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WBEL4 Preview Ready For Testing
linuxbeta writes "A preview of WBEL4 (White Box Enterprise Linux) is currently available via BitTorrent. White Box nicely fills the niche between Fedora and RHEL. WBEL Sreenshots. WBEL FAQ. With this latest White Box Enterprise Linux release, is it time to walk away from RHEL?" Not if you want support from Red Hat, it's not.
CentOS screenshots shots.osdir.com
Their mission statement says it all. Centos retains complete compatibility. 'Enough Compabibility' means there will be a divergence between WhiteBox and RHEL while they hope "to support RHEL Erata releases" which is a complete contrediction. It's not good enough to be able to install RHEL erata fixes. It's nessecery to ensure that no other security or reliability problems are introduced by any divergence from the platform on which you depend for your security patches.
While I believe variety in Linux distributions in itself is a positive contribution to the platform's overall growth and appeal, The distributions should be distinct enough to offer a meaningful value-add as compared to others already established in the market (free - as in beer - as the market is).
Where Centos provides an unincumbered version of a supported (and thereby presumed superior) distribution, what is WhiteBox providing over either of these existing and established offerings?
--CTH
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I think this is pretty interesting. I have to admit my ignorance of the WBEL intiative before tonight, but I am now looking at all the Redhat Enterprise licenses I was about to go buy and am wondering if this isn't a better alternative.
Most of the Enterprise licenses I've purchased have been acquired to avoid the upgrade dance. I know linux well enough to troubleshoot just about anything that comes up outside of obscure kernel and driver issues. In my two years using Redhat Enterprise, I've had to use their tech support once to resolve a hardware issue. I wonder how many other corporate IT depts are in a similiar situation and how this will ultimately affect Redhat revenue?
I think it is just the general slashdot mentality. Slashdot group think leads to alot of wierd assumptions. One being that money==bad, but money made linux mainstream and continues to foster more of it's development then any other means. Without distributions making money off of linux, it's development would slow down quite a bit. People don't realize all that companies like Red Hat do for the community, maybe if they grepd a few major projects they'd see. Anyway... I would never suggest that what slashdot's users think is actually how reality works and this applies to many things. One major area being with GUIs. Most notably, alot of slashdotters disagreed with Gnome's switch to the spatial model. The thing is, companies like Red Hat (probably Novell too) do HIG studies with actual users and implement what they find is needed or wanted. Developers don't realize that only about 5% of their needs overlap with regular users in GUIs. Everyone screams and shouts that they want linux to be mainstream and to have all this greatness, but then they scream and shout when money is involved and changes are made that benefit 95% of people rather then their 5% needs. Its just a wierd kind of paradox here, I've learned to live with it over the years.
Regards,
Steve
You're almost ready to give up XP, but insist that software designed to run only on XP will run on Linux. Get over it -- if software makers wanted to support Linux there are many ways for them to do this -- and some of them do write crossplatform games that run just fine of Linux, but they are the minority. If you want to make the leap to Linux, you'll have to get it through your head that you're giving up many applications and hardware devices that are closed and designed to solely work with Windows.
In certain popular cases people will create workarounds in WINE/Cedega/CrossoverOffice and enthusiasts have created drivers for some of even the most closed off and niche hardware devices -- but you cannot count on them to be easy to install or to work wonderfully. So really, you have to realize that not all software and hardware will work on Linux. What I don't get is that people are perfectly willing to accept that Windows-only hardware/software won't work on the Mac, but they can't accept that it won't work on Linux.
When you buy a playstation2, you do so knowing you won't be able to play Paper Mario or other exclusive Nintendo titles. When you buy a iPod, you do so knowing you can only use iTMS for legal music purchases. And when you use Linux you must realize that certain software and hardware publishers are hostile to Linux and you can't just blindly use anything that expects Windows to be running. If you mistakenly think that one day it'll all be perfect and linux will be 100% software and hardware compatible... I'll just hope you aren't holding your breath until then.
501 Not Implemented
"Why doesn't someone tell this whiny little whore to wipe his own ass?"
And it's attutudes like this that is EXACTLY why Linux will never succeed or appeal to the masses. Basically what your telling me is "Figure it all out and code your own solutions, or STFU".
You wanna know something? I don't program, but I am willing to look into an alternative. Microsoft maybe a monopoly, but at least I can be guaranteed some form of support for XYZ funtion of windows if I'm not able to fix it myself. Thought it might cost me, but I would rather go down that road then having to deal with condescending fuck-tards such as yourself.
I really hope you don't represent the majority of *nix users out there. Because if you do, then fuck open source.
For the record, I'm rather optimistic about the OS community. But you fit the classic example of how NOT to be of any help to a newbe in the world of Linux.
Life is not for the lazy.
Not that I'm against variety or anything, but doesn't it make sense for these two projects to merge? Is there some need each fills that the other doesn't?
I'm not trying to bash either one, I just don't understand why if they live next door, leave at the same time and work in the same office they might not want to ride-share?
TW
Darn. What company can't afford 345 bucks a year?? I mean, a new computer is even more expensive.
IANALE (I Am Not A Linux Expert), but how on earth could you possibly need an enterprise system if you cannot afford $345 a year?
whiteboxlinux.net used to be a community site for the WBEL distribution. The lead maintainer of the WBEL project, exhibiting the traits of some of the greatest people in FOSS, was a complete dickhead to work with and furthermore refused almost all offers of help. Said dickhead blasted the whiteboxlinux.net site, wrote it off as domain hijacking, and the site maintainer was lured away to work on CentOS which had a much stronger community behind it and very approachable project leadership.
WBEL was probably the first RHEL clone out with a 1.0 release but it's also a one man show. CentOS has a small army of people behind it so if one or two important people get hit by a bus, it will continue on without them.