!

[Anonymous Coward]

People are ripping off RedHat's hard work by stealing their intellectual property and the results of their labors. They are ver reasonable about htis, I think.

%s/Red\ Hat/SCO/g

Sorry about the confusion. This was what I wanted to say.

RedHat's plan is 2 get bought by MS

[argoff]

Well first off, if you have a bunch of high end enterprise customers in one corner willing to pay buco bucks, and then a bunch of small scale users in the other - the direction is a no brainer. However, I could easially see them taking the enterprise server market by storm, and being an irresistable sell to Microsoft who would then get the high end enterprise users they have always dreamed of. You had better bet Microsoft would pay top dollar for that market. Then Micrisoft could easially migrate to closed more proprietary system in due time. Hell, Microsoft already reuses so much freebsd code, they're experts at taking free code and turning it into closed systems. It'd be alot easier then you think.
Anyhow, if things don't go that way - eventually they will get back to the desktop when the enterprise market saturates. It's just a matter of allocating resources.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this is, who will judge the quality of the developer's code?

Me!

szulik's answer: use debian

[wobblie]

Well, it's obvious now, Red Hat is getting worse and worse, becoming more like proprietary UNIX every day. The distribution has shrunk from 3-4 cd's to 2, has package management that is actually worse than "no package management", the packages are buggy as shit into the bargain, and they're now playing versioning and licensing games ala Microsoft.

When will you people get it? RED HAT SUCKS. there, I said it. Pretty soon it will be one CD, and will cost more than windows.

Look, Debian offers everything you could want. Just freaking try it and stop whining about Red Hat.

The next Debian stable (due in 1-2 months) will:

• have roughly 9GB of binaries in the respoitory, compared to the anemic, paltry ~1GB RH offers
• best package management there is (sorry, rpm is just trash)
• developers who respect their users. Unlike RH, where "up2date" wil gleefully overwrite your configuration files and everything else by default
• can't go out of business or get bought out, period.

And please, no crap about debian being outdated. RH is more dated than debian, considering the last stable version of RH was 7.x. 9.0 is a total mess, way worse than debian unstable. RH's ".0" releases are like Debian's "unstable" branch, but with 1/20th the software available.

Copyright violation!

[lone_marauder]

Recently we launched a statement of direction - Open Source Architecture for the enterprise. As more large customers move to distributed computing architectures, firms will want to leverage the flexibility and independence a integrated stack can create for a business. Our product line is being built through the delivery of software sold modularly. For example, our cluster suite.

I don't think you're allowed to use the Dilbert mission statement generator in an interview.

Qustion 1b, or bend over, this won't hurt at all

[stonewolf]

Restated to take the gloves off:

Q: I put my butt, my balls, and my mortgage on the line to get my boss to pay for your service. Are you really going to pay me back by ripping me off?

A: You poor stupid trusting person. Not only am I ripping you off... now, where did I put the KY...

I too paid for services that I will never recieve. Nice to know the true nature of the thief who now runs Red Hat.

Yeah, yeah, mod me down... The truth hurts. One of the greatest companies in the Free Software Universe is stealing from its customers.

Stonewolf

RE: personal OS choice?

[RoadWarriorX]

9) personal OS choice? - by BigGerman

Which OS and desktop environments you, your colleagues and friends use every day?

Szulik:

I have not used proprietary software for many years. I run a 5 node Linux cluster at home. I use Gnome.

You know, I would love to know what he does with that cluster. I wonder if he set up his own 5-node Linux Virtual Server like I am.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Brandybuck]

They have incorporated and then licensed software from BSD developers without paying one red cent.

Anything other than portions of the TCP/IP stack?

The point for the grandparent post, is that Microsoft is following the terms and conditions of the BSD license. The developers weren't looking for monetary renumeration, so it's no disappointment when none comes. But what if the BSD developers had demanded payment for checkin to the Microsoft code base? Then Microsoft would have written their own incompatible stack, and we would have all been worse off.

If you check, the BSD TCP/IP stack had already been paid for. That's right, BSD got paid to write it. DARPA paid them. That they didn't get additional payment from Microsoft is skin off of no one's back.

Executive turn over

[Compenguin]

What's going on with all the exectutive turn over at RH? I can remember like 3 or 4 CEOs in the past few years.

Re:Executive turn over

[Compenguin]

Ok, after looking at all the facts it's only 2, my memory must be playing tricks on me.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Brandybuck]

Redhat wants us to develop and test fedora for free, turn around sell it to enteprise for big bucks.

No one is forcing you to develop for or test Fedora. Although I somewhat agree with you in my distaste of performing unpaid QA work for corporations, the choice to do it is still up to you. If you don't like it, stick with noncommercial systems like Debian and FreeBSD, or "just enough revenue to pay our developers" systems like Slackware.

The Average Person Wouldn't Pay For Linux

[reallocate]

>> The average person who WANTS to use Linux (as opposed to merely the average user) is going to be capable of using their digital camera with Linux.

I don't think that's important The important question is will the average personb who wants to use Linux buy it at a price that's high enough to sustain it as a product? Szulik clearly said that Red Hat has decided there's more money to be made elsewhere. That's a business decision. Expectations that Red Hat is obligated to maintain a line of business that they want to eliminate are naive and misplaced.

Re:The Average Person Wouldn't Pay For Linux

[Brandybuck]

If Mr. Szulik doesn't want to maintain a distro for average users because he doesn't see any money in it, that's his choice. Heck, I might even agree with him. But that's not what he said.

Operating systems are a "trickle up" technology in many ways. Microsoft made inroads into the enterprise markets by being ubiquitous on the desktop. For Redhat to ignore the desktop is to squander its future in favor of present incomes. IHMO.

Re:The Average Person Wouldn't Pay For Linux

[reallocate]

Szulik said the retail line was profitable, but not the best avenue for developing Red Hat's business. I understand that to mean they've decided that they can get a greater return on their investment by leaving that market and concentrating on the enterprise and corporate desktop markets. As the Linux market changes and Linux matures, I wouldn't be surprised to see Red Hat reenter the retail market.

There's plenty of evidence that retailing Linux is a losing proposition. Mandrake appears to survive by appealing for donations. SuSE continues to market a retail package while clearly focusing on the enterprise market. That may change following the Novell acquisition.

Microsoft's experience doesn't necessarily translate to today's environment. Microsoft rode, and helped create, the PC revolution. Before Microsoft could sell into the enterprise market, they had to create a desktop market, which they did by means fair and unfair. Today, however, the market is entirely different. Linux is not ubiquitous on the desktop, and almost certanly will never be. If Linux makes sufficient inroads into the desktop market, I'm sure Red Hat will reenter the retail stream. Until then, why should they throw good money after bad?

Re:The Average Person Wouldn't Pay For Linux

[Brandybuck]

Until then, why should they throw good money after bad?

They don't have to throw good money after bad. But neither do they have to tell SuSE and Mandrake users to use Windows on the desktop. Yet that's what they're saying. If SuSE and Mandrake wish to throw good money after bad, it's none of Redhat's business.

Re:The Average Person Wouldn't Pay For Linux

[reallocate]

I interpreted those remarks to refer to current Windows users, not current Linux users. It was simply an acknowledgement that for many, many people Linux still has too many rough edges, and that it will take a few more years of development before Linux becomes a compelling desktop alternative for those people.

In particular, the lack of device drivers for many commercial add-on products deters people from switching from Windows to Linux. If your favorite Gizmo is working with Windows, but the vendor tells you they make no driver for Linux, why would you switch?

Re:The Average Person Wouldn't Pay For Linux

[Brandybuck]

If your favorite Gizmo is working with Windows, but the vendor tells you they make no driver for Linux, why would you switch?

My friend's favorite gizmo had drivers for Windows 98, but NOT for Windows XP. So he didn't upgrade. Then he got a new gizmo with drivers for XP but not 98. What should he do?

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[scavenger87]

As an individual and as the original author
I can sell training classes in how to use
the software and can charge quiet well for
the service.


That is the main reason why it is profitable
for OSS developers to design not-so-userfriendly
products. If it's pain in the ass to use but
the product is having a market share of 100%,
you _have_ to pay for 'expensive' (price
is always negotiable) classes.

Selling out

[demachina]

I've gone out of my way over the years to buy Red Hat box sets and up2date subscriptions. I wanted to give money to Red Hat because they were pretty cool in the early days when they seemed to have a long view and had what it would take to make Linux successful. After recent events and reading Matthew's BS I'm afraid I made a mistake. For what ever reason the executives at Red Hat have mutated in to the same kind of slimeballs that populate companies the world over and they certanily don't "get it" anymore. Its a really great idea to dump your flagship producton, and customers, on the backs of a bunch of unpaid volunteers, while you try to cash in on the peices you can charge an arm and a leg for. Red Hat's strategy of making a product based on free labor worked when they were making an affordable and convenient package. Now that they are orphaning a big segment of their loyal customer base and still leveraging free labor but are now charging rates rivaling Microsoft's and are starting to look just as slimy and unappealing. It was a really great idea to sign a bunch of people for up2date and then immediately kick the chair out from under it leaving paying customers hanging.

I imagine this can be attributed to the disease that inflicts every company after it goes public. They stop prioritizing making good products and cultivating happy customers who in turn give them money with joy in their hearts because they like the product.

Instead, like most public companies, the only people they start caring about are the analysts sitting in Wall Street and the one and only priority is making the revenue projections each quarter so the stock price goes up and they get rich when they cash in the options. Just being profitable isn't good enough either. MUST GROW FAST AND CONSTANTLY whether its sound business or not. Customers, rather than being the top priority, turn in to a necessary evil who must be constantly milk for cash and they must be constantly manipulated.

Priority #1, must get customers to sign up for subscriptions. Just selling good software is too unpredictable. If we screw the pooch and a new release sucks people don't buy it, we miss our numbers and Wall Street is unhappy. If we make customers pay us a constant amount of money each year then we ALWAYS make our numbers even if our product sucks sometimes.

Priority #2, a key component of subscriptions is support. But damnit support is expensive. Must cut support costs. Lets hire a bunch of people in India who are dirt cheap. Nothing wrong with that if they actually know what they are doing. The problem is they are usually hired iike cattle and handed a bunch of preprinted FAQ's. As long as the customers question is precisely answered on the FAQ service is great, unfortunately the FAQ's only work half the time and the rest of the time your support staff exercises their one true skill, using the buttons on their phone to constantly forward or put on hold anyone who has an actual problem until they eventually give up and hang up.

Priority #3, make sure all your competitors are also publicly traded and also implement Priority #1 and #2 so they suck just as bad as you do so customers are left choosing between the lesser evils and will pay you even though your company's products have started to suck. Thats what competition is all about. Everybody competes to be equally shitty.

After some consideration I've deduced that Capitalism was an interesting experiment but its reached the point its flaws are starting to far outweigh its benefits. Fact is its become 100% about overpaid and unscrupulous execs striving to make as much money as possible as easily as possible. Screwing labor and customers is job 1. Those with ethics and interested in producing a good product at a fair price need not apply. All of Capitalism's competitors have also proven to suck so maybe we should go back to the drawing board and try to come up with a economic system where people are actually rewarded based on the merit of their work.

Re:Selling out

[Paul Jakma]

Its a really great idea to dump your flagship producton, and customers.

Which customers have they dumped? The ones who bought into RedHat Network and bought boxed sets can surely continue to buy RHEL. The ones who did not, well why should RedHat lose /too/ much sleep about "customers" who dont pay?

And to be really fair to RedHat, they did still think of the hobbyist/non-paying "customers", they will hosting and developing for Fedora, which is free and will have updates. They did not have to do that.

Now that they are orphaning a big segment of their loyal customer base.

Loyal customer base of which the vast majority did not contribute to revenue. RedHat employ a lot of people to work full-time on Linux, David Miller, Alan Cox, Havoc Pennington, etc.. etc.. etc.. Rather strangely, in order to employ people you have to pay them, and these people depend on having an income in order to live. Very hard to work on Linux if you're a bum as its almost impossible to get telco's to run a DSL line to your cardboard box.

and still leveraging free labor

Oh please, See above. Further, I dont see anyone being forced to work on Fedora for free.

Although, I havn't been out to the local tavern in a while so maybe i missed the RedHat press-gang abducting unsuspecting developers and hauling them off to HMS Enterprise Linux.

Re:Selling out

[orionbelt]

Which customers have they dumped? The ones who bought into RedHat Network and bought boxed sets can surely continue to buy RHEL. The ones who did not, well why should RedHat lose /too/ much sleep about "customers" who dont pay?

Until now, small customers could buy RH for a few dozen $$. With RHEL this is not possible.

And to be really fair to RedHat, they did still think of the hobbyist/non-paying "customers", they will hosting and developing for Fedora, which is free and will have updates. They did not have to do that.

Yeah, very nice, they now want to milk the community for beta testing without offering back a stable product. Besides, Fedora will probably not be usable for any serious setup (see below)...

Loyal customer base of which the vast majority did not contribute to revenue.

Problem is, they now offer no solution for the little guy. It's all about Big Business. Sorry, Fedora does not sound like an option, it's more like a toy for eternal beta testing.

And do not forget that many of those customers who "did not contribute to revenue" are actually those who push for RH Linux in enterprises which do contribute to revenue.

Further, I dont see anyone being forced to work on Fedora for free.

True. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Re:Selling out

[Paul Jakma]

Until now, small customers could buy RH for a few dozen $$. With RHEL this is not possible.

Well, that's RedHat's choice isnt it? And its the small customer's choice to not buy it, to instead buy Mandrake or SuSe or whatever. RedHat are not a charity, they do have to find some way of making money to pay for their staff to work on Linux, pay for the ancillary staff to run the business and ultimately, pay dividends to shareholders. And even if RedHat price themselves out of the reach of "small customers" and those small customers have to use something else, if that is what allows RedHat to continue to pay Alan Cox, DM, Jeff Garzik, Havoc, etc.. etc.. to work on Linux, then the small customers /still/ benefit indirectly by virtue of RedHat funding people to contribute to Linux. Just as RedHat users benefit from those who are paid by IBM, SuSe, Mandrake, etc.. etc.. to work on Linux.

Go and use debian for free and you /still/ benefit from the "Big Business" which has chosen to fund people to work on Linux.

As for "RHEL", well if you can obtain it, you should still be able to use it, apart from one or two rpms, its all freely distributable software. See this post of mine where I ponder on some of the legalities. Of course, you dont get the RH support or updates if you dont have the RHEL service contract.

Problem is, they now offer no solution for the little guy. It's all about Big Business.

Why do they have to offer a solution for the little guy? If you think they're neglecting the little guy and there's a niche, why dont you go and fill that niche? Its very very hard to argue that you should have the choice to use RedHat, if by that same argument you deny RedHat their freedom of choice in how they support Linux. And as I've argued in my previous post, even if RedHat are now too expensive for the little guy, the little guy *still* benefits indirectly, and benefits /directly/ if he chooses to use Fedora.

A healthy Linux 'ecosystem' is one that people can make a living from it, and that implies that companies need to be able to make at least some small margin of profit from Linux. As a corollary, if RedHat do better out of this move, then it quite probably is better for the Linux ecosystem in general.

Sorry, Fedora does not sound like an option, it's more like a toy for eternal beta testing.

Yes, but Fedora is being opened back up to the community - slow process, but it's happening. So instead of moaning about it being a toy, why dont you get off your soap-box and get involved to actually make it better? Also, there is the Fedora Legacy project, community driven, which will try to provide long-term updates for Fedora releases, ie backport patches and rebuild RPMs for older Fedora's - something that a lot of reasonably experienced Linux users could help with.

And do not forget that many of those customers who "did not contribute to revenue" are actually those who push for RH Linux in enterprises which do contribute to revenue.

Well, that is presumably a factor which RedHat considered, duty of care to their shareholders would have demanded it, if nothing else.

True. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Yes.

Re:Selling out

[orionbelt]

Well, that's RedHat's choice isnt it? And its the small customer's choice to not buy it, to instead buy Mandrake or SuSe or whatever.

Sure. The point is that, on the one hand, this transition is going to leave "up in the air" a number of small/medium users (some of whom did pay RH but apparently "not enough for GROWTH!" --how much growth is enough growth?) who will not be happy with RH any more; and on the other hand, it is not clear (from what i read) that RH will be "saved" by their Enterprise edition, esp. if they lose the small/medium guy who often was the key for introducing RHL to many businesses.

So we end up with the worse of both worlds: RH ends up losing karma with the small guys (and linux loses steam with the masses), while its future with Big Business is probably not guaranteed either...

Of course, since Szulik knows more about his company than i do, i hope he made the right decision and i'm wrong. And i agree with you here. In fact, if we could know that a new company (or other entity) will emerge to fill in the small user gap, i would be as happy as anyone.


Go and use debian for free and you /still/ benefit from the "Big Business" which has chosen to fund people to work on Linux.

Obviously, the reason why i (and many other people) have been using RH linux is b/c we saw advantages to it which we could not find in Debian or other distros. However, these advantages are not worth the price of RHEL. So what i (and others) may end up doing is precisely what you are suggesting, but it is so obvious to many of us that this is the wrong thing for RH's (and linux's) own interests to do, that it hurts seeing it happen, that's all.


As for "RHEL", well if you can obtain it, you should still be able to use it, apart from one or two rpms, its all freely distributable software. See this post of mine where I ponder on some of the legalities.

The thing is that it is not clear that your suggestion works (technically or legally)! See all the discussions left and right on this topic... This is actually part of the reason why so many people are pissed off, because we are left with so many scattered pieces to make sense out of... RH just dumped their small users (and i'm talking about paying small users now!) w/o any backup plan other than Betadora...


Yes, but Fedora is being opened back up to the community - slow process, but it's happening. So instead of moaning about it being a toy, why dont you get off your soap-box and get involved to actually make it better? Also, there is the Fedora Legacy project, community driven, which will try to provide long-term updates for Fedora releases, ie backport patches and rebuild RPMs for older Fedora's - something that a lot of reasonably experienced Linux users could help with.

This all sounds so great and right, so let's see how it rolls out.... I guess it's just hard for me to imagine that the quality of "boring" (for geeks) things like bugfixes and security updates could work out so smoothly and securely and expediently without the backing of a company.

Unhelpful

[Voix des Airs]

I find these responses extremely unhelpful.

I am literally beside myself. I have been a (paid) Redhat user since 5.0 (and unix for a decade before that) and currently run 8.0. The huge problem here is what now? The systems I run are quite customized with local init-scripts, a patched kernel, and many custom or home-grown applications. Up2date and all are nice, but not the key issue... that being the *unbelievable* migration headache of moving to another distribution. Weeks of work at the very least... and how do I even approach that? I can't take the systems I have now off-line for the time necessary to move everything to Debian or Suse - and where do I do this since it can't be done in-place as it were? And what about the learning-curve? I'm not talking about learning a new desktop or something silly like that, I'm talking about how the system boots, where it keeps stuff, how its package management works, etc., etc., etc.

I am not an "Enterprise" as Redhat seems to conceives of the term and cannot afford what Redhat Enterprise costs - nor do I need that level of support. I am also not a hobbiest who just wants to "Play around with linux" - it runs 24/7 here. I guess what I am is a guy who made a mistake back in 1996 or 1997 when he decided to rely on Redhat. What am I supposed to do Mr. Szulik? I trusted your company and now I'm screwed (and Fedora *is* *not* the answer.) Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that certain companies have said would happen if we went with open source? Doesn't this give the entire linux community a black eye?

Re:Unhelpful

[Anonymous Coward]

someone mod this up please, it captures the essence of the problem in a nutshell.

If RH executives don't understand this, they should.

And if they do understand this, but don't care... then to hell with them. They'll never see another dime from me again.

Desktop market

[BalkanBoy]

I see someone raised concern over the desktop issue - if Apple can port their GUI layers (Aqua, etc) over to Yellow Dog Linux, so that we can have a Linux+Mac OS X-like GUI - this will blow a galaxy size hole in Microsoft's desktop share in due time.

I'm only wondering if there's someone else at apple or IBM contemplating the same idea...

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[BalkanBoy]

JBoss Group has already done what you're asking. They have paid their OSS developers with money they get off servicing/supporting/documenting JBoss.

Debian install

[runlvl0]

"Debian still has that horrible installer which makes vi commands seem intuitive"

I was in the same boat with respect to Red Hat; Debian has turned into my favorite post-RH Linux largely on the basis of ease of installation.

Download a Knoppix .iso, make CD

Boot system with Knoppix CD

Open console, type

sudo knoppix-install

Follow curses-based menus to create partitions and select bootloader. Reboot.
No packages to select, no painful Debian installer, just an easy desktop Debian installation in about 15 minutes (total install, depnding on RAM and CDROM speed). For more fun, after installation, a quick

apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

brings you up2date with the latest packages - you'll never even miss the Red Hat Network, I promise. (For graphical management, apt-get install synaptic. So simple, even a recovering MCSE can do it!) :^)

P.S. - "...which makes vi commands seem intuitive"? Why, vi is intuitive! In my day, we had ed and we liked it! We typed uphill, both ways in the snow...

Long Live *BSD!!!

[bfn]

Just more proof that Linux is dying.... All hail *BSD!

sorry.....couldn't resist.

Sometimes it is annoying...

[X-Nc]

to be part of the Open Source community. The amount of bitching, whining and moaning about the RH/Fedora move is an embaresment to everyone in it. I have been using RH since 2.1 and Linux, in general, since November of 1991. I'm not some kernel hacker guru, just a techie doing network/sysadmin/development stuff. Personally I think that the direction that RH is going is a good one. It could have been done in a better, more gentle way, though. But the bottom line is this...

There is nothing phylisofically or morraly wrong with the move RH is making. If the change does not fit your needs, for whatever reasons, there are more than enough alternative distros (and even the *BSDs and other OSs) to choose from. Why does everything have to devolve into a holey war? Why do people have to get so personal about a tool? This is like throwing a fit over, for example, a hammer. Comopany A makes hammers. You've been using their hammers for years. They decide to change their hammers size, weight and price and this change makes it unusable for your needs. Do you cry and bitch and act stupid about it? No, you go buy a hammer from company B. End of story.

My suggestion to all the people posting flames and toll bait in here is to get off your high horses, shut the hell up and do something useful.

(Yes, I know this isn't much better than a flame either but I'm really getting tired of all these people going on and on about how bad RH is when they're doing more to further the use of Linux and open source than all of these ranting people combined)

Re:Sometimes it is annoying...

[Rick BigNail]

I could only guess why some people behave like that.

Red hat is the 'proof' to them that open source business model works -- it is profitable and at the same time 'moral'. Unlike Microsoft.

But now their dream break down. So they become upset.

RMS had it right. He said he was not sure whether free software could make more money, or work better than proprietary software.

For me, the interesting thing is whether Redhat made the right business decision. It probably is a good decision in the short run. But for the long run I am not sure.

Irk!

[Anonymous Coward]

They outsourced PR to India!

The middle class of computing

[Roadkills-R-Us]

OK, so we have the Enterprise series for the big companies with tons of money, and we have The Product Once Known as Fedora for folks who just want a toy, or geeks who can maintain it themselves. [1] But what about those in the middle - a *huge* group? Small businesses make up the majority of the business economy, at least in the USA.

There's no way my employer is going to pay the sort of prices RH is charging. We don't need much support, and 95% of the patches don't affect us. At the same time, we are trying to get away from the idea of pulling folks off the projects they are supposed to be on to help maintain the OS (and many companies don't have anyone capable of this). For the price RH wants us to pay, we could hire an extra person, and have them maintain the OS *plus* do other work.

RedHat has abandoned the middle class. The middle class has the most money, but they don't want to talk to us. OK, fine. I'm willing to bet someone else will. So we'll just be off, now.

Hey, Red Hat:

SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH!

[1] I'm not putting the semi-consumer product down, just noting it's suitable only for a completely different set of markets.

RedHet Doomed To Repeat Past

[webzombie]

Reading the comments made by RedHat really make me wonder just where they think their market will grow after the business and enterprise markets become saturated with RedHat, Novell and MS solutions.

RedHat forgets that MS DID NOT gain any significant foothold in Business markets until workers starting going to work singing the praises of this software called Windows.

Ignoring the consumer market will inevitably cost RedHat more in the long run. IMHO

It sounds to me the RedHat will eventually be a proprietary services solution for an Open Source OS and/or product... now doesn't that make those investors wiggle!

If I had money...

[ColeNielsen]

If I had a couple million lying around, I would fund a project that will make Linux more user Friendly. I would do this by following what a company has already accomplish with BSD (Apple anybody). You have a kernel that supports certain hardware. You have a graphics subsystem that handles MOST of the available commands. Next door to the graphics subsystem you have a CLI that allows normal commands to be executed. On top of that you have a totally customizeable user interface that's fast and clean. something like Aqua with the ability to turn off some of the fancy shit. I would want to base it on XFCE4 :)

I would then build systems and ship them with my LINUX OS, cheaper than Apple, not m$, and simply put, better. I would also fund to port software to the new system. You would effectivly have the ability to run software based on the interface or you could install GNOME or KDE or whatever...

This still gives us geeks the ability to be geeks but it gives my 50 year old parents a system that is stable, tested, proven, fast, simple, and comes with everything they need: Email, Web Browser, Office Suite... you get the idea. It eliminates the confusion of Open Source while still providing the flexibility and configurability of LINUX --

man if only...

I'm also very serious, I'm open to donations, ideas, questions, comments, and whatnot.

http://www.colenielsen.com

Mod down

[bogie]

As everyone else pointed out nobody is forcing you to use Fedora. And if you do, nobody if forcing you to report bugs. So what's the problem again? Oh I get it. Red Hat is giving away a free distro for anyone to use as they see fit, but that's not enough for you. You want to be paid for using it. Sorry, not gonna happen.

According to your logic everyone who reports bugs for ANY distro deserves to be paid for it, or else they are "just working for free".

"I guess what I'm saying is that I don't want to develop for free"

Are you new to this whole Free Software thing? Because it sounds like it. If your into the "pay me for my work or screw off" thing you'd be better off sticking to proprietary commercial software. And if you going to develop OSS then it better be Dam good. Because if it isn't your sure not going to make any money on it.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[irix]

Redhat wants us to develop and test fedora for free, turn around sell it to enteprise for big bucks.

RedHat gives you Fedora for free. They sink lots of resources into working on Fedora, not to mention bandwidth for hosting, mailing lists, etc. If you want you can help by creating packages or filing bug reports. How exactly is this a bad thing?

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't want to develop for free.

Then don't. Nobody is asking you to do anything. Many of us write open-source software on our spare time because we have an itch to scratch or we want to give something back. Other people write docs, file bugs reports and do packaging for the same reasons.

What about a model where OSS developers get paid for the quality of code they check in? ... that would be better than the current state of affairs.

WTF? It would be better than the current state of affairs? I'll give you a clue: there is nothing wrong with the current state of affairs. People are paid to work full time on Open-Source software by companies selling support for it. Other people do it on a volonteer basis for free. What is the problem here exactly?

Pink Tie Linux

[FreeLinux]

Sounds like Pink Tie Linux ala Cheap Bytes

Re:Pink Tie Linux

[jmorris42]

Hmm. Looks like Cheap Bytes is actually doing a little more nowadays. Their "Pink Tie" version of RH 7.3 was no different from Red Hat's version, no logo removal, etc.

But yea, White Box is essentially a Cheap Bytes style RHEL except I had to build it ALL from source, not just anaconda-images and redhat-logos. Still working out some kinks though. Feel free to drop in, grab the release candidate isos and help out if ya want.

Bad CEO.

[greygent]

I have not used proprietary software for many years.

Maybe he should start using his competition's software, so that he has an idea of where the industry is going. Then maybe Red Hat software will be really "ready" for the rest of us.

Not knowing your enemy is a serious weakness.

My Turn Now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Redhat is dead!
Long live FreeBSD!

White Box Linux: RHAS w/o the trademarked graphics

[JMarsden]

There are several efforts under way to build and create installable freely-redistributable ISOs from the RHEL 3 SRPMs.

Note also that RH does make SRPMs of updates to RHEL freely available for download. So such a distribution can benefit from RH's updates/patches/security fixes.

One of these I have here is "White Box Linux". Its web page specifically asks that it not be linked to from /., and I'll comply with that request. Use Google to find it, if you really do want to get a copy (via BitTorrent) of its RC1 ISOs. There is also a mini-HOWTO on rebuilding RHEL at http://www.uibk.ac.at/zid/software/unix/linux/rhel -rebuild.htm and an associated mailing list at http://www.uibk.ac.at/zid/software/unix/linux/rhel -rebuild-l.html.

For some ex-RH users, this kind of "unsupported forked varient from RHEL3" may be a better choice than Fedora, without paying $$$ for official RHEL.

Jonathan

Blowtus Goats

[Anonymous Coward]

> you have Lotus Notes, which is much more flexible and powerful, and much more secure.

More secure? Definitely. Powerful? I hesitate to agree. Flexible? Like a turd is flexible.

I still have nightmares of when I was pigeoned into maintaining several Notes servers. Lotus Notes makes Tomcat look fun and easy.

RH Abdicating as "Generic Linux"

[Anonymous Coward]

To many people, RH == Linux.

How many times have you seen the argument that Microsoft/Symantec/etc. benefit from piracy because it maintains them as the "standard". That college students graduate and have an income, so then they buy the stuff they have been using for free for all those years. That they introduce the same stuff to their companies.

RedHat has been in a similar position, except everyone could cut their teeth on it legally. Then when it was justified, you'd move your company/school/whatever to RedHat because it's the best known Linux generally, and you are already familiar with it.

Well, RedHat is flushing this advantage down the toilet. After being out of wide distribution for a year or two, how many people will be migrating their companies from Windows to RH? Far fewer that there would have been. People will move to whatever they've been experimenting with on the side.

I can't help feeling that RH will do some backtracking over the next few months as this all sinks in. I wouldn't be in too big a rush to pick a new distribution just yet.

Very relevant...

[Slashamatic]

We are lucky as so many questions got answered. However the usual rule is the top 10 highest moderated posts. As they stop at +5, this kind of sucks.

Re:Very relevant...

[SeanAhern]

However the usual rule is the top 10 highest moderated posts. As they stop at +5, this kind of sucks.

Exactly. With a cap of 5, you can't tell what are the top 10 highest moderated posts. The bell distribution is cut off before the "top" comments can be determined.

Ah well. At least some interesting questions get answered, as you pointed out.

Re:Very relevant...

[Slashamatic]

I think the issue is the way that mod and meta-mod work out. Each open mod has to be separately processed during metamod - however I don't believe that upping the limit to 10 or 20 would be that much of a deal. The change wouldn't be too difficult if it applied to everything, bit more so for interviews only, I guess. In any case it comes down to CmdrTaco to decide whether he wants it.

Re:Very relevant...

[SeanAhern]

And CmdrTaco has said that he's considering changing it. Quoting his journal:

What I'm planning on doing is reworking scoring. Right now, all Slashdot Comments are rated on a scale from -1 to 5. Many things cause comments to change score: The Karma Bonus, The Short Comment Penalty, Excessive Downmods to your Domain, and of course, users moderating the comment up or down. But ultimately, it's very difficult to tell one score:4 comment from another. The difference between 4 & 5 is minimal. The difference between 1 & 2 is almost entirely the AC vs Logged in bonus. The difference between 1 & 2 is almost entirely the karma bonus. -1 is preetty much all crap, and it works well.

What I want to do is expand moderations to take advantage of several pieces of information that we have, that we don't use. And also, add new pieces of data to the mix. For example, comment age, the rate that a comment is moderated up, the total number of moderation points used on a comment, and perhaps bayesian filtering. But ultimately, instead of scores being classified into one of 7 groups, I want to rank them, from "Best" to "Worst". Maybe we retain the -1..5 range, but give the scores a decimel. Maybe we throw out the old scoring entirely, and give every comment a percentile.

The short and long of this whole discussion is that we have a lot of data that we're not using. And when we start making intelligent use of it, we'll dramatically improve the value of discussions.

Not sure what he's going to do, but he's at least aware that there's a problem that needs fixing. I'm hoping he talks to a mathematician to see what's been done before, rather than coming up with something on his own.

Using a Star Trek Analogy

[Ilan Volow]

If Captain Picard diverted 90% of his warp power to running a simulation in the holodeck where he rides horses in the Kentucky Derby, he better damn well admit that the Enterprise is in no shape at all to fight Klingons.

What I'm really unhappy about is that Red Hat has in the past spent $700,000,000 dollars buying out some dicey dot-coms and a compilter company when they should have used a small portion of this to make their distribution more desktop-ready. When I've mentioned usability problems to Red Hat's programmers, they tell me that they are having these usability problems because they don't have the money to hire HCI folks who know what they're doing and would help solve (and in many cases, help to avoid the creation) of things that make the user experience suck for non-technical users.

Given that Red Hat didn't spend the resources they needed to to make their product acceptable for end-users, I respect Matt Szulik for acknowledging that his product still has quite a ways to go.

(BTW, you didn't deserve a troll rating in my opinion. You also should have gotten more of a role in Nemesis. The movie would have sucked a lot less).

Re:Using a Star Trek Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree that buying a "compilter company" (actually the primary maintainers of GCC) was a bad idea. Not only was the company profitable, it gives RedHat an enormous strategic influence over the future of Linux.

Re:Using a Star Trek Analogy

[Cro Magnon]

Actually, if you've got Klingons coming at you, the LAST thing you want to do is admit that you're in no shape to handle them. Whether it's true or not!

Here's the payment

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL and OSS

Was that so difficult? Shesh, you'd think that a Slashdotter can understand how opensource works.

Everything contributed to Fedora is under the same open source license that they were originally in. If Mandrake wanted to copy the current Fedora system and create their own fork, they could do it right now and have the same rights to everything on Fedora that RedHat does. You or Mandrake are *NOT* working for RedHat, you're working for "the Fedora community" of which RedHat is a part of.

Sleepcat (with the Berkeley database), TrollTech (with Qt), and MySQL AB (with MySQL) have a business model that's a lot closer to what you're talking about. If you contribute to the main branch of these projects, you have to agree with their dual-license which allows them to make proprietary versions of your code which they can combine with other proprietary goodies. You don't have similar rights to make proprietary versions of these products, yet I don't here you complaining.

Sad thing is, the above post was moderated as +5 and not troll. It seems like the anti-RedHat community is willing to grasp *anything* to attack RedHat, whether it makes sense or not. I see where SCO learned their tactics.

Why do they hide it....

[Slashamatic]

One of the advantages about RH in the past is that you downloaded the ISOs or bought a box and if you decided that you liked it for the big time - you jest went out and got a product that was really just a souped up and supported version of what you downloaded.

It is interesting that RH stress that this product isn't upgradable to Enterprise Linux although the RPMs are similar. However if I can be sure that something working on it will work on RHEL then this could be a step in the right direction.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Redhat wants us to develop and test fedora for free, turn around sell it to enteprise for big bucks.

Isn't that what linux does, apache, gnome, kd.. err well KDE might be an exception, i'm not sure how that QT thing goes, pay us if someone pays you or something like that. But anyway even Redhat follows these rules, how do you think Mandrake was born? or white box or countless other distros who've tried and failed? Redhat only sells two things when it comes down to it, they sell thier name and support. If it was just software we'd all just use whitebox or pink tie linux.

Read the next line.

[Anonymous Coward]

The next line after the one quoted is:

That is obvious, not redundant you crazy moderators. What I'm trying to get at is, that I don't see this as a good thing, but it must be the model for development if OSS is to thrive.

Dude, read the post again!

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I admit all of what you say in my post! Its amazing how lazy slashdotters are.

Cameras, Linux and Windows

[RAMMS EIN]

Just to give the thread about cameras a somewhat interesting twist; plugging in my digital camera instantly killed Windows XP (BSOD, instant reboot that didn't allow me to read what was on the BSOD, and the machine wouldn't work properly afterwards). This was a factory installation of Windows XP, less than 2 days of use.

Under Linux, the USB controller didn't work due to the BIOS assigning the wrong IRQ to it, but putting the CompactFlash card from the camera in a $10 RadioShack CF<->PCMCIA converter allowed me to mount the card and beam over the images without a hitch.

Another camera I have is a Philips webcam. Works great under Linux (with the open source driver, and better yet with the closed bits from Philips added). I tried once to get it to work under Windows (I think it as XP as well) and failed.

To top things of, I recently bought a USB flash card reader that Just Works under Linux (haven't tried Windows, reportedly it needs a driver there).

I realize that mine are pretty extreme cases (all these products actually claim to be engineered for Windows and Mac), and hardly any of my video cards are supported by XFree86 better than VESA, but I do get the feeling that Linux's hardware support is pretty good, even in its traditional weak areas.

BTW why is it that when I want to write <-> I have to write &lt;-&gt; even though I selected Plain Old Text?

Has anyone tried nrh-up2date?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the Slackware world myself so I don't do the RedHat thing, however, as I read the three questions about Education sites and > 4000 clusters and buying subscriptions for each one of them, I thought, why not write something for one box to grab updates and distribute them to all the others.

Turns out theres already something out there that does that. Well... at least thats the way it sounds to me.

www.nrh-up2date.org

Do you really have buy a RedHat subscription for each computer you put it on or will the guys with red hats bust down your door and fine you out the ass.

Hopefully not...

Very disappointing

[osgeek]

I just paid for a Redhat Network update license a couple of months ago when I installed RH9. I don't want the enterprise version of their software. I don't want to upgrade. I want the update service that I paid for to continue.

You can be assured that as the machines in my IT department are upgraded/replaced, they won't be running any version of Redhat.

Cutting off the low end is just stupid stupid stupid. It's a huge mistake that is going to open the door wide for a new distribution that will grow off the low end and then give RH serious problems on the high end as well. RH will find itself wedged between Microsoft, Novell, Sun, and whatever upstarts fill in the low end markets and creep upward. They're fucked.

Re:Very disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides hollow threats to a salesman's face, the funniest thing is hollow threats volleyed over the internet. I'm sure Redhat will be filing for bankruptcy after this post, waaaahaahaa

Yeah sure.

[jotaeleemeese]

When computers became popular nobody had to mess around with their autoexec.bat and config.sys files.

Or the win.ini file and related gremilins.

Re:Yeah sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

They did, the thing is back then, speaking as someone who made alot of money back then(and now thanks to XPOS), they simply hired people to take care of those types of problems.

There aren't exactly a ton of local Linux shops everywhere, as compared to shops that do Windows.

And as for win.ini, your average windows user back then did not mess with that file. Go get yourself a job where dealing with end user support for a few months, your eyes will be opened...

Hi RedHat CEO! You're Scaring Me!

[ThoreauHD]

I don't know what Szully is doing, but this reminds me alot of when they fucked up Redhat 7 with gcc2.96-34832-3848Beta. Only this time, it's only screwing 4/5's of the people.

Not wholly sure if you realize this, but if users are running unsupported 3 month recycled crap on their desktops, they aren't going to use RedHat anymore and they aren't going to consider putting that steaming heap on their Server.

Microsoft owned the server market because CTO's kids were using it at home. You know the history. That's why I am not comprehending why you can't see the terrain in which you are currently deployed. Exquisitely stupid move. Redhat is very close to being a corporately accepted desktop. Now you just lost your PR person in every IT shop, because they have no more legs to stand on in regards to support. 2 points.

Next is the licensing. You guys really need to go back to the drawing board on this one. You cannot charge more than the dominant market player and expect to be around long. Every linux user wants your ass in the office and at home. That's a given, at this point in time...

And yes, we all understand that you cannot charge for linux. It's support right.. What the fuck ever. Charge for the bookmark you send with the 8 CD's.. It's the same outcome, and you know it. You are not helping by making licensing shit up with academia and research folks as well. Not good. These guys pull the heaviest and most stable purse strings, since their income is in and of itself based on Federal taxes. And this 6 months rotation, and 1 year and your smoked bullshit. No man. You are high.

In short, Szully, you're scaring me.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[nathanh]

WTF? It would be better than the current state of affairs? I'll give you a clue: there is nothing wrong with the current state of affairs. People are paid to work full time on Open-Source software by companies selling support for it. Other people do it on a volonteer basis for free. What is the problem here exactly?

In fact, not only is there no problem, it's a wonderful improvement over the previous models.

Cast your mind back to the late 80s. MS-DOS was dominant but there was no source code. If you found a bug (and there were lots of bugs to be found) then you had three options.

• Grin and bear it.
• Submit a bug report and pray that Microsoft fixed it in the next release, which you paid for, of course.
• Pay heaps of money to Microsoft for a special bug fix; only the very richest companies could afford to do this.

People back then wished fondly that they could get the source code so they could fix the bugs themselves, or hire a contractor at whatever rate to fix the bug.

So if the person before you doesn't feel like "working for free" then they don't have to. They have to pray that Red Hat decides to fix the bug for them. Or if they don't mind "working for free" then they can fix the bug themselves. How is this bad? It's not! It's choice. It's something we didn't have before. You don't have to fix it for free, but you can if you so choose. This is the FREEDOM aspect that RMS keeps harping on about. It's not about cost. It's about freedom of choice.

Users, developers, owners, volunteers, all with the same level of access. All with the same rights to modify the software. It's ... utopian.

mass storage, and "PTP"

[pr0ntab]

Almost ALL cameras support one or the other.

gphoto2/kamera speaks PTP, usb-storage is a kernel driver.

gphoto2 only needs to know about camera models to be able to do things that are vendor-specific. There is a "general purpose subset" which, incidentally XP uses to give you plug-n-play access.

"Folder Categories"

[pr0ntab]

just an idea... a configuration file which presents paths w.r.t. your home directory for which you can set icons and shows up in the file browser for quick access. So you don't have to call it "My Pictures", it could be "Content Staging Area" or "Open Service Requests" or whatever you need them to be.

Admins could get users set up with defaults using a skeleton file in /etc/skel.d

Not necessary.

[pr0ntab]

The editors pick the questions, and the editors can see the total moderations applied (and know what the real score is).

There is no harm in modding up a +5 score question if you really agree with it, it will be noted. (Also, later downmods won't bring the score down)

Finally, I think the editors need to make sure they have MORE than 10 questions because they don't know how the interviewer will react to them beforehand: he may balk at one, refuse to answer, get angry, etc. and so they can go to "backup" questions.

I wonder if that happens ever? It would be nice to see in the article notes whether or not a set of other questions went unanswered, provided that sort of thing occured.

Cameras and distros...

[internet-redstar]

On holiday with my dualboot XP/Mandrake system, a friends digital camera got full. Luckily he brought his USB cable...

First booted in XP, because we wanted it to have it work 'right away', billy style ;)
Wrong assumption: drivers not installed and no Internet connection on holiday (not even a fixed phone line near sight - you can imagine how desperate I got near the end to read slashdot :)

Booted Mandrake, and without doing ANYTHING WHATSOEVER, the camera icon jumped on the desktop and we were immediately capable of seeing the thumbnails and copying the pictures over. NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL A GOOD USER EXPERIENCE.

However, a company with still a bancrupcy-image on its name and a very RedHat-ish marketing style on its website. Isn't something we can recommend to new Linux users (professional or not).

So now we recommend Debian to all enterprise users and and KNOPPIX to newcomers. KNOPPIX runs from 1 CD, has all the good things, autodetects hardware very good and can be instantly copied to the HD for continued Debian use.

It was nice with you, Red Hat, but it was you who broke our relationship. It will be you who will miss us!

Long Live you all, friends of the OpenSource and Free Software movement!

---
The MS Word paper clip DOES suck!

Lack of release consistency and stability

[Anonymous Coward]

One major issues that has not been discussed is that by creating many
variations of RH it creates much more work for developers to support
linux, and causes a lot of frustration for customers when
incompatibility issues are encountered. One of the major advantages
of RH had been that it represented a standard upon which binary
software could be released. Developers now need to qualify products
for a large range of RH variations. This seems to be a big mistake by
RH, and makes the platform much less attractive as a target for
commercial products.

And FYI

[pr0ntab]

there is nothing stopping you from running rpmbuild on all of those and starting up your own repository.

You just can't claim it's RHEL. Even if the resulting bundled ISOs had the exact same MD5sums. (I wouldn't do that purposefully anyway, not a good idea).

You could call yourself "Beanie-Cap Enterprise Distribution" or something.

Just do what we do.

[pr0ntab]

Only one machine of each configuration is "supported".

By a wild coincidence these machines save all the files it downloads off the network, which just so happen to be used as local repositories to update the other machines.

Those machines are NOT supported. OTH, if I can't duplicate what's wrong on unsupported machine X of type Z with supported machine Z-prime, then clearly it's a hardware issue and not RH's fault.

I see no problem with this. Neither do my superiors.

Re:Just do what we do.

[GigsVT]

But Red Hat probably would have a problem with it, if they ever audited you. That clause seems specifically crafted to prevent people from doing what you are doing (and what I would be doing too, if I wasn't afraid of the risk it would expose my company to through that EULA).

It's standard operating procedure to have a some development servers that aren't in production, and may never be. That's one of the key benefits of Linux as I see it, that we can just throw an extra machine or two together on a whim, and see if it works out for what we are planning to use it as. This EULA seems to prevent this, unless you buy a bunch of extra seats that may rarely be used.

IU Students can Buy Windows XP Pro for only $5

[kimkhan]

Maybe only a few 100 or close to a thousand students that are in engineering or computer science are using linux but rest of the 20-40 thousands of students would rather buy windows XP Pro for $5 and easily install it on their system. When these students graduate and go into workplace what OS will they request? This is how MS is now making sure of their future demand. RedHat and other Linux's needs to tap into the Educational institutes, not just depend on a few hundred Computer Science students.

Capitalism baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh. I've got a simple explanation: capitalism.
What you seem to prefer is a gift-economy alike model.
I agree with you, however, according to Marx theories there should first be a revolution.
Though i'd say: do your own thing :)

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[hayden]

RedHat gives you Fedora for free. They sink lots of resources into working on Fedora, not to mention bandwidth for hosting, mailing lists, etc.

RH give you Fedora free now. RH has made their intentions on the desktop front quite clear to the point of sabotaging the whole linux on a desktop movement. It would be relatively trivial to slowly starve fedora to death over the next couple of years. This could happen especially quickly if the maintainers of Fedora start going in a direction that RH doesn't like (ie the aformentioned desktop area).

The fact that Szulik answered these questions himself bother me more that if some PR flack had written them for him. It appears as though the PR flack is now completely superfluious. He's quite capable of avoiding the question and telling half truths all by himself now.

Execs don't use unix

[superpulpsicle]

This is a fact. I know of someone closely enough who had at one time business ties to some high execs in sun microsystem. These execs swear by solaris on the job, but they are on their windows PC/laptop asap when they get home. No this is not a stereotype based on one exec either.

When Mr. redhat CEO here claims he has a 5 node linux cluster at home... it's a joke. You know this guy has already accepted $$$ from Mr. gates in a short conspiracy to take down redhat.

Execs in general like golf, lots of vacation days, unnecessary business trips, ludicrous bonuses and M$ windows. They are all the same. Nicely done, answer all the easy questions.

Human perception.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

It would seem that everyone is reading what they themselves think out of my post. I never said I wanted to be paid for using software. What I am saying is that I have a talent. A Talent that I want to share with the world. I am gratefull that others before me have chosen to share theirs as well in a form that allows me to learn from them. Thats the good part of OSS. However, there are certain economic realities in this world that are inescapable.

Money is nessisary to pay the bills. Neccisary, to obtain hardware that facilitates the further creation of software. In an ideal world (economically perfect), all work would be compensated in accordance with its worth to society. Our world is not that world. In a propreitary closed source software model, developers are compensated at a constant fixed rate. Any cost or benifit due to a variance in the quality of work produced from said employee is born by the company. That can be benificial or detremental to the develoeper as well. The Wally's of the world benift and the Alices suffer. Now take the OSS model and look at it from the perspective of a developer whos work is not subidised by a large coperation ( Uh, IBM, HP, Red hat or others). The only benift he can hope for is to impress one such company so that they become a patron. Or they can just continue to benifit from your work with out so much as throwing a dime your way. I attempting ( however poorly) to derive an alternative method to encourage code sharing (a good thing) while providing some sort of fair compensation to those who cotribute.

I hope you have a better understanding of what I was getting at, and why it was modded up. I am after much bigger fish than Fedora. I am much more interested in the economic philospical implications of the OSS model. For years, the conventional wisdom on sights such as Slashdot has been that Propietary software was some how less fair, and "evil". I certianly understand part of that viewpoint, but that does not make the inverse nessisarly true. OSS may actually be less fair as currently implamented.

Why?

[Max Threshold]

*Too many* choices! If we want to appeal to the unwashed masses who expect things to "just work", we need a well-supported distro containing only carefully selected, well-integrated packages that install one way and one way only. I know this seems counter to the whole spirit of Open Source, but we need a standardized platform if we want to attract serious developers of the software people care about. (Namely, kickass games.)

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Max Threshold]

Redhat wants us to develop and test fedora for free, turn around sell it to enteprise for big bucks. They're not selling software. They've chosen a collection of packages that work well together and they're selling their time in supporting your installation of those packages. And guess what... you are free to do exactly the same thing with any GPLed software.

I sold my RedHat stock today

[reasonable observer]

I sold my 1000 shares of RedHat stock today for $12.50/share...a tidy profit from the $4.50 buy-in about a year ago.

From everything I read and from my own gut reaction to RedHat's new business model, I think that there is going to be a big wake-up call over the next few quarters as RedHat finds it may have sold into a few Fortune 500 companies, but lost the rest of the world. I just don't see how that is viable. As all the stock valuation basics say that RedHat is vastly overpriced now, and my feeling is that there will only be bad news from them in the future, it is time to get out.

I then sent a letter to RedHat. I explained why I sold my stock. I also explained that I was right in the middle of the bell curve of their previous business model. I bought a boxed set ever 12-18 months and I bought a subscription for support updates. I explained that I supported their work and felt they had nailed the value of their development, support, and updates on the head before and that I felt that they were entitled to a reasonable profit from it. However, the new pricing and subscription model is usurious. I believe it will drive away the people who use RedHat distributions on their own and who have been instrumental to bringing it into business, government, and education; moving to other distributions with now much more reasonable pricing and support models.

It isn't like RedHat has a monopoly. I think that they will find that out real soon.

So, I'm on to SuSE for now. My RedHat investment has been liquidated, both on my desktop, my servers, and in my portfolio.

Not a straight answer

[whereiswaldo]

"Recently we launched a statement of direction - Open Source Architecture for the enterprise. As more large customers move to distributed computing architectures, firms will want to leverage the flexibility and independence a integrated stack can create for a business. Our product line is being built through the delivery of software sold modularly. For example, our cluster suite."

Don't people know they are spewing corporate speak when they talk like this? It makes little sense.

Let me try and pick it apart. More large customers are moving towards distributed architectures. "distributed architectures" is ambiguous - software, hardware, P2P technology? Firms will want to leverage (take advantage of) the flexability and independence an integrated stack can create for a business. What kind of flexability? Where does independence come in? Independent of ______? "integrated stack"? More explanation needed. Tcp/ip stack? OS stack? Ok, our product is being built (manufactured) through the delivery (sale?) of software sold modularly (in pieces). Wow, that's confusing. Who build's Red Hat software? Build engineers, compiling OSS packages on computers. How do they build their software by selling it? (chicken and egg?) For example, our cluster suite. Never heard of it - no comment.

Can anyone else clarify this mind bending paragraph?

Re:Quit being a cheapskate and buy a copy of WinXP

[Anonymous Coward]

In your opinion, a new remote exploit every 3 months does not count as a headache?

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Confessed Geek]

Oi, Redhat is on my Sh1tlist right now for this bait and switch scam, but I have to disagree with you on this one.

Unless your one of the rare few employed by a Redhat or Suse, or working for a company like IBM that is promoting Linux for its own agenda (break M$ stranglehold) you arn't ever going to get paid for contributing to open source. And I wouldn't bank on those being careers spanning careers either as they will eventually go away as they lose interest (IBM) or become irrelevant (boxed set distros) and their role is taken over by community/volunteer communities (GNU/Debian/Fedora,ect).

The way you will make a living as an OS programmer is finding a company that uses a lot of opensource and wants to take advantage of that fact by not relying on anyone else for updates/fixes/modifications of their code. You will work for a company that supports its own in-house bullpen of programmers. Rather than make mr. Gate$ richer each year they will sink a portion of that money into salaries for folks like you who will be their onsite code monkey working w/ open source software for them. Then once you have developed it /tweaked it/ patched it, you put it back in the community if your work is generally usefull. Then some other programmer being payed by some other company will use some of your GPL code, tweak it for his companies use, fix your bugs, and again release it. Some freelance developer, sees that guys code, works out a few kinks, expands is functionality, and then sells his services setting up the new killer enterprise app for some 3rd company, then releases what he did. You see his revised version, see how with a bit of reworking it can save your company Mucho $$$, customize it, implement it, get your nice raise and release it again. Wash, Rinse, Repeat

See, lots of folks getting paid to write opensource code, "GNU/Linux/HERD/Whatever" doesn't pay a cent for it, but still continues to expand, grow, and breed more opportunities for smart techies to make buckaroos.

So, YOU don't develop for free - unless its a hobby, or to fix something that irks your favorite app. Then, why should you? You would have done it anyway to scratch your personal itch.

I'm not sure if your post was a real question or a Clever closed source sponsored FUD, but for the sake of argument I'll assume it was the former and hope this is a useful answer for you.

Mod Parent Up

[neurosis101]

If only I had those mod points from a couple of days ago.

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Thanks, I think yours was the first intersting reply.

But, I don't think I would do it to scratch a personal itch. There are many things that i could do myself and *NOT* release under a free license other than the BillSoftwareLicense(based on the Netscape or Apple Public license). The GPL only requires you to submit you mods if you distribute it.

Re: Games

[dolson]

I agree with the using the right tool for the right job - I prefer using my Xbox than playing on a computer.

However, this is not to say that Linux shouldn't or couldn't have games too. There is a slowly increasing amount of titles that are coming out. I own about 50 Linux games so far, which is more than I have for any console. There are more coming out too.

Granted, about 70 to 80% of these games are FPSes, but that's another story.

Compilers and libraries are packages too

[Sits]

gcc and glibc aren't controlled sorely by redhat but those are the things that tend to break binary compatibility. So if the (upstream) gcc / glibc folks break compatibility but say povide a 50% speed increase or improved security then Fedora will probably break binary compatibilty too. Just for the record a fair few (redhat 8/9) rpms continued to work in fedora but some did break and needed recompiling (e.g. pine was broken by updated kerberos libraries). Other times you need to install a compat library and things compiled with gcc 2.x will generally run into trouble.

In the kernel there was bearly any binary compatibity to start with... This is mostly an non-issue if you have the source but obviously if you do not want to / cannot recompile the source for most of what you use you are better off with something else that has a longer support cycle.

Re:Compilers and libraries are packages too

[Crispy Critters]

"Just for the record a fair few (redhat 8/9) rpms continued to work in fedora but some did break and needed recompiling"

I am sure I can find binary rpms on a Red Hat Linux 4.1 CD that will work on Fedora, and there are binaries compiled for RHL 8.0 that won't run on RHL 9. What matters is the probability of breakage. It is expected that a binary for RHL X.n will run on X.n+1, and if it doesn't, it is a bug. There is no legitimate expectation that a binary from RHL X.n will run on RHL (X+1).0.

Does this matter? It matters a lot. Linux systems I see people using for their jobs include some proprietary software (with no source code). If this is going to break every four months, then these people will drop Red Hat and the Fedora Project completely (these people should be using RH Enterprise Linux, but they are not going to). Personally, I have a reasonable amount of stuff I downloaded and installed from tarballs, as well as lots of stuff that can't just be "make install"-ed, like fonts and extra TeX packages. I am not going to reinstall all this every four months either.

I suppose anyone who uses the vanilla install with no customization can be happy with a major upgrade several times a year. The rest of us will not be. (Customization is a main reason I use Linux.)

one clue does not constitute a proof

[Per Abrahamsen]

Poor reading skills seems to be a larger problem on /. than poor writing skills.

Not quite, but mistake nonetheless

[einhverfr]

Renouncing their standard distribution is a problem for RH. I hope, however, that since the software is still FREELY REDISTRIBUTABLE that people will distribute copies of RHEL. But here are the points:

1: It is really hard to make a reasonable, reliable profit selling copies of open source software. Therefore the business MUST center arround services and subscriptions. Note that what RH sells is a set of subscriptions that include support, possible service level agreements, etc.

2: I used to work at Microsoft's technical support department, and I can tell you there is a HUGE difference between consumer technical support and enterprise technical support. Businesses running mission-critical servers are willing to pay large sums of money for critical support...

The reason why it is a Bad Idea to discontinue a standard "civilian" version of Red Hat is that this version has two functions which are of strategic importance to the company.

1) Introducing new users. A few years ago, Red Hat really outmanuvered Caldera and others by making their CD's redistributable, and this lead to a strong hobbyist culture surrounding Red Hat Linux. This hobbyist culture has helped Red Hat make inroads into the enterprise.

2) These copies are also inexpensive, simple environments for studying for the RHCE exam, giving Red Hat an advantage in this regard also.

SO in disregarding this product line, although it will probably save the company something now, will cost the company dearly in the future, I am afraid. We will have to see what becomes of Fedora.

Gentoo

[revividus]

I like Gentoo. I used Redhat for almost a year, and got frustrated by certain things consistently not working like I wanted them to; I tried Debian at one point, but I was still too much a n00b to stick with it and make it work. :-)

Maybe I've just learned more, but when I installed Gentoo, I didn't find it that difficult; I learned quite a bit about how linux works during the course of getting everything installed and working.

I will probably give debian another shot now that I'm less intimidated by the thought of recompiling a kernel or editing a bunch of config files, but Gentoo works so well for me, I'm sure I will always have at least one or more Gentoo box running at home.

Worth checking out, especially for those who are already contemplating moving away from redhat for whatever reason.

Re:Quit being a cheapskate and buy a copy of WinXP

[ThrasherTT]

How many desktop users run services that need to be open to the 'net? Just because they are stupid enough to use Outlook for the majority of the rest of the real problems on XP doesn't mean XP is bad.

If you are an average user, and you are on an always-on, unlimited connection (read: no port blocking on the ISP end), you need to be using a firewall of some sort. Like I said before, I run linux at home, and I still have a hardware firewall between me and the world.

Then why does OS/X support it?

[konmaskisin]

OS/X which has fewer installs than MacOS9 and way fewer installs that Linux supports USB flawlessly and easily.

USB support in FreeBSD and especially NetBSD was lightyears ahead of Linux (of course those systems don't have decent GUI's for USB management since most are linux specific). kernel 2.6 is supposed to catch up. News flash: it hasn't. USB and hotlplu of any consumer electronics device in Linux is HORRIFIC.

If USB support at io/kernel level was good then a plethora of Gtk2/Glade python "installers" for drivers or a hardware browser system://usb or usb:// via konqueror or nautilus that would show attached devices and allow a user to drag and drop a driver might be possible. But we are not there yet DESPITE economics: there is much higher demand and bigger market for USB devices to work under Linux that under OS/X.

I don't really get why so many specific USB drivers are needed anyway ... a manufacturer has VERY LITTLE to do to get their device to work under Linux. The problem is they simply WILL NOT DO IT.

Re:Then why does OS/X support it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Yep. and Yep.

Pisses me off to no ends. Here I am, with a ton of money to spend on my system and all these devices that I would buy, I don't. Don't support my OS, you don't get my money.

Oh well, more money for more important upgrades.

Umm i will buy your USB device for my system ....

[konmaskisin]

... if you get your developpers to spend 15 friggin' minutes writing a "driver" for it.

Can you see the economics?

Re:What I don't like about Opensource.

[robhancock]

I believe they also took code for some of the command-line network apps like ftp - if you look at the executable files, you will find a "Copyright The Regents of the University of California" in there..

Re:Umm i will buy your USB device for my system ..

[Anonymous Coward]

he doesn't see it. He obviously has a degree of disdain for OSS advocates.

I agree with you though. I just paid 300 bucks for a higher end consumer level nvidia video card. I chose it over ATI, solely because Nvidia has 64bit drivers out that work with the 64 bit kernel(I'm running dual Opteron 248s), ATI does not. I can say with 100 percent assurance, I WOULD have bought the ATI card, but they couldn't be bothered with releasing drivers for it. Nvidia did though, so they have money.

Simple economics.

Why linux is like communism

[1iar_parad0x]

I know this is going to get flamed, but what the heck.

One of the things I noticed about the Bolshevik revolution and other intelligencia movements in Russia, was the fact these movements thrust their beliefs upon everyone else. These people believed they knew what was best for everyone else. It is the ultimate example of hubris. I'm so right and I care so much I'm going to thrust my ideas upon you even if it hurts. Safe to say, these entire attempts failed, until Lenin and his followers, inspired more by greed than altruism took over. Look, the market has responded to Linux fairly.

I'm a programmer/administrator and I love using *nix on servers and for my development. Yes, I use it at home too. However, if I want to set my friends up on the web, I'm not going to give them a copy of Steven's Unix programming book and a copy of FreeBSD. People want easy to use software. Frankly, the learning curve of open source products is high. Some of the software out there is great and some of it is horrendous. I don't like having to muck through complex config files. Have you ever shown a non-geek friend regex in Perl? Most people don't GET the line noise that is average Perl code. As an administrator I need the power and flexibility of *nix. However, if I were a soccer mom, I wouldn't want to muck with ipchains or cronjobs.

Don't tell everyone what is user friendly. Try to be more accommodating. If Linux is such hot stuff, it will sell itself (unless it's marketed by Amiga). Embrace true anarchy, read "Wealth of Nations".

So maybe that's why people keep likening the OSS movement to communism. It's not so much because of the philosophy as it is about elitism.

In Soviet Russia, the computer programs you! Nyet, comrade, don't bring our glorious mother Russia into this.