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Red Hat Listed Among 50 Top Tech Companies

Kelvin Ekston writes " Red Hat is listed among ZDNet Asia's 50 Top Tech companies 2006. It is also one of the fastest growing companies with 210.4% year on year income growth over 4 years. While almost all Linux companies grapple with the perennial question of how they can make money through software subscriptions and services rather than selling packaged boxes, Red Hat finally managed to improve credibly and match the hype with substance and show the way to do business with Linux. That's the way to go!"

169 comments

  1. What a suprise..... by wpiman · · Score: 5, Informative

    The ad sponsors for the link are IBM, EMC and Redhat. Can you guess which three companies are on the list?

    1. Re:What a suprise..... by FortKnox · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Beat me to the punch.
      Its the same as when people complain that surveys done that show Windows is better than Linux is funded by Microsoft. This should be taken with a large grain (hell, a pinch) of salt.

      --
      Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
    2. Re:What a suprise..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
      But it was not funded by a lot of those companies.

      I for one am going to work for Tata Consultancy Services. You cannot go wrong when your services are consulted by Tata's. When you go through one of their consultations, you too will like their services. Maybe one of their services is to help the porn industry decide whether to use HD-DVD or Blu-Ray!

    3. Re:What a suprise..... by jamesgomez · · Score: 2, Funny

      The ad sponsors for the link are IBM, EMC and Redhat.

      Ads? You need http://adblock.mozdev.org/ my friend.

    4. Re:What a suprise..... by timeOday · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Microsft is on the list too.

      Besides, RedHat's 36% annual revenue growth for 4 years is impressive. Sure it's easier for smaller company to score big growth numbers, but $200M in revenue and 36% annual growth seems like a pretty nice place to be.

      The nice thing is RedHat's success actually means something to Linux users, even if they're not RedHat customers, because RedHat is quite active in developing OSS.

    5. Re:What a suprise..... by errxn · · Score: 1

      It's not quite the same. Had it been Microsoft, the story would have been loudly trumpeting the fact that MS was an advertiser, and there would have been 250+ posts by now decrying them as Evil.

      Ah, yes, the good old /. double standard. Gotta love it...

      --
      In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
    6. Re:What a suprise..... by CCFreak2K · · Score: 1

      It makes me wonder if it's a worthwhile prospect to invest in RedHat stock. If they're just gonna keep growing, I should probably get in quick.

      --
      "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
    7. Re:What a suprise..... by wilsonng · · Score: 1

      That's still less than 1% of Microsoft's revenues isn't it? so there is still a way to go.

      --
      Wilson Ng What matters is what you can, and cannot do.... Captain Jack Sparrow
    8. Re:What a suprise..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the result is quite fair, there are many companies in the list and Red Hat is just one of the 50. There are many other companies in the list. If you read the report about Red Hat, it is quite measured and balanced and wasn't one of those all out praise to Red Hat. If any report on companies that looks good at any angle it would be Baidu but it wasn't a sponsor. But Red Hat being a small emerging player in among other well established tech giants, the marketing folks certainly wouldn't mind seizing the opportunity for additional exposure by being an advertiser.

    9. Re:What a suprise..... by Mika24 · · Score: 1

      what about the other 47? are you saying they paid for being on the list also?

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      http://www.npcgaming.com Dedicated Gaming Servers
    10. Re:What a suprise..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me be the first to welcome you to slashduh, Mr Szulik!

      Unfortunately, we only accept blatant astroturfing about iPods and new Google services here, and preferrably it should be masqueraded as "news stories" instead of user comments.

  2. And to see the fruits of their labor... by TheLevelHeadedOne · · Score: 5, Informative
    --

    Twin or more? ITA
    Apache/Spring/La
  3. No surprise by AceyMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Redhat, everyone should agree, is one of the biggest players in a space we all know is growing nicely, and already has a pretty solid presence in the business space.

    Cracking the top 50 isn't surprising, or terribly newsworthy.

    That said, it's more proof that Linux® is on the radar screen, which is nice.

    --
    -- Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
    1. Re:No surprise by DogDude · · Score: 5, Interesting

      and already has a pretty solid presence in the business space.

      Yeah. 2 years of profits. That's solid.

      That might be considered "solid" in the Open Source industry, but as a business in general, they're still considered a relatively unproven start-up. I want to see at least a solid 5-10 years of profitability before I'd consider investing a dime, personally.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    2. Re:No surprise by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Informative

      I want to see at least a solid 5-10 years of profitability before I'd consider investing a dime, personally.

      Redhat merged with Cygnus, didn't they? Cygnus have been profitable using an open-source business model since the late 80s/early 90s. And Redhat as a whole have been doing business for 12 years too - although they haven't always been in the black, they have still managed to pay the bills, pay wages, and put out products that people buy for well over a decade. Redhat aren't as unproven as you make out.

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
    3. Re:No surprise by Glock27 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I want to see at least a solid 5-10 years of profitability before I'd consider investing a dime, personally.

      At which point you'll be investing in a mature, proven company...with a lot less growth potential, and hence much lower stock appreciation prospects.

      The way to make big money in the stock market is to find small, great companies and ride their coattails to wealth. More risk, but far greater rewards.

      --
      Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
      Score: -1 100% Flamebait
    4. Re:No surprise by 31415926535897 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I want to see at least a solid 5-10 years of profitability before I'd consider investing a dime, personally.

      It all depends on your investment goals, naturally, but doing this as you say is a great way to see your money stagnate. You need to find a company that has a great idea that is undervalued in your opinion. For instance, Microsoft has had many, many years of profitability, but their stock has done nothing interesting in the last year+. I would bet there are a lot of geeks on this board who feel that RedHat is undervalued because the business market doesn't yet understand the power of Linux (especially as a server), and RedHat stands to profit a lot from any growth in that segment. If you were to buy RedHat now, and they became that solid, proven profit-making machine you're looking for in the next 5-10 years, you'll easily double your money. The only way to make money is if you take some risk.

      Again, I want to stress that all of this is based on personal opinion (as you said at the end of your post, 'personally'), and I have no idea if RedHat's stock is going to go up or down. To everybody that reads this--do not make any investment or trading decisions based on this post; if you do you're foolish. This is not an offer to buy or sell any security, and you should obviously talk to any investment professional before you make any trading decisions (yada, yada).

    5. Re:No surprise by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      And your returns will be lower. Your threshold of risk is lower than others and that's fine, but the risktakers are the ones who will reap the big rewards (and the cripling defeats)

      Redhat's not just an unproven start-up. It's an unproven start-up with a developing track record and posting real profits. Which is a huge improvement over the scam^h^h^h^hcompanies of the dot-com bubble.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    6. Re:No surprise by nine-times · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I want to see at least a solid 5-10 years of profitability before I'd consider investing a dime, personally.

      Except that a tech company with 10 years of profitability could just as easily be on their way out. There are no guarantees either way, but some people might rather invest in an up-and-commer then a tech company gone stale.

    7. Re:No surprise by justins · · Score: 1
      Cygnus have been profitable using an open-source business model since the late 80s/early 90s.

      How do you know that? I mean, Cygnus was never publicly traded, so you must have some kind of source for the information?
      --
      Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
    8. Re:No surprise by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 1

      Redhat is publicly traded. After the purchase of Cygnus they had to release their financials.

      --

      --

      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
    9. Re:No surprise by ashshy · · Score: 1

      Right, to put all of this into Foolish terms, DogDude is into Inside Value or perhaps Income Investor, while 31415926535897 is more of a Rule Breaker or Hidden Gems miner. My point is, there is no right or wrong here, just different styles of investing.

      Invest in RHAT and five more companies like it, and you're likely to see one or two going gangbusters, while the rest may fade away or go out of business entirely. Go with proven, huge businesses like IBM, KO and BRK.A instead, and your returns on each one will be lower, but they will all still be there in ten years, or thirty.

      Both portfolios may end up making lots of money, just different ways, and it basically comes down to what level of risk you're willing to take on. It's a personal choice, and a crappy basis for a flame war. Settle down, kids.

      --
      #o#
      O Moo.
    10. Re:No surprise by justins · · Score: 1

      That means all their financials from their entire history became public? If the OP was referring to that I'm sure they can provide a link.

      I tend to think the OP was just talking out of his ass.

      --
      Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
  4. Easy task by DogDude · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's a relatively easy feat to increase profits from Zero just two years ago.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Easy task by SocietyoftheFist · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Lots of companies never make a profit. Do you know what it takes to run a company? I'm going to guess not by that ignorant statment.

    2. Re:Easy task by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amen, DogDude! Nice work DedHat, you increased your profits 210%, from $20 to $42! Douglas Adams fans were so elated, they voted you Small Fry Linux Startup of the Hour! Gee, why are all your executives so filthy, obscenely rich if you've only made a profit after digging in the couch cushions? Seems a little unfair, don't you think? Kind of like Darl McBride's outrageous salary? It's unfortunate that what used to be a respectable company has turned into a profit-sucking executive career stepping stone machine and can't even spell "innovation" any longer... Good job on those profits, though!

    3. Re:Easy task by BlueStraggler · · Score: 1

      Will you be my CEO? Everyone else just whines about how hard it is to double revenues from $100M to $200M in 2 years.

  5. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by Rei · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Agreed. I find it amusing that I've found even things like working with apt easier on Fedora than I did on my Debian box (before I converted it over), given that I first learned apt through Debian like many here. Perhaps it's because there are so many well-maintained RPM repositories like Dag, Dries, et al out there.

    My whole office at work uses RHEL - works well, although it doesn't have as wide of RPM support as Fedora, and software stays further behind.

    --
    Did you really name your son "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--"?
  6. redhat schmedhat by Xargle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sure they grow their income, but by that's flogging training, support and having an underpaid skeletal staff and not actually doing that much?

    Ever *used* RH support in a corporate environment? If your query is beyond RTFM it's a constant battle to get anywhere. Plus their QA is terrible given they're competing on the corporate level - we've had hanging kernels (on pretty stock hardware) and endless dodgy packages we've had to replace.

    There's this endless love in on messageboards because they're FOSS promoters and actually comply to the GPL, but when it comes to working with them if you're corporate and you don't have a sizeable contract with them (ie. govt or multinational) their product in terms of service is no where near close to what you'd expect from other vendors in the market.

    1. Re:redhat schmedhat by einhverfr · · Score: 1

      Yeah well....

      I think that Red Hat is overhyped today.

      If I had to look at companies poised to do well in the near future, I would sook to Novell.

      --

      LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
    2. Re:redhat schmedhat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know that my company had quite a few Linux boxes, and were originally RH, but RH said "24/7 support? How about 16/5 and next day onsite?" We now have quite a few SuSE boxes.

    3. Re:redhat schmedhat by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Ever *used* RH support in a corporate environment? If your query is beyond RTFM it's a constant battle to get anywhere. Plus their QA is terrible given they're competing on the corporate level - we've had hanging kernels (on pretty stock hardware) and endless dodgy packages we've had to replace.

      and this is different form Microsoft or Sun how??? Right now I am fighting the same fight with Windows 2003 advanced server and SQL2000 enterprise on an 8way server that is giving me fits that just happen to coincide with their latest hotfix for SQL2000 enterprise. Their support is useless as well.

      Redhat is simply following the standard held up by ALL computer software and OS companies.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:redhat schmedhat by obirt · · Score: 1

      Not to mention that RedHat is more of an investment banking company than a software company. The software is already written, they just butcher it and backport incompatible patches to the kernel and break their ABI every time they update something. It's a miracle that anyone actually gets anything to work that hasn't been specifically written for RedHat. (Mind you that RHEL AS 2.1 binaries don't work on RHEL 3 or RHEL 4 in most cases)

      --

      I use to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
    5. Re:redhat schmedhat by LnxAddct · · Score: 1

      Red Hat's support wins awards year over year. I'm not sure what you're talking about. The only other company I've ever seen have as good support as Red Hat, is Veritas.
      Regards,
      Steve

    6. Re:redhat schmedhat by MayorNagin · · Score: 1

      RH support geezers have given me decent answers when I've called them. Better than I've had from SuSE and IBM anyway.

    7. Re:redhat schmedhat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I work for a reasonably large Redhat customer. We have slightly more than a thousand RHEL3 subscriptions, all running on a variety of servers (all x86, though). After moving to RHEL3, our ROI per server increased between 85% and 140%. I haven't yet seen a single kernel-level crash on RHEL, despite running several third-party software (Oracle, anyone?).

      There were several highly technical queries we had when we moved over from Oracle on Solaris to Oracle on Linux; they were ALL dealt with with a high level of technical competency by our Redhat engineer.

    8. Re:redhat schmedhat by Obfuscant · · Score: 1
      The only other company I've ever seen have as good support as Red Hat, is Veritas.

      Is that superior level of support the reason why the "subscription number" I got for RH support of my new Dell server keeps coming back "invalid", and the only thing RH can say is "maybe it will work tomorrow?"

      Or was your comment sarcastic? I don't know, I don't know if Veritas is known for good or bad support. I only know what I'm thinking of RH right now. (Oh, they also shut support down at 3PM PST, as if nobody might have any problems after the afternoon teabreak.)

    9. Re:redhat schmedhat by BigBadRich · · Score: 1
      How is it different from Sun?

      Let's take some examples of calls I've had to deal with in teh last 12 months. A call with redhat regarding a kernel panic for RHEL3 on itanium (yes, I know) and a mysterious oracle hang on Solaris 8.

      Initial callback:
      Call logged with Sun: Initial response encouraging, engineer gathers as much information as possible from me.
      Cal logged with Redhat: Initial response is via email, after I call back the support line MYSELF to ask for an update.

      Followups:
      With Sun, I am regularly called by someone from Sun (usually in the Indian callcenter) to advise me on the progress of the call, and ask me if there have been any developments. I am advised of possible fixes, and given references to documents on Sun's support website, as well as given detailed analysis of live core dumps I have captured. Sun engage oracle and veritas to work on the problem.

      Redhat keep updating the support website where I logged the call, and expecting me to check it for updates, when the engineer switches the sate from 'waiting on engineer' back to 'waiting on customer'. I repeatedly tell them (via phone) that I am not receiving email to the effect that they require something from me, nor am I being given followup calls to check on status. In one example, the status was 'waiting on customer' for three days. I'd have expected a phonecall.

      Despite regular assurances that I am not getting email, Redhat continue NOT calling or emailing me until the case is resolved.

      Redhat support may be good, but it is not in the same ballpark as Sun. I can't speak for Micro$oft. Fortunately I don't do windows (tm) professionally.

      In case you're wondering, we have the highest level of support available to us with Redhat (we're running AS).

      Redhat's solution to our problem was "hey, get a TAM (Technical Account Manager)". That was going to cost us $AU60K per year. That's (I believe) on top of what we already pay for support.

      Redhat simply don't have the technical expertise available to them in house that Sun do. So I concur with 'if it's not an RTFM query, you're screwed'.

    10. Re:redhat schmedhat by VENONA · · Score: 1

      Veritas?!

      You would not believe the problems I had with their support for Enterprise backup in a mixed HP-UX/Win environment, a couple of years ago. And for a while, I get getting the same guy at HP-UX support, on several issues, who was absolutely useless. I think about half of those calls ended up in escalation. Some other times, they were just freaking outstanding. These were both max support contracts, BTW.

      Just goes to show that anyone can have a string of bad experiences with any vendor, I guess.

      --
      What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
    11. Re:redhat schmedhat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Red Hat has actually guaranteed kernel ABI/API stability for both RHEL3 and RHEL4 for something like the last 8 - 12 months. Only in -extremely- critical circumstances is the ABI allowed to break, and then only for something like critical security updates. Quite a bit of thought goes into figuring out how to bring in customer requested features and bug fixes without compromising kABI.

    12. Re:redhat schmedhat by Xargle · · Score: 1

      This is precisely the experience I had - though admittedly Sun's support is more expensive. One Sun Support Engineer even called me back after going through the tech manual of some non-Sun SAN hardware I was having issues with! That's service!

  7. Ad man doing his job by Silver+Sloth · · Score: 1

    Ad man on phone:- Hey IBM/Redhat/EMC, you're featured as a top player. How's about a bit of sponsorship?
    IBM/Redhat/EMC Publicity guy:- Hmm, a survey that makes us look good - yes, we'll put out names along side that.

    Cause and effect are not always straightforward.

    --
    init 11 - for when you need that edge.
    1. Re:Ad man doing his job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your role play dialogue is quite true. That's how business is done in the media industry. But not all marketers will buy in, that is why there are only few out of the 50 are sponsors. But I don't think the report is rigged, I find them quite balanced otherwise the report will contain obvious flowerly praises for the company as desired by the marketers. hmmm... maybe that is why Intel aint the sponsor? cos the report touches the raw nerves by mentioning the recent debacle with AMD and the anti-trust suit...

  8. And I was going to say ... by DikSeaCup · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It seems to me that, as far as Linux distros are concerned, Redhat tends to be the whipping boy of the Linux enthusiasts on Slashdot.

    Some days it seems like some folks put them just a step above Microsoft.

    1. Re:And I was going to say ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative


      It seems to me that, as far as Linux distros are concerned, Redhat tends to be the whipping boy of the Linux enthusiasts on Slashdot.

      Some days it seems like some folks put them just a step above Microsoft.


      A lot of people on Slashdot are very anti-corporatist by nature. They'll be suspicious of any company that seems to be making a buck, even if they're selling Linux. To these people the only good Linux distro is a not-for-profit one that's run by a band of diehard enthusiast hackers.

    2. Re:And I was going to say ... by talksinmaths · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Redhat tends to be the whipping boy of the Linux enthusiasts on Slashdot

      I agree, but one must keep in mind that this says far more about the character and maturity of Linux enthusiasts on Slashdot than it does about the RedHat distro.

      --
      Don't you have someone you'd die for?
    3. Re:And I was going to say ... by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      redhats an awkward one.

      on the one hand they do contribute a lot of code to the opensource movement and they should be applauded for doing so!

      on the other hand they released rh9 which was known to be a pita to get a lot of software to work on. then they scrapped rhl altogther and moved to fedora with its insanely fast release schedule and which afaict wasn't properly stabalised before rh9 was eoled.

      i really got the impression that they wanted to force people to switch to rhel.

      sure there is the rhel rebuilds but you really get the feeling that redhat would rather those didn't exist.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    4. Re:And I was going to say ... by arodland · · Score: 1

      Redhat has one fundamental technical flaw, and its name is RPM. Unfortunately, it's even been adopted by such otherwise-beautiful distros as SuSE.

    5. Re:And I was going to say ... by drsmithy · · Score: 2, Insightful
      It seems to me that, as far as Linux distros are concerned, Redhat tends to be the whipping boy of the Linux enthusiasts on Slashdot.

      This is because Redhat are trying to run a business, not a charity.

    6. Re:And I was going to say ... by scotch · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How is RPM fundamentally more flawed than deb, pkg, or other common package formats? Please keep it technical, thank you.

      --
      XML causes global warming.
    7. Re:And I was going to say ... by arodland · · Score: 1

      Simple. Its damn database breaks more than anything. Nobody's agreed on a decent set of conventions for package names. And they decided to use their own format instead of, I don't know, existing standards for archiving data :)

  9. Is Red Hat Linux? by FishandChips · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's interesting to see that they've managed this with less than 1000 employees. Only two others in the list are comparable in this respect. Plenty of other companies on the list have thousands or tens or thousands of employees.

    Red Hat's stock is on an astronomical PE ratio, higher even than Google's. It's pretty instructive comparing the PE ratio to, say, Novell's which is about a tenth as high.

    So, I guess it's clear the financial market is very much buying the line that "Red Hat is Linux", perhaps much more than was the case a year or two ago. Nice news if you're Red Hat. Not so nice for anyone else.

    --
    Las qué passoun
    tournoun pas maï
    1. Re:Is Red Hat Linux? by Otter · · Score: 2, Interesting
      It's interesting to see that they've managed this with less than 1000 employees. Only two others in the list are comparable in this respect. Plenty of other companies on the list have thousands or tens or thousands of employees.

      OK, but only two others in the list have lower revenues! If you look at revenues/employee, Red Hat is ...lessee... 30th of 50, with Hitachi so far in number 1 (36 times that of #2 Dell) I'm thinking there must be a mistake.

      Who was it who was linked here last week saying that table display widgets should be full-featured spreadsheets? I'm all for it!

    2. Re:Is Red Hat Linux? by GigsVT · · Score: 4, Informative

      One thing that killed their PE was constant dilution via secondary offerings, convertible debentures, and compensation stock options.

      If you invested in Red Hat, you really invested in them.. Your money went straight into the companies asset sheet through their extreme dilution.

      Red Hat is making good on it now for us long-term investors finally at least. They are buying back the convertible debentures and some of the stock. This should bring their PE down even if the P part stays constant.

      It's going to take a while though, Red Hat effectively borrowed billions of dollars from their stockholders and they aren't going to pay it back overnight.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    3. Re:Is Red Hat Linux? by KiviPall · · Score: 2, Informative

      ... and as you can read form Red Hat Shares Fall on Analyst Downgrade

      Red Hat Shares Fall on Analyst Downgrade
      Tuesday November 15, 12:01 pm ET
      Red Hat Shares Fall 5.5 Percent After Analyst Downgrades Stock on Lacking Near-Term Upside

      NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of Red Hat Inc. dropped 5.5 percent trading Tuesday after an analyst cut his rating on the stock, citing concern that he doesn't anticipate any events that can move the stock price up in the near future.

      Shares were down $1.34, to $23.02 in midday trading on the Nasdaq.

      and so on ...

    4. Re:Is Red Hat Linux? by FishandChips · · Score: 1

      Yes, that's a darn good way of looking at it. Red Hat don't do so badly in terms of net income per employee, though, coming around 16th in the field. I agree that the Hitachi figure looks duff, too.

      --
      Las qué passoun
      tournoun pas maï
    5. Re:Is Red Hat Linux? by saider · · Score: 1

      I always hear people commenting about "PE Ratio", but I still cannot figure out why that number is used. It is used to provide some indication as to whether a company is overvalued or not. However, the price is determined by many things and can change if a company does a stock split.

      I feel that it should be the "MCE Ratio" or Market Captialization to Earnings. This is something that will not be affected by the number of splits the company has gone through.

      --


      Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
    6. Re:Is Red Hat Linux? by fugspit · · Score: 2, Informative

      The P/E ratio is calculated by dividing the share price by the earnings PER SHARE number. As such, it is not affected by stock splits.

      For a company earning $10 that has 10 shares out standing and a share price of $10
      P/E = share price / (earnings / shares outstanding)
      P/E = $10 / ( $10 / 10 ) = 10
      after a 2 for 1 split they will still earn $10 but now they have 20 shares trading at $5 each
      P/E = $5 / ( $10 / 20 ) = 10

      Tada! the same number.

      There are reasons not to rely solely on P/E ratios as a company measure but fluctuations due to stock splits is not one of them.

    7. Re:Is Red Hat Linux? by rm69990 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, so? If you look at this : http://www.google.com/search?q=stocks%3ARHAT&clien t=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

      you would see that Red Hat's stock is still a lot higher than it was at the beginning of this year. So your point is? (you might have to click the link to make the graph span out for a year).

    8. Re:Is Red Hat Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > It's interesting to see that they've managed this with less than 1000 employees.

      Red Hat use a lot of contractors. And pay them a lot more money than permanents, perpetually renewing their contracts. Keeping permanent staff levels low is better for the stock price than minimising operating expense.

  10. er, 36% growth? by Zaurus · · Score: 1

    The article says RedHat had 36% revenue growth over 4 years. How does that equal 210% year-over-year growth? Am I missing something?

    1. Re:er, 36% growth? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This is very possible - just spend some time at a financial site. Growth does not always refer to revenue. For example, revenue and profit are completely different numbers.

  11. List also has MS, Intel, Sony, Fujitsu... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't see any point in the heading...Its worthy that Red Hat made into the list...but franfly its just one amng the list...The entry should have just said 'Top 50 companies' or something like that...

  12. Good stuff -- by meisenst · · Score: 1

    Maybe my RHCE certification will land me a job now! *gets hopes up*

    Question is, with all of this emerging interest in Red Hat, why hasn't it already gotten me a job? I haven't seen (around here, in Ottawa, anyway) any sharp rise in the number of Linux-related jobs available. So, who's buying all of this support?

    --
    Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
    1. Re:Good stuff -- by Xargle · · Score: 1

      Proven skill a demonstrable ability get you a job, not certifications.

    2. Re:Good stuff -- by meisenst · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Oh, I have nearly 15 years of proven skill. I think what I'm getting at here is, there is a sizeable amount of demand for RH services and/or support -- yet people who are certified with their products seem to find less demand than, say, MCSE.

      --
      Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
    3. Re:Good stuff -- by mottie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Every tech I've ever met that has moved to Vancouver from Ottawa has talked about how far behind in technology the average infrastructure in Ottawa is. They blame it on the fact that Ottawa has a lot of goverment jobs. Based on that (and only that, I've never worked or been to Ottawa) I'd guess that an RHCE wouldn't be as valuable as an MCSE, as the Canadian Gov't hasn't embraced linux yet.

    4. Re:Good stuff -- by LordSnooty · · Score: 1

      Maybe my RHCE certification will land me a job now!

      That's how they make their money, selling certifications to guys like you for jobs that don't exist.

  13. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There speaks someone who doesn't use OS X in anger. It's woeful and very buggy for server apps. Wait until it actually works before astroturfing eh?

  14. Never Mind by Zaurus · · Score: 1

    Ok, nevermind. The article with tons of text is confusing. The top-50 chart is where they got the big numbers from.

  15. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by rovingeyes · · Score: 1
    Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche

    You made that claim for Apple based on just one version of their server OS? Based on my experience, 10.3 was a nightmare. 10.4 seems more stable, offers better compatibility with Active Directory, and the command line management even though is available since 10.3, seems more useful now. In 10.3, every time I had to manage anything, I had to go to the server room and in Linux, unless there is a need I never am at the terminal. My take, give it some time and then decide, its too early to draw conclusions.

  16. Ethics by NumberOneFan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Good on Red Hat. How many times has this "business model" failed, continues to fail, or barely makes it? This way of doing business really relies on the scruples of the company. Financially, it isn't in their best interest to keep packages up to date. The longer they drag their feet, the more money they keep making in their subscriptions. It's like Code Sourcery. They port the GNU tool-chain for use on embedded platforms like ARM. They also give out their changes and such like they have to. What's to say what they give out doesn't have a few bugs that were fixed a long time ago but haven't quite made it to the free public version. If you pay them for support maybe you get a less buggy version.

    I'm not skeptical of when a person does this for free and just relases the source. That's cool. When a company has to generate money by basically, fixing bugs and/or some customization, I think you need to be skeptical.

    Just my paranoid thoughts on it I guess.

    1. Re:Ethics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Financially, it isn't in their best interest to keep packages up to date. The longer they drag their feet, the more money they keep making in their subscriptions. It's like Code Sourcery. They port the GNU tool-chain for use on embedded platforms like ARM. They also give out their changes and such like they have to. What's to say what they give out doesn't have a few bugs that were fixed a long time ago but haven't quite made it to the free public version. If you pay them for support maybe you get a less buggy version.

      That's a very poorly constructed argument, so much so that I'll leave the research into precisely why as an exercise to the curious reader.

    2. Re:Ethics by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you pay them for support maybe you get a less buggy version

      Red Hat releases .rpms and .srpms for all their software. So they can't hide "special fixes". But sometimes mainstream developers doesn't want those fixes (and there's no reason why a OSS developer shouldn't be looking at the .srpms and check the patches to see if there's something interesting), or the fixes are not ready to be upstream. For example, redhat backported lots of 2.6 things to 2.4. 2.4 was not going to include those never, the same goes for the fixes for those extra features.

      When a company has to generate money by basically, fixing bugs and/or some customization, I think you need to be skeptical

      Red Hat generates money by being "red hat", having support, etc. It's not the quality of the software what matters for support, what matters is the fact that if you find a bug redhat will fix it. Once redhat has fixed it, they've no interest in keeping the fix only for them. From what I've seen, they're not interested in having to maintain thousand of extra patches and they try to avoid it as hard as possible.

      Redhat also sells because of their customization:

  17. Red Hat who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Just out of curiousity, why does anyone care about Red Hat? Their product isn't free. You can't go out and download a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

    I'm going to get modded flamebait, but their business model is identical to Microsoft's. The only way to get Red Hat Linux is to buy it from them. If you aren't a paying customer, you mean zero to them.

    Sure it's possible to build a system that is mostly the same at no cost, but you aren't running Red Hat and they won't give you any support if you run into problems.

    1. Re:Red Hat who? by robpoe · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's a "Microsoft Answer"(TM).

      Sure, you *can* download a RHEL. It's just called Centos. Or WhiteBox.

      But you're right .. RedHat won't recognize you then.

      --
      = Grow a brain...
    2. Re:Red Hat who? by Jokkey · · Score: 1
      I'm going to get modded flamebait, but their business model is identical to Microsoft's. The only way to get Red Hat Linux is to buy it from them. If you aren't a paying customer, you mean zero to them.

      Hmm... Microsoft's apparent business model: sell subscriptions that give you the license to use (not modify, not own) software, then fail to deliver any new versions of the subscribed software for years; charge extra for support; buy or bury competition; flex monopoly power as much as possible. Red Hat's apparent business model: sell subscriptions that include support; invest heavily in developing OSS software and then give all of that back to the community; make all of their sources available for rebuilders like the CentOS team.

      I'm not seeing much similarity.

      Sure it's possible to build a system that is mostly the same at no cost, but you aren't running Red Hat and they won't give you any support if you run into problems.

      Of course they won't give you any support; you're not paying them anything. They're a company; they don't give tech support as a charity.

    3. Re:Red Hat who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Considering the amount of development resources they invest in software like GCC, glibc, X.org, Linux, GNOME, etc, I'm far more interested in their success compared to, say, Ubuntu (though that's what I run).

      Red Hat is free (as in freedom), and Fedora is freely available for download. So what's to complain about?

    4. Re:Red Hat who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      But you're right .. RedHat won't recognize you then.


      And why the hell should they? You think Microsoft's going to support a freely available beta version? Hehehe!

      Redhat are in the business of providing comercial support services.

      The OS is free as in speach, not as in beer as one RMS is so fond of pointing out.

      If you just want 'free as in cheap', then accept that RH provides no value to you and move onto some good free beer distro.

      Don't tell the beancounters though - they won't be happy to hear that the mission critical apps are running on an unsuported, uncertified base built by people with no track record for maintaining an enterprise distribution or the security of their build hosts.

      (unless you're moving to Debian - they have a repuatation for all this, and more. Be happy with them)
    5. Re:Red Hat who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Microsoft's apparent business model: sell subscriptions that give you the license to use (not modify, not own) software, then fail to deliver any new versions of the subscribed software for years; charge extra for support; buy or bury competition; flex monopoly power as much as possible. Red Hat's apparent business model: sell subscriptions that include support; invest heavily in developing OSS software and then give all of that back to the community; make all of their sources available for rebuilders like the CentOS team.


      Right. So Red Het is all joy and love. Except that you don't own the software, it's licensed to you. If you actually modify the software you don't get support. If you install it on a platform with greater resources than your purchase specificed you don't get support. Or if you want the source to Red Hat Cluster Suite. Or numerous other components that are not available to the community at large.

      Of course they won't give you any support; you're not paying them anything. They're a company; they don't give tech support as a charity.


      Funny that a company whose product is the result of thousands of people giving away their time and expertise, won't give back to the community. But in addition to not giving tech support, you cannot get parts of their offerings without buying a license from them and you will not get the source code and you do not have the right to redistribute.
    6. Re:Red Hat who? by LordMaxxon · · Score: 0

      not free? so you've never heard of fedora core?
      plus, when you buy rhel, you buy service, too, not just a product.

    7. Re:Red Hat who? by pembo13 · · Score: 1

      As far as I understand, the product is free, as it's all GPL code. You pay for the support. If you are not a paying customer, you still mean alot to them [bugzilla.redhat.com]. Would you like RedHat to employ tech support people and pay them with your "thank you"s ? These people need actually money to pay the programmers to do all the nice things that you download for free.

      --
      "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
  18. So why stock down by yapplejax · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If that's the case, then why is RedHat dipping following analyst downgrades?

    1. Re:So why stock down by The+Mayor · · Score: 1

      Why don't you look at a longer duration than 1 day?

      --
      --Be human.
    2. Re:So why stock down by GigsVT · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you still listen to analysts after the very public events of the last 5 years, you deserve what's coming to you.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    3. Re:So why stock down by LnxAddct · · Score: 1

      They named a new board member that investors have yet to see proven. This happens everytime any company makes some kind of change like that. Look at their 6 month stock history...they are doing excellent, a lot better than Novell, and most tech companies. Anyone who judges a stock based on one day's values and one downgrade does not understand the stock market...
      Regards,
      Steve

    4. Re:So why stock down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah. 10 Years is a much better way to look at it.

      Oops. Way way down.

  19. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apple has replace Linux as the geek favorite.

    Somone please mod this +funny. My trolls don't ever make +interesting so I can mod this nonsense down!

    AC

  20. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by the_B0fh · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    I use Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and think they are the best Linux distributions



    BAH!!! REDCRAP is the WORST piece of shit I've ever used. We just bought a bunch of RHEL 4 AS licenses, and it has been a freaking nightmare. Support sucks, and takes its own sweet time if it's not something easily found. And they'll ask you to test things out for things that they've confirmed to be issues - WTF? If you FSCKING know it's an issue, you can FSCKING TEST IT OUT YOURSELF, damned lazy bastards.


    I also like the way they push things off to others. Oh, disk druid is broken? Use fdisk. Umm, excuse me, but where's fdisk when I'm trying to install? And why aren't you putting in a ticket to engineering to get it fixed?


    And I especially love the way everything is bundled together. So, now, my choice is waste 1G of disk space on win2k, or waste 1G of disk space on REDCRAP, when all I'm trying to do is run a freaking web server?!


    Oh, oh, lets not even mention the fact that RHEL4 can't even run, out of the box, on platforms that they advertize for!!!! Yeah, go perform a default install of RHEL4 on a dual core opteron, reboot, and watch it hang. Why the fsck do you put in the smp kernel, if it doesn't fucking work?


    And of course, the support and registration sites going up and down, and taking more than 24 hours to get my damned registration in.


    And lets not talk about how much fun it was doing an up2date to go from RHEL 4 to RHEL 4 U1 and U2. Freaking dependency failures, and killing the box so bad that it can't reboot, and needing a re-install.


    And did you know that even though you paid thousands of dollars for that nice RHEL 4 dvd, you can't get an actual working RHEL 4 U2 dvd. They want you to download CD isos. You see, this is because:

    1. it takes too much bandwidth to download a DVD
    2. it the download gets interrupted, you have to re-download the whole thing again
    3. Redhat can't afford to buy some extra drives

    I'm not shitting you, those were the exact answers given to me. Of course, the fact that:
    1. downloading 5 CD isos saves you a shitload of bandwidth over one DVD
    2. ftp and http both support resumption of downloads, so if REDCRAP's servers can't support this, this is a REDCRAP issue, isn't it?
    3. "we're an enterprise company, hear us ROAR" but... umm... just don't expect us to be able to afford to buy a couple of extra hard drives...
  21. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by einhverfr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You have a lot more faith in Apple's business ability than I do. Apple has always managed to survive but has seemed to be the future of the OS for the last twenty years. Apple has never been willing to allow their vertical integration to be broken (even with the move to Intel chips), and thus is always a niche market. For better or worse I don't see this changing.

    Now, I have used Linux as my primary desktop at home for six years. In that time, it has improved more than any other desktop solution in terms of look and feel, but it was adequate from a productivity perspective even in 1999. Both Gnome and KDE have similarly improved.

    What holds back Linux on the desktop is simply fear of change and fear of a lack of interoperability with MS products. These issues are being delt with quickly and I expect that within a short time both issues will be mitigated sufficiently to allow larger corporations to move quickly to Linux with only a bit more effort than upgrading Windows. With any luck we will be close to that before Vista really starts to become commonplace.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  22. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by tpgp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let's face it, Red Hat's amaturish "desktop" offerings and lame marketing can't and won't overthrow Micrsoft.

    Troll.

    Red hat do not compete in the desktop space. Nice try.

    As the future of Unix, Apple is also making strong claims on the server and super computer markets. Apples success with the Virginia Tech supercomputer is proof that Apple is opening up a lead in the top-end of the market.

    Troll

    You mean the way Linux "rules" Supercomputers with an estimated 60% of the top 500?

    There seems to be an emerging consensus in Slashdot land that Apple and OS X is the future of Unix and the sole legitmate claimaint to the king of the desktop.

    *sighs* Troll... modded up to +3 by apple fanboys - how predictable.

    --
    My pics.
  23. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't you get it? It's only deemed Officially Evil(TM) when Microsoft sponsors the surveys! Now get in line and drink the /. double standard Kool-Aid like everyone else.

  24. % increase in profit should be taken with a grain by carlcmc · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... of salt.

    going from barely making anything to making just a bit more can be a dramatic % growth but still not necessarily reflect a thriving business model which will generate year over year growth.

  25. Perhaps a dime or three wouldn't hurt. by Vengeance · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I personally put some money into RedHat last summer. Not enough to bankrupt me or to get rich, you understand, but I'm currently sitting on about 41% equity growth.

    --
    It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
    1. Re:Perhaps a dime or three wouldn't hurt. by xziz · · Score: 0

      I did the same and am sitting at a 290.15% gain on my investment.

    2. Re:Perhaps a dime or three wouldn't hurt. by DogDude · · Score: 2, Informative

      And you'll probably see that kind of growth for a while longer, too. What you're talking about (the span of a year or so) isn't investing... it's speculation. And while I don't deny that Red Hat has had decent returns recently, and may continue to in the near future, the parent said that Red Hat is a "solid" company. My main point of contention is that two years of profit doesn't define a "solid" company in the financial sense, regardless of industry. The dot-coms all had tremendous growth as far as market capitalization goes (stock price), but very few of them had "solid" financials, hence the dot-bomb. New businesses can't even APPLY for most bank loans until they've been open and profitable for at least 3 years (this is coming from a business owner).

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
  26. Interesting that Google is missing... by CptTripps · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I thought it odd that F5 Networks was there, but Google wasn't...

    I DID like that RH made the list with 800 employees...compared to 11,000 for Apple, or 56,000 for M$.

    --


    My .sig can beat up your honor student.
  27. Any non-independent study by jd · · Score: 0

    ...requires vast quantities of sodium flouride. That is the primary market for salt mines, now that people are wary of it in food.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    1. Re:Any non-independent study by jd · · Score: 2, Funny

      That should be sodium chloride. Though if you want to use sodium fluoride on bullshit (or indeed food), I won't stop you. I'll just not eat in the same restraunts.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    2. Re:Any non-independent study by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      This is not a study of anything, it is just an edititorial fill in piece giving the opinion of cnet as to who the top 50 tech companies in Asia are. Odd that most of the notebook ODMs are missing, they obviously don't spend enough marketing dollars (Dell is on the list and Compal is not? Compal make most of the Dell notebooks as well as notebooks for most of other companies on the list). Perhaps they just should have rated it as the top 50 cnet advertisers in Asia, then at least it would have made more sence.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  28. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by GigsVT · · Score: 1

    What I don't get is why they made yum the "preferred" way. Yum is so much slower and more cumbersome than apt.

    --
    I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  29. Now to beat RedHat by Sheepdot · · Score: 1

    That's the way to go!

    Yes, but unfortunately, Red Hat was there first. Similar models will get the proverbial "but how are you any different than Red Hat?". So just because it worked for them doesn't mean someone can start now to try to copy the same model for open source. Red Hat is so comprehensive with their services that to try to compete now, especially since it would be *against* them, is an effort in futility.

    Not that this is a bad thing, I'm glad for them, but to say that there is a model that works and to suggest that now others can emulate them and succeed is a bit presumptuous. After all, if their services were "bad", they probably wouldn't be a successful model.

    1. Re:Now to beat RedHat by flyinwhitey · · Score: 1

      Yeah you know, once McDonalds did that fast food thing, the market was all but closed off to new players...

      You have made, quite possibly, the worst argument for anything I have ever seen.

      Nicely done.

      --
      How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
  30. RedHat blows away the market by digitaldc · · Score: 1

    http://www.fool.com/news/mft/2005/mft05100301.htm? source=eptyholnk303100&logvisit=y&npu=y&bounce=y&b ounce2=y

    "Shares surged nearly 30% higher on the news -- and with good reason. The company is experiencing sequential improvement in the current quarter as more corporate customers take a shine to open-source solutions."

    RHAT is now at $23.13 a share.
    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=RHAT&t=5y

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
  31. Re:I'm gonna... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ballmer would never have the ^H problem. He uses a real, innovative operating system that knows how to handle the backspace key. And no, I don't want fries with that.

  32. The updates aren't that impressive by jd · · Score: 1

    But I've found Scientific Linux (another RHEL rebuild) to be better than Centos, overall. The problem with RHEL-derived distributions is that next to none of the RPM repositories will work with them, because many of the packages are archaic.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    1. Re:The updates aren't that impressive by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Informative

      really? what you point to is still on RHEL 4.1 while centos is already at 4.2 and I have never had a problem like you described.

      Maybe back in the 3.x series they were lagging, but they have a crapload of people working on it now as well as their own yum update repository instead of pointing at redhat's.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  33. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by e40 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    As the future of Unix, Apple is also making strong claims on the server and super computer markets.
    I call bullshit. We run almost every flavor of UNIX available (AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD, various Linux distros, Tru64, HP-UX, Mac OS X, yada, yada, yada), and I can tell you without a doubt: Mac OS X is the least stable and the most difficult OS to deal with.

    Look at something like AMD (the automounter, not the chip) and NFS. Wanna lock up your Mac OS X box? Merely access the automount point (/net for us). The finder and AMD don't mix. WTF? It's been this way from 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 and now 10.4. Yes, 10.4 is better. Waaaaay better than just a couple of revs ago. Mature it is not. In 10 years it might have a chance, though remote, of being as stable as Linux and Solaris are today.

    In general, when I have some opensource package I need to compile and install on all the UNIX boxes here, what system will make me spend 90% of the time on it? That's right, Mac OS X. Yes, 10.4 is better, but I could waste whole days trying to get crap to compile on 10.3 and before.

  34. Replying to myself, but by einhverfr · · Score: 1

    It should be noted that Red Hat != Linux. Red Hat today is overhyped, though I still use their projects (Fedora, etc) for a number of customers. Also though they have come through a very painful transition, I think that people expect more from them than they can deliver (look at their P/E ratio for example). And I am not convinced that *despite desktop offerings* like RHEL Desktop, I don't think that they really understand the market beyond the engineer's desktop. Red Hat has been important largely because they did prove the concept of open source business. But I think that soon they may become a victim of their own success.

    I do think that Novell is today better positioned to grow, and they have showed that they are genuinely interested in opening up a large number of their products. If they take their strategy to its logical end, they could easily userp Red Hat's position as *the* open source Linux solutions leader. What would be required for them to do this would be opening up their directory services software, and some other things.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  35. Many, many RHEL rebuilds out there by jd · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Scientific Linux is another. They're good for stability, but I wouldn't rate them much for performance (the builds are all pretty safe and have no obvious speedups anywhere), extensibility (very few RPM sites provide RHEL RPMs) or progressiveness (you can't update Enterprise-level software that rapidly, but RHEL is getting positively ancient in places).


    I'm hoping someone'll put together a "best of" compilation, using what's stable (and what can be made stable) from the RPM repositories - including Fedora - but optimized much more aggressively. I would, but I don't have the bandwidth or the disk space to carry a distro. If someone was interested in hosting, that would be another matter. I'd certainly be willing to compile the code and upload it to a host site.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  36. What about SCO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    According to them, owed billions by IBM,

    Owed money by Red Hat,

    "We are using objective third parties to do comparisons of our UNIX System V source code and Red Hat as an example. We are coming across many instances where our proprietary software has simply been copied and pasted or changed in order to hide the origin of our System V code in Red Hat. This is the kind of thing that we will need to address with many Linux distribution companies at some point."
    www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-10_Story02. html

    And owner of UNIX... ...the best bits of Linux, AIX and IRIX

    "Specifically, Sontag believes the "SCO technologies" which were misappropriated into AIX, IRIX, and the derivative UNIX-alikes (including Linux) are JFS (Journalling File System). NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access), a SGI/Stanford collaboration. RCU (Read-Copy-Update). SMP (Symmetrical Multi-Processing). "
    http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7801/byt1055784622 054/0616_marshall.html ...and in fact all modern operating systems

    "So you want royalties from FreeBSD as well?" I asked. Sontag responded that "there may or may not be issues. We believe that UNIX System V provided the basic building blocks for all subsequent computer operating systems, and that they all tend to be derived from UNIX System V (and therefore are claimed as SCO's intellectual property)."
    http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7801/byt1055784622 054/0616_marshall.html ...shouldn't they be on the list!

  37. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're so obviously retarded, I need to work through this one point at a time.

    > BAH!!! REDCRAP is the WORST piece of shit I've ever used. We just bought a bunch of
    > RHEL 4 AS licenses, and it has been a freaking nightmare. Support sucks, and takes
    > it own sweet time if it's not something easily found. And they'll ask you to test things
    > out for things that they've confirmed to be issues - WTF? If you FSCKING know it's an
    > issue, you can FSCKING TEST IT OUT YOURSELF, damned lazy bastards.

    Lazy? Have you any idea how long it could take to *accurately* reproduce a problematic
    environment for this kind of work? It may not even be possible. By asking you to help out,
    they are helping *YOU* out - FOSS is all about co-operation btw.

    > I also like the way they push things off to others. Oh, disk druid is broken? Use fdisk.
    > Umm, excuse me, but where's fdisk when I'm trying to install? And why aren't you putting
    > in a ticket to engineering to get it fixed?

    It's on virtual console 2 (Alt-F2, or Ctrl-Alt-F2 if you're using graphical). Learn to use
    the tools in your hands before criticising the help offered by others. Or find out what a
    kickstart %pre script is good for.

    > And I especially love the way everything is bundled together. So, now, my choice is waste
    > 1G of disk space on win2k, or waste 1G of disk space on REDCRAP, when all I'm trying to
    > do is run a freaking web server?!

    You installed your webserver with a pre-defined package profile? What are you? Fscking crazy?

    Learn to do a kickstart like everyone else and have *only* the packages you select.
    Oh, wait, you probably don't even know what packages you want or need.

    *sharpens the clue-by-four*

    > Oh, oh, lets not even mention the fact that RHEL4 can't even run, out of the box, on
    > platforms that they advertize for!!!! Yeah, go perform a default install of RHEL4 on a
    > dual core opteron, reboot, and watch it hang. Why the fsck do you put in the smp kernel,
    > if it doesn't fucking work?

    You mean the dual core opterons that weren't even available as engineering samples at the
    time RHEL4 was being cut? Ahh, of course, Red Hat should have just used their magic crystal
    ball. In the mean time, install update 2 like the rest of the sane world.

    Oh, and RHEL doesn't even come in a box. It's a *subscription*. But you knew that right?

    > And of course, the support and registration sites going up and down, and taking more than
    > 24 hours to get my damned registration in.

    Works for me. Perhaps you need to use a working web browser? Or maybe the fault is between
    chair and keyboard?

    > And lets not talk about how much fun it was doing an up2date to go from RHEL 4 to RHEL 4
    > U1 and U2. Freaking dependency failures, and killing the box so bad that it can't reboot,
    > and needing a re-install.

    OK, now I just don't believe you. Oh, wait, you didn't kill an up2date/RPM process did you?
    Or reboot? Bwaahahahahahaaaha HALOF!

    > 2. ftp and http both support resumption of downloads, so if REDCRAP's servers can't
    > support this, this is a REDCRAP issue, isn't it?

    RHN downloads use wget or curl by preference. Please consult the manual pages.

    Also, please investigate the carriage return key on your keyboard - it's very useful.

  38. So what? by flyinwhitey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Mod me down if you want, but a few years ago, pets.com could have been listed there too.

    This may be an indication of great things to come, or it could be the start of the much speculated upon Linux bubble.

    Don't jump to conclusions.

    --
    How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
    1. Re:So what? by LnxAddct · · Score: 1

      Except that Red Hat has been around for 12 years and already had its bubble back during the dotcom. At one point Red Hat was worth around $125 a share. Any company that survived the bubble can survive anything.
      Regards,
      Steve

    2. Re:So what? by superpulpsicle · · Score: 1

      The term bubble implies that when the bubble explode, shit happens. What's the worst possible scenario, 200 distros gets decommissioned and we are left with 10 other free distros?

  39. slashdot about face? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The real interesting thing here is not Red Hat, or Red Hat in Asia.

    It's the haters at Slashdot actually posting something nice about Red Hat. This must be a first. Usually, the posts fall into these broad categories:

    1) Red Hat, the new microsoft
    2) Red Hat, saying desktop still far off: boo!
    3) Red Hat, we still don't understand Fedora vs. RHEL, boy was that stupid
    4) Red Hat, ignore said (continuing) contributions to free software
    5) Red Hat, ingore real commitment to GPL
    6) Red Hat, fedora releases slow internet to crawl
    7) Red Hat, tool to the NSA
    8) Red Hat, anti-LSB when in reality only distro who cared enough to shape it
    9) Red Hat, why use when there is another disto iso you can download
    10) Red Hat, new proof that the man is them

    I've always thought that the slashdot corporate parent was extremely anti-Red Hat, and encouraged this editorial slant in the early days. Rising tide lifts all boats? Not according to VA, err, whatever they call themselves these days, oh I know, just another has-been proprietary software vendor.

  40. Although by jd · · Score: 1
    I would not be willing to agree that Red Hat are bad - they're no worse than any other distro I've tried, and the range of software is good - but I would be willing to agree that their QA isn't impressive (eg: they don't build their Fedora development RPMs when a dependency has changed, breaking updates), the "install everything" states that it includes stuff not listed (which means if you need those components at the very start, you HAVE to install everything), you cannot install using any filesystem other than EXT3 and the installer is not IPv6-compliant.


    There is room for a distribution which uses Fedora as a starting point and builds what you really want/need from that - much the same way Slackware grew out of SLS. Remember, nobody has ever assumed Open Source solutions to be perfect, or we'd still be using the MCC distribution, Shoestring for the boot-loader (hey, it was a damn good boot-loader!) and X10 for the GUI. (I dare someone to find a still-running, still-in-use X10 server.)

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    1. Re:Although by the_B0fh · · Score: 0, Flamebait
      Remember, nobody has ever assumed Open Source solutions to be perfect, or we'd still be using the MCC distribution,


      JD, the issue is not about opensource, but about a commercial OS that is sold, that is sorely lacking in QA and support.

      Complaints about REDCRAP are not complaints about opensource. I use gentoo and openbsd, both personally, and professionally, and I get exactly the kind of support I put back into it. With REDCRAP, all I got was a couple of months of frothing at mouth type issues, because REDCRAP fscked up yet again. This is simply not acceptable in an enterprise environment.
  41. Red Hat New Installation by DrCash · · Score: 0

    Just installed Red Hat EL4 on a Dell PC just now. The installation seemed to work well with no problems. So far, runs better than WinBlows! This slashdot article was the first news I found! LOL

  42. Are any of these privately owned? by Lester67 · · Score: 1

    Just curious... at first glance they all look to be publicly held.

  43. google not on the list? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, google isn't on the list of top-50 tech companies? I just looked and didn't see it on there. Am I seeing things?

  44. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by saintp · · Score: 1

    I absolutely agree. Anyone who thinks that OS X currently belongs in a server room has obviously never tried to use it there. After just a year running OS X for our file server, we switched to Linux. Our shop isn't as diverse as yours, but we run Solaris, Tru64, and lots of different Linuces, and I can agree: OS X is *by far* the least stable.

  45. Its not suprising by radiogeak · · Score: 1

    Its not suprising. I use Ret Hat Enterprise Server 3 all the time at work, and it beats the hell outa any other distro in the business field IMO.

  46. If they don't, they should. by jd · · Score: 1
    BeOS "didn't compete" with Microsoft on the desktop or in multimedia, to avoid being squished like a bug. Bad mistake. Microsoft squished them anyway and, by having not competed, BeOS wasn't capable of surviving. Netscape also tried to avoid confrontation, but Microsoft "knifed the baby" (their words) with no remorse. No, the way forward isn't to run backwards. The giant WILL step on you, if you try. The best hope for Linux is for vendors to fight for every square inch of market space and mindspace that they can. Microsoft isn't about to "play nice". It doesn't want anyone - anyone at all - to be in the computer software industry. They want to be all, sell all, do all, and want the playing field utterly deserted of all others, even if there is no conflict at this time.


    The only way Linux - or any other OS - is going to survive is to play fair but play hard and never, ever give ground to Microsoft. When boundaries are not recognized and courtesy is not respected, the only hope for enduring is to throw caution to the wind and charge.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  47. Redhat Did a lot to screw Linux credability too! by MrJerryNormandinSir · · Score: 1, Informative

    I a unix/linux systems engineer. I can tell you Redhat Linux AS 2.1 was anything but advanced. Sure EMC and Oracle supported it. But there was NO LVM! No Support for Extended ACLS! And the infamous low EMEM bug when you are under heavy I/O. If I compiled a fix in Oracle wasn't going to support it. The servers are Dell PowerEdge 6650's with 8GB RAM connected to an EMC SAN via Qlogic HBAs. I managed to tame the beast, but managing the filesystems without an LVM is a pain.

    The ERP project has grown, so when the lease is up on the Dell equipment it looks like we are going with the IBM pSeries. Why... basically we need the I/O.

    I've achieved 97% uptime but the credit is mine, not Redhat's. Redhat staff is brain dead when it comes to cutting edge solutions. I solved my problems before Redhat was ever on the trail.

    I haven't been able to upgrade to Redhat AS 4.0 since according to the usenet groups Oracle RAC and 10g perform poorly with SAN attached storage, 50% of the throughput I have on the heavily patched Redhat AS 2.1

    Bottom line, if you are going to roll out Linux throughtout your Enterprise you need engineers like me on your staff, not Redhat. I believe the public will catch on and the Redhat stock will take a nosedive. Unless they hire engineers with experience in the Enterprise.

    They need to take a good solid look. What I am personally looking at is licensing from Oracle. I believe the whole Redhat / Oracle Grid deal is to sell as many oracle licenses as you can. Need more horsepower? Add a database node?
    An Additional database node means more money for Ellison, and less money in your IT budget. So we are now looking at
    running the backend on a IBM p570 or a p590 and host many
    databases there. The business decided that Disaster Recovery is more important than HA! Why... 9iRAC takes 4 minutes to failover. Also.. sometimes failovers fail.
    Some of the bugs may have been worked out in 10g.

    Anyway have your read the latest news at Oracle? Sun is now the preferred Oracle platform of the month again.

    That's not goinf to help redhat's stock.

    Believe it or not I've been a Linux fan since 1992.
    Yggrasill was the release I cut my teeth on.
    I've been using it ever since.
    I was very dissapointed to see what redhat did.
    This is not only going to hurt Redhat. But then again, Linux was never written with the intent to make money.
    It has however helped many Computer scientists and professionals improve on thier careers. It helped me stay on top of my game and earn a decent salary.

    I would not recommend buying Redhat Stock.

  48. Uhm by kmmatthews · · Score: 1

    Maybe you should start bathing before interviews?

    --
    feh. stuff.
  49. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by the_B0fh · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You obviously do not have experience with REDCRAP, but is just a dumb pawn for the fedora crap. If I pay for something, I expect it to work as advertized, even though this is software we are talking about.

    >> BAH!!! REDCRAP is the WORST piece of shit I've ever used. We just bought a bunch of
    >> RHEL 4 AS licenses, and it has been a freaking nightmare. Support sucks, and takes
    >> it own sweet time if it's not something easily found. And they'll ask you to test things
    >> out for things that they've confirmed to be issues - WTF? If you FSCKING know it's an
    >> issue, you can FSCKING TEST IT OUT YOURSELF, damned lazy bastards.

    >Lazy? Have you any idea how long it could take to >*accurately* reproduce a problematic
    >environment for this kind of work? It may not even >be possible. By asking you to help out,
    >they are helping *YOU* out - FOSS is all about >co-operation btw.

    This is NOT about FOSS. This is about REDCRAP's support, which is allegedly what I get, when I pay them shitloads of money for free crap. Further more, if you have had some reading comprehension, you will note that I stated that support had already cnfirmed the bug as something that exists - if it's a known issue, and they want to know more about how it behaves, then they should fscking test it out, and then only go bother the customers.

    >> I also like the way they push things off to others. Oh, disk druid is broken? Use fdisk.
    >> Umm, excuse me, but where's fdisk when I'm trying to install? And why aren't you putting
    >> in a ticket to engineering to get it fixed?

    >It's on virtual console 2 (Alt-F2, or Ctrl-Alt-F2 if >you're using graphical). Learn to use
    >the tools in your hands before criticising the help >offered by others. Or find out what a
    >kickstart %pre script is good for.

    Hmm, valid point, I didn't check to see if fdisk actually exist. But neither did support mention this - and the question has been posed to them for more than 2 days now.

    >> And I especially love the way everything is bundled together. So, now, my choice is waste
    >> 1G of disk space on win2k, or waste 1G of disk space on REDCRAP, when all I'm trying to
    >> do is run a freaking web server?!

    >You installed your webserver with a pre-defined >package profile? What are you? Fscking crazy?

    You have not had a chance to install REDCRAP lately have you? I'm not talking about the pansy ass fedora crap, I'm talking about RHEL 4. *you* show me an install that's under 800Megs.

    >Learn to do a kickstart like everyone else and have *only* the packages you select.
    >Oh, wait, you probably don't even know what packages you want or need.

    Some people obviously like to hear the sound of their own voices. Tell you what, I'll make it easy on you. Go install RHEL4 under 500 megs, with a working apache server, only using standard RHEL4 rpms.

    >*sharpens the clue-by-four*

    *and accidentally takes off his own hand*

    >> Oh, oh, lets not even mention the fact that RHEL4 can't even run, out of the box, on
    >> platforms that they advertize for!!!! Yeah, go perform a default install of RHEL4 on a
    >> dual core opteron, reboot, and watch it hang. Why the fsck do you put in the smp kernel,
    >> if it doesn't fucking work?

    >You mean the dual core opterons that weren't even >available as engineering samples at the
    >time RHEL4 was being cut?

    Oh, you mean they were not telling me the truth? They sold me a defective product?! They lied about a working smp kernel? OK, even if I grant you that they did not have a working smp kernel - WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU INCLUDE IT ON THE FUCKING CD THEN?!

    >Ahh, of course, Red Hat should have just used their magic crystal
    >ball.

    Well, they wouldn't need to, not with fanboys like you around.

    >In the mean time, install update 2 like the rest of the san

  50. Now that you have to pay for it, is RH any better? by Browzer · · Score: 0

    If Centos' genericization and repackaging of the RH product gives hint of RH's quality, then there leaves something to be desired.

    Petty example: on x86_64, compiling the kernel fails due to two typo errors in one of the scripts (yes, there is a fix/patch), and then it fails again due to a problem with the offset?.? file. Does the same thing happen on RH?

  51. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by MrJerryNormandinSir · · Score: 1

    Not only that. MacOS/X does not have a true Xserver.
    The power of X11 allows you to run from the server/desktop
    and display anywhere. You can't do that with macOS/X.

    And.. have you ever managed macOS/X hacked version of LDAP?
    Try implementing that for 600 users. OpenLDAP is better and easier to manage on an enterprise scale.

  52. where the heck is SAS by frankcow · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    SAS should be on that list for sure. Maybe they should've co-sponsored it...

  53. In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    50 companies make the Asia Top Tech 50 list.

    1. Re:In other news... by chawly · · Score: 1

      Which number were you looking for ? 49? 51? 501 and a half? Excuse me, but I don't understand your post.

      --
      How many beans make five, anyhow ? ... Charles Walmsley
  54. Seconded... by Junta · · Score: 1

    Every dealing I have with them is a strange mixture of trying to be too cutting edge at times, and at others so terrified of even straightforward patches required to avoid panics. In general when I deal with them, I invariably get someone who has a huge ego that exceeds their ability. The fact I've had so many dealings with them speaks volumes on the QA issues. Once I did deal with some RedHat folks in the UK, and they seemed more level headed than the US RedHat folks, admittedly.

    By far, I have had immense success dealing with and deploying SuSE. I haven't had to actually deal with them since the Novell buyout, but at least back then the support and path to someone appropriately competent was reasonable. They were prepared to take very sane courses of action to get problem resolution. They never seemed too paranoid of patches nor did they try to push things too far feature-wise. These occurances where I have to deal with them are once in a blue moon, which speaks highly of their support (use RHEL4 and SLES9 in various capacities to this day, but have only had to deal with RedHat support despite heavy SLES usage).

    On a technical and support level in an enterprise, SuSE by far has my recommendation.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  55. Re:Redhat Did a lot to screw Linux credability too by RunzWithScissors · · Score: 2, Insightful

    LMFAO Of course RHEL 2.1 AS has no LVM support, it was created four friggin years ago! And lets face it LVM on Linux back then was not what you would call, um, stable or reliable. But lets also look at what Red Hat has done with RHEL 2.1 AS. They've published updated and bug fixes over the last four years, and another 3 years into the future. It's still a reliable platform, even if it is no longer a modern one. And seriously, holding Red Hat accountable for what Oracle or some SAN provider is doing is ludacris. Like they have any control over the Oracle sourcecode or QA at another corporation, or licensing agreements offered by other companies on unrelated add-on products. There's a reason Oracle installs itself in /opt. I mean, That's like saying that Fedora sucks because your Nvidia graphics card doesn't work right, *mutters* with the binary drivers I downloaded from Nvidia and have nothing to do with Red Hat nor included in any part with the Red Hat distribution... You want to talk about hinky agreements, how about the fact that SUN sales reps got kickbacks from Oracle based on the number of per CPU Oracle licenses they sold! Like that didn't encourage the sales people to tell the customer they need an extra 2 CPUs to really do the Oracle operations they wanted. I'm sure Red Hat has problems, like every other company, but dinging them because of crap that other companies do is silly. -Runz

  56. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by RunzWithScissors · · Score: 1

    Just as a note...

    The reason Red Hat does not offer RHEL4 DVDs as a download from Red Hat Network is that there is a two Gigabyte download limit for files in Apache. FYI

    -Runz

    P.S. Tried http://bugzilla.redhat.com/ lately? You can request features and submit bug reports for developers to work on. It is still open source, so if they don't move at a speed that is acceptable, you could always just suck it up and do it yourself....

  57. Lamer alert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Using "fscking" and "freaking" confirm that you are total wimp and wannabe sysadmin poseur. Learn how to use profanity like a real man - BOFH doesn't stand for "blessed operator for heaven".

    Also, what kind of "bofh" can't manage to build a webserver without having to place support calls? Support is for real problems, not your sissy crybaby complaints.

  58. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ever tried to browse to /proc with nautilus or konqeror ?

  59. you know redhat has made it by the_B0fh · · Score: 0

    You know RedHat has made it, when they have fan boys modding folks down for criticizing it.

    And I love the fedora fan boys who can't tell the difference between a guinea pig and an enterprise solution.

    Remember, folks, RedHat (the company) is NOT fedora, and fedora is NOT RedHat. And when folks complain about the lousy support that RedHat has, they are NOT interested in how good or bad fedora is. They are talking about the LACK of a quality product from RedHat.

    1. Re:you know redhat has made it by pembo13 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Critizing is one thing, but have you read some of the brain dead comments comming out? What exactly is the point of your post?

      --
      "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
  60. I can understand your opinion by jd · · Score: 1
    I can't say I've ever been impressed by Red Hat's support or response time. I am also not confident in the use of Red Hat in an enterprise environment, but that is because of the point I mentioned before of failing to monitor dependencies correctly. It is NOT because there is anything inherently poor in their business model, although I have never been overly impressed by that, either.


    Gentoo is OK, but I've broken the ebuild system many times because (again) dependency checking on the part of the distro maintainers is not what it should or could me. OpenBSD is OK too, but I'd personally use MirBSD for most things. There is a risk, when using untested packages with an OS that is secure through audits, of opening security holes through unintentional interactions. I don't know how much additional checking MirBSD gets to keep the risks down, but because it is designed to be more extensive than OpenBSD - while being built on the same basic codebase - it could be more secure than OpenBSD in cases where you need those extensions.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  61. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by salimma · · Score: 1

    apt still does not handle multilib install, even when using RPM as the package format - on x86-64, with yum you can have glib2.i386 and glib2.x86-64 installed side-by-side, so you can run 32-bit apps (like OpenOffice) without resorting to having a parallel chroot install, or a custom-packaged OOo RPM (which is how Ubuntu does it)

    --
    Michel
    Fedora Project Contribut
  62. Let the RedHat Trolls come out of the woodwork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whether slashdotters like Redhat or not is a moot point.

    The fact that a Linux company is actually making a name for itself is cause enough to celebrate.

    I use CentOS (based upon freely available RedHat sources) for ALL my servers and CentOS is more rock solid and as easy to administer as any M$ server boxen.

    I have read the shrilling complaints ad nauseum of how Redhat has fubar'd this or that because of their package management - reality is, they are making money with their business model and there is nothing wrong with making money in this highly competitive industry...

    I for one see this as a positive thing for my business - I will reap the benefits of their work with the constant SRPMS that I can keep my servers up to date via YUM...

    And yes, I welcome with open arms the Red Fedora wearing overlords

    Ok, you can move along now, nothing else to see here...

  63. Maybe I regret selling... by paj1234 · · Score: 1

    ...my USD 200 worth of shares in 2001, when they were worth about 6 USD each. I bought through http://www.sharepeople.co.uk/ but sold because they shares were not going anywhere and the Sharepeople fees were chewing the money at an alarming rate.

    Now I wonder if I should've been bolder. I could have spent USD 5,000 on RHAT shares instead of leaving the money in my savings account in the bank. Now the shares are worth USD 22 the result would be USD 18,000! Even if Sharepeople had taken 1,000 dollars in fees in that time, it would still be 17,000 USD now...

  64. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You obviously do not have experience with REDCRAP, but is just a dumb pawn for the fedora crap. If I pay for something, I expect it to work as advertized, even though this is software we are talking about.

    Yawn. I'm glad I just got back from the bar and it's a slow evening. But you're right - I have no experience with Red Hat products at all. *chortle*

    I have an RHCE certification and two of five endorsment exams for RHCA - I obviously never touched RHEL.

    This is NOT about FOSS. This is about REDCRAP's support, which is allegedly what I get, when I pay them shitloads of money for free crap. Further more, if you have had some reading comprehension, you will note that I stated that support had already cnfirmed the bug as something that exists - if it's a known issue, and they want to know more about how it behaves, then they should fscking test it out, and then only go bother the customers.

    OK. One more time: Acknowledging an issue != having an environment which easily reproduces it. If someone posts a dmesg with a clear BUG() invocation in it, I can see that's a bug.

    It does not mean I can easily reproduce it. The two are orthogonal.

    If you want your vendor to waste it's time & resources doing things you could do in half the time, go right ahead and find one who is happy to do so.

    Hmm, valid point, I didn't check to see if fdisk actually exist. But neither did support mention this - and the question has been posed to them for more than 2 days now.

    Funny, because it's mentioned in the RHEL Installation Guide in section 4.1.1, and was taught as part of the RHCE when I sat it.

    Here's a link.

    You have not had a chance to install REDCRAP lately have you? I'm not talking bout the pansy ass fedora crap, I'm talking about RHEL 4. *you* show me an install that's under 800Megs.

    Friend, I assure you that isn't true. This week alone, I have installed over 30 systems running RHEL, including satellite systems.

    A trivial bit of shell work shows us:

    rpm -q -g "System Environment/Base" --queryformat "%{SIZE}\n" > packages.tmp
    rpm -q -g "System Environment/Daemons" --queryformat "%{SIZE}\n" >> packages.tmp
    echo $[`awk 'BEGIN{ size = 0; } { size +=$1; } END{ print size; }' packages.tmp` / 1024**2]
    217

    That's in MiB - 217MiB for Base + Daemons. That's not the minimal install size btw, simply the size of those groups. Keep doing that for any groups you want included, and unless you're on crack, you can fit it in well under the 1 GiB mark.

    If you have any sense, you'll build a stripped down ISO with just the packages you need (figured that out yet?), and your kickstarts all set and ready to go.

    There are instructions for that here among other places.

    Some people obviously like to hear the sound of their own voices. Tell you what, I'll make it easy on you. Go install RHEL4 under 500 megs, with a working apache server, only using standard RHEL4 rpms.

    Oh, so it's 500MiB now? It was 800 a paragraph ago, and 1GiB in your original post.

    Please stop moving the goalposts.

    And btw, how will adding to the standard RHEL4 rpms *reduce* your installed size?

    *and accidentally takes off his own hand*

    Thanks for the concern, but I'm still typing for the moment.

    Oh, you mean they were not telling me the truth? They sold me a defective product?! They lied about a working smp kernel? OK, even if I grant you that they did not have a working smp kernel - WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU INCLUDE IT ON THE FUCKING CD THEN?!

    Oh, how

  65. No, in my case it's investment. by Vengeance · · Score: 1

    I didn't go into this looking for 6 hour or 6 month gains, and I won't be selling my shares any time soon, barring some downturn in business that causes me to reevaluate. I'm not much of a speculator or trader. I tend to buy and hold long-term. That's why I specifically worded my post to indicate a growth in equity, and not in dollars.

    --
    It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
  66. funny... by pyrrho · · Score: 1

    ... but it's actually easier to lose money.

    --

    -pyrrho

  67. Mod parent up by SocietyoftheFist · · Score: 1

    Very good post Jokkey

  68. Re:Redhat Did a lot to screw Linux credability too by MrJerryNormandinSir · · Score: 1

    LVM existed 4 years ago. I used it. Remember the IBM/SUSE relationship in 2001??? Well IBM ported
    LVM to Linux and it was included in SUSE since version 6.3! That's over 4 years ago. Technically
    SUSE was more advanced than RedHat. The only thing Redhat was good generating money from the blood and sweat of open source developers. SUSE innovated.

    The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) - Part 1

    Michael Hasenstein

    This document describes the LVM in SUSE LINUX. It is freely distributable as long as it remains unchanged. The original version of this document (PDF) can be obtained at http://www.suse.com/oracle/.

    The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) - Part 1

    Michael Hasenstein

    This document describes the LVM in SUSE LINUX. It is freely distributable as long as it remains unchanged. The original version of this document (PDF) can be obtained at http://www.suse.com/oracle/.

    SUSE has included a Logical Volume Manager since SUSE LINUX 6.3. The LVM in SUSE LINUX is Heinz Mauelshagen's implementation, the homepage is now available at http://www.sistina.com/lvm/.

    SUSE Inc. 2001
    Michael Hasenstein

    Like I said, I've been active in the Linux Community since 1992.

  69. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by the_B0fh · · Score: 0

    I have an RHCE certification and two of five endorsment exams for RHCA - I obviously never touched RHEL.

    And this is different from the legions of mcse fanboys how?

    This is NOT about FOSS. This is about REDCRAP's support, which is allegedly what I get, when I pay them shitloads of money for free crap. Further more, if you have had some reading comprehension, you will note that I stated that support had already cnfirmed the bug as something that exists - if it's a known issue, and they want to know more about how it behaves, then they should fscking test it out, and then only go bother the customers.

    OK. One more time: Acknowledging an issue != having an environment which easily reproduces it. If someone posts a dmesg with a clear BUG() invocation in it, I can see that's a bug.

    It does not mean I can easily reproduce it. The two are orthogonal.

    So, without know what was the bug I was bitching about, you can instantly determine that support can't replicate it?

    Hmm, valid point, I didn't check to see if fdisk actually exist. But neither did support mention this - and the question has been posed to them for more than 2 days now.

    Funny, because it's mentioned in the RHEL Installation Guide in section 4.1.1, and was taught as part of the RHCE when I sat it.

    Here's a link.

    Which further shows how much REDCRAP's support sucks, if they can't answer such a simple question.

    That's in MiB - 217MiB for Base + Daemons. That's not the minimal install size btw, simply the size of those groups. Keep doing that for any groups you want included, and unless you're on crack, you can fit it in well under the 1 GiB mark.

    So, why does a minimal install, WITHOUT even X, give me this:

    [the_B0fh@REDCRAP ~]$ df -h

    /dev/sda3 132G 940M 125G 1% /

    I can only guess that either you use non-RedHat rpms, or the EMT64 install is *significantly* different from the x86 installs.

    If you have any sense, you'll build a stripped down ISO with just the packages you need (figured that out yet?), and your kickstarts all set and ready to go.

    If I had any sense, I would do a minimal install of openbsd. Too bad I'm not allowed to have sense at work.

    Some people obviously like to hear the sound of their own voices. Tell you what, I'll make it easy on you. Go install RHEL4 under 500 megs, with a working apache server, only using standard RHEL4 rpms.

    Oh, so it's 500MiB now? It was 800 a paragraph ago, and 1GiB in your original post.

    Please stop moving the goalposts.

    *shrug* The way I see it, I know a minimal install is 900+megs, so, if I let ask you to do a 500meg, that can't be done. But if you _can_ do it, that's a net win for me anyway.

    The SMP kernel has *NOTHING* to do with dual-core support. It existed years before dual core was even thought of for x86 family CPUs.

    You know, this explanation actually makes sense. I've no idea if it's true or not (like the other guy who claimed that apache won't support > 2G, sounded good, turns out to be false, because you _can_ download fedora DVD isos), will have to double check.

    If you're an enterprise customer, you should know that early adopters shoulder the pain that latecomers don't even see.

    This is very true. Unfortunately, I'm only allowed one vendor, and this vendor refreshed their opteron hardware one month right before I put my orders through. Hence my pain. There are a number of issues I had that I attributed to the hardware vendor and did not include in my earlier rant.

    Oh, and btw, I looked, and Red Hat introduced dual core

  70. How about bittorent? by MrJerryNormandinSir · · Score: 1

    last time I check 2GB is not a problem for bittorent!

  71. Lamer alert! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The "BOFH" got beat down pretty bad. Better luck next time, lamer!

  72. Re:Redhat Did a lot to screw Linux credability too by baseballjones · · Score: 1

    so don't be pissed at red hat's product, be pissed at the "decision maker" in your company who decided to go with red hat without these features you so desperately need.

    --
    the sunshine bores the daylights out of me
  73. Re:Redhat Did a lot to screw Linux credability too by pembo13 · · Score: 1

    When RedHat's stock takes a nosedive, I'm sure you and your company will be among the first to put money into OSS to meet the void left by Redhat...right?

    --
    "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
  74. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by Evro · · Score: 1

    I have to say, we purchased RHEL 4 for our database machine, and when the performance of the new machine was 1/4 the performance of a machine with half the number of processors, we naturally wanted to speak to someone at Red Hat. After all, support was the only reason we went with RHEL over CentOS. Well after a lot of phone tag we finally scheduled a conference call with one of their engineers. We call them up and we're placed on the phone with a sales engineer who said he'd relay our questions to a real engineer, and suggested that we look for help in online resources. Really! Now, I can understand their not wanting to put a software engineer on the phone when he has better things to do, but when we ask to speak with a technical person, we want to speak with someone who can answer our questions. We don't need an intermediary to relay stuff. Anyway, after that we ditched RedHat and moved back to CentOS. With the support not there, there's really no reason to buy a RHEL license. It's sad, but if you're charging for support, you better make sure it's some damn good support. And yeah, we only had one license, like $1200 or something, but if we'd known we'd be getting such a low level of support we'd have not even spent that. Don't get me wrong, I think RHEL is a great product, but if you're charging for support, then that should be pretty good support.

    --
    rooooar
  75. Re:Apple is the future, though. RHAT remains niche by listen · · Score: 1

    Seems to work fine.

  76. Nice! by McPierce · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I just accepted today a position with them as a consultant. :)

    --
    Darryl L. Pierce "What do you care what people think, Mr. Feynman?"
  77. Profit?? by greenerhat · · Score: 1

    Not much profit, if you ask me. Redhat made $44.9 million in Net Income in its 2005 fiscal year. The year before $14.0, 2003 -6.6, 2002 -140(!!). In its history this company has cumulatively lost $174 million dollars!

    And they just announced last night that they are going to have to pay $20 million into this organization that is buying up patents to protect linux from lawsuits. Of course, from an accounting perspective that's an investment, not an expense. Considering there will be no return from this 'investment', maybe we should consider that it would wipe out half of last years profits if looked at as an expense.

  78. Re:Red Hat cosponsored the survey... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's different from MCSE "fanboys" as you say because I can do shit like this: here's df -h on a minimal RHEL4 install. Not a pre-defined package profile, but a customized kisckstart build (using entirely RHEL original packages):

    $ cat df-h.final
    Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
    72G 474M 68G 1% / /dev/sda1 99M 9.0M 85M 10% /boot
    none 1014M 0 1014M 0% /dev/shm

    Here's my package list:

    indexhtml-4-2 redhat-logos-1.1.25-1 setup-2.5.37-1.1 basesystem-8.0-4 tzdata-2004e-2 glibc-2.3.4-2 beecrypt-3.1.0-6 chkconfig-1.3.11.2-1 elfutils-libelf-0.97-5 expat-1.95.7-4 glib2-2.4.7-1 iputils-20020927-16 libacl-2.2.23-5 libselinux-1.19.1-7 checkpolicy-1.17.5-1 db4-4.2.52-7.1 libtermcap-2.0.8-39 mktemp-1.5-20 iproute-2.6.9-3 less-382-4 pcre-4.5-3 perl-Filter-1.30-6 psmisc-21.4-4 slang-1.4.9-8 usbutils-0.11-6.1 vim-minimal-6.3.035-3 file-4.10-2 cpio-2.5-7 ed-0.2-36 gawk-3.1.3-10.1 coreutils-5.2.1-31 grub-0.95-3.1 krb5-libs-1.3.4-9 openssl-0.9.7a-43.1 readline-4.3-13 pyxf86config-0.3.19-1 rpm-libs-4.3.3-7_nonptl shadow-utils-4.0.3-41.1 dbus-glib-0.22-11.EL sysklogd-1.4.1-26_EL cracklib-2.7-29 pam-0.77-65.1 policycoreutils-1.18.1-4 SysVinit-2.85-34 lvm2-2.00.31-1.0.RHEL4 hal-0.4.2-1.EL4 cyrus-sasl-2.1.19-5.EL4 kudzu-1.1.95.8-1 kernel-2.6.9-5.EL libuser-0.52.5-1 usermode-1.74-1 mailcap-2.1.17-1 hesiod-3.0.2-30 attr-2.4.16-3 libgpg-error-1.0-1 libjpeg-6b-33 lrzsz-0.12.20-19 mailx-8.1.1-33 bzip2-1.0.2-13 logrotate-3.7.1-2 rdate-1.4-2 schedutils-1.4.0-2 setuptool-1.17-2 symlinks-1.2-22 tcp_wrappers-7.6-37.2 tmpwatch-2.9.1-1 zip-2.3-27 binutils-2.15.92.0.2-10.EL4 gpm-1.20.1-66 groff-1.18.1.1-3 libtiff-3.6.1-7 libxslt-1.1.11-1 man-1.5o1-9 bind-libs-9.2.4-2 cups-libs-1.1.22-0.rc1.9 psacct-6.3.2-31 libxml2-python-2.6.16-6 rhnlib-1.8-6.p23 rpm-python-4.3.3-7_nonptl sysreport-1.3.13-1 time-1.7-25 wget-1.9.1-17 xmlsec1-openssl-1.2.6-3 pam_ccreds-1-3 dhclient-3.0.1-12_EL ipsec-tools-0.3.3-2.1 kernel-utils-2.4-13.1.48 iptstate-1.3-4 openssh-clients-3.9p1-8.RHEL4.1 pciutils-2.1.99.test8-3 portmap-4.0-63 vixie-cron-4.1-20_EL rhce-pubkey-7.0-1 screen-4.0.2-5 apr-util-0.9.4-17 httpd-suexec-2.0.52-9.ent hwdata-0.146.1.EL-1 libgcc-3.4.3-9.EL4 rootfiles-8-1 filesystem-2.3.0-1 termcap-5.4-3 glibc-common-2.3.4-2 audit-0.5-1 bzip2-libs-1.0.2-13 device-mapper-1.00.19-2 e2fsprogs-1.35-11.6.EL4 ethtool-1.8-4 gdbm-1.8.0-24 hdparm-5.7-2 libattr-2.4.16-3 libcap-1.10-20 libsepol-1.1.1-2 libstdc++-3.4.3-9.EL4 gmp-4.1.4-3 mingetty-1.07-3 bash-3.0-19.2 ncurses-5.4-13 net-tools-1.60-37 perl-5.8.5-12 popt-1.9.1-7_nonptl redhat-release-4ES-2 setserial-2.17-17 newt-0.51.6-5 hotplug-2004_04_01-7.2 zlib-1.2.1.2-1 info-4.7-5 diffutils-2.8.1-12 findutils-4.1.20-7 grep-2.5.1-31 ash-0.3.8-20 gzip-1.3.3-13 module-init-tools-3.1-0.pre5.3 procps-3.2.3-7EL python-2.3.4-14 rhpl-0.148.2-1 sed-4.1.2-4 dbus-0.22-11.EL MAKEDEV-3.15-2 rpm-4.3.3-7_nonptl tar-1.14-4 cracklib-dicts-2.7-29 setools-1.5.1-5 util-linux-2.12a-16.EL4.6 udev-039-10.8.EL4 initscripts-7.93.11.EL-1 cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.19-5.EL4 mkinitrd-4.1.18-2 openldap-2.2.13-2 passwd-0.68-10 selinux-policy-targeted-1.17.30-2.52.1 kbd-1.12-2 man-pages-1.67-3 eject-2.0.13-11 glib-1.2.10-15 acl-2.2.23-5 libgcrypt-1.2.0-3 libusb-0.1.8-3 lsof-4.72-1 crontabs-1.10-7 nc-1.10-22 pam_passwdqc-0.7.5-2 procmail-3.22-14 rsync-2.6.3-1 setarch-1.6-1 statserial-1.1-35 talk-0.17-26 unzip-5.51-7 elfutils-0.97-5 at-3.1.8-60 libpng-1.2.7-1 libxml2-2.6.16-6 logwatch-5.2.2-1 mgetty-1.1.31-2 pam_krb5-2.1.2-1 bc-1.06-17.1 gettext-0.14.1-13 pyOpenSSL-0.6-1.p23 tcsh-6.13-9 utempter-0.5.5-5 xmlsec1-1.2.6-3 sudo-1.6.7p5-30.1 cyrus-sasl-plain-2.1.19-5.EL4 iptables-1.2.11-3.1.RHEL4 gnupg-1.2.6-1 openssh-3.9p1-8.RHEL4.1 netdump-0.7.4-2 openssh-server-3.9p1-8.RHEL4.1 pcmcia-cs-3.2.7-1.14 nfs-utils-1.0.6-46 quota-3