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WBEL4 Preview Ready For Testing

Posted by timothy on from the amazing-margins-up-to-65-percent dept.

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.

20 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. What about CentOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    CentOS screenshots shots.osdir.com

  2. White Box? Red Hat? by Bananatree3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hmmm... how about Purple Moose?

  3. CentOS by barwin · · Score: 4, Informative

    CentOS also fills this niche, and I think has a stronger community base behind it. It's been a while since I've done a full comparison though.

    1. Re:CentOS by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Interesting

      RHEL have recommended CentOS in the mailing list if you need an enterpise system and you or your company can't afford $345 a year. I guess that says alot about it. Some red hat engineers have even helped the CentOS project out.
      Regards,
      Steve

    2. Re:CentOS by jallen02 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Its not about needing an enterprise system. If you want to use RedHat's more stable product offerings then you have to pay. While Fedora Core is a nice operating system it is referred to as a "Test Bed" by RedHat. "Test Bed" operating system and "Production Environment" don't go toghether in my mind. With the end of RH 9 there isn't a freely available OS from RH anymore. You have to pay. So if you are familiar with and or like RedHat you have to compile from source if you don't want to pay. This is especially interesting when you have software that only runs on one of the commercial operating systems and you have been using RH for years as it was one of the supported OSes. $345 / year * 10 boxes. That is not an insignificant cost. Across 5 years that is ~$20,000.

      Jeremy

  4. Differences between Whitebox, CentOS, Tao? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm currently using CentOS 4.0, which works great.

    What distinguishes Whitebox and Tao from CentOS? As far as I've been able to tell, they're all just blatant imitators of RHEL, but CentOS appears to have the largest community (and therefore, the greatest prospect of actually being around in five years).

    So: why bother with Whitebox or Tao?

  5. It is important to note... by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is important to note that Red Hat eningeers have actually helped put White Box out. People here are going to yell and complain about how Red Hat made White Box remove any mention of Red Hat and they are probably also going to suggest that you dont need RHEL anymore. I'm just clarifying that Red Hat isn't out to crush White Box, but corporate customers really were confused. If you want or need support (as most companies and enterprises need) go with RHEL, if you don't need support then go with White Box, its pretty decent and some of the same engineers involved with RHEL have helped with White Box. Personally, Red Hat does a hell of alot for the community in everything from the kernel to the gui so $345 a year isn't bad if your company can afford it and you'll be supporting the community. The only place Red Hat has ever screwed up was due to a marketing mistake, so let's be nice...if that's the worst they ever do then we'll be pretty well off imho.
    Regards,
    Steve

  6. Other flavors... CentOS & TaoLinux by Erik_ · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are also other flavors available...
    CentOS at http://www.centos.org/ and probably TaoLinux at http://www.taolinux.org/ will also follow suit with a new release.

    One interesting software release that takes advantage of North-American Linux Enterprise distribution, is Asterisk@home, which comes with a recent CentOS 3.4 build. Spin your own VoIP infrastrucutre from http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/

  7. What about kernel compatibility? by mnmn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Binary driver vendors only distribute binary drivers for certain kernel versions of certain distros, mostly redhat suse and mandrake. The nVidia drivers are an example, but they can also recompile for vanilla kernels, but what about say a binary driver compiled for the stock 2.4 kernel that comes with redhat 9 shrike? Will it work seamlessly with WBEL?

    I'd imagine all kernels were recompiled, at least to remove the word 'redhat'. I know I could download RHES kernels from their installation floppies and use those... but is that required to run precompiled kernel modules?

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
    1. Re:What about kernel compatibility? by barwin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Had that problem with one of the early CentOS kernels because they had renamed it. Now they keep the name exactly the same so any 3rd party drivers that rely on kernel versions are 100% compatible with CentOS. I can only assume WBEL is doing the same (or will when complaints come flooding in).

  8. "To Retain Enough Compatibility" - Not good enough by hillct · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

    --

    --Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
  9. Re:Will it be free?` by gtoomey · · Score: 4, Informative

    Its been available and free for years. Its Red Hat Enterprise Linux minus the Red Hat name released under thet GPL. This is a new release.

  10. Support by Cruithne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not if you want support from Red Hat, it's not.

    That to me sums it up. The *only* reason i can think of to go with Red Hat is if you need the support. Other than that.. what are the benefits?

  11. img-timeline by buddha42 · · Score: 5, Informative
    just fyi to anyone actually interested in a free RHEL rebuild, look into CentOS. When RHEL rebuilding first became a need, there were half a dozen different rebuild projects, of which Whitebox was the first/most-popular. However since then tao is all but dead, scientific is looking to merge with centos, and wbel went weeks and sometimes months between when redhat would release a security update and when he would get around to repackaging it. CentOS has emerged as "the" RHEL rebuild because it doesnt try to do its own thing at all, just rebuild RHEL, and because there is usually a less than 24 hour lag behind official RHEL packages.

    In fact, this very article announced whitebox finnaly got RHEL4 rebuilt, yet the CentOS team had it finished over a month ago, and I'll be putting my first live instance of it in production on monday.

  12. Looks like WBEL is being discontinued... by sasha328 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I went to the WBEL website, got re-directed to Whiteboxlinux.net and this is what I saw:
    I've been actively involved in the CentOS community for the past several months. As most of you know I've become disinterested in WBEL. CentOS is nearly the same as WBEL with a few minor exceptions: updates occur in a timely fashion (usually 24 hours), the developers are accessible (even if via IRC), and there is an active community (again in IRC atm).
    CentOS has launched a new dedicated site at http://www.centos.org
    I have prepared a migration page for moving from wbel to CentOS. http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faq id=19

    I am confused now. Who's who?

    1. Re:Looks like WBEL is being discontinued... by nonce+tomar · · Score: 5, Informative

      A former user of Whitebox Linux and a semi infrequent poster to the user's list decided that whiteboxlinux.org didn't provide enough info and started this unrelated website. Subsequently he/they decided that Whitebox linux didn't meet his/their needs and put up that crappy statement. A shame as it confuses new users and spreads bogus information. I wish he/they would just take it down.

  13. Sloppy editing strikes again by goon+america · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can you spot the subtle misspelling in this statement?

    "Not if you want support from Red Hat, it's not."

    Answer:

    There is a iterative fragment missing from this statement. I've bolded it below.

    "Not if you want support from Red Hat until the whim strikes them to EOL your product, it's not."

  14. Re:Mod parent up by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  15. Re:ST Font? by ABeowulfCluster · · Score: 4, Funny

    Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnoppix!

  16. Heh by theantix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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