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Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise?
Tony Mobily has written a thought-provoking editorial for Free Software Magazine that makes the bold prediction of Red Hat's eventual demise at the hands of Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu. Calling on memories of Red Hat alienating their desktop user base to focus on their corporate customers and making money, Mobily states that many of those alienated desktop users are also system administrators who now feel more comfortable with Ubuntu and will make the choice to use Ubuntu Server over Red Hat now and in the future.
I really don't see this happening. Red Hat has a good presence in the server market, where as Ubuntu doesn't have that yet. I know Ubuntu is the "in" thing right now, but I don't see it toppling other vendors with established business models.
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own!"
Feh. Lots of us abandoned Red Hat after the crappy RH9 and following carpet snatch. Red Hat didn't die then, and it isn't going to die now. Ubuntu's not going to change that any more than Gentoo did.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
One reason that Ubuntu will never be accepted: they don't offer the things that make beancounters sleep well at night. They don't have an "enterprise edition." They give it away for free - it can't be any good, right?
Ultimately, Red Hat targets corporate clients. Ubuntu doesn't. And it's not like that's bad!
I completely agree. I dumped Red Hat after Fedora Core 4. The worst mistake Red Hat made was to fork the distro into a "we don't eat our own dog food distro." Back in the day when Red Hat was free for download I would actually buy their distro to help support them. When they went the Fedora Core route I was disappointed to say the least. If Red Hat wants to survive the coming Ubuntu storm they need to go back to the way they were before. It's not what is, but what is perceived and by forking like they did they turned a lot of people off to even installing their distro.
Canonical has in no way contributed to the Linux movement as Red Hat.
Besides, it will take years for ubuntu to be certified for the enterprise environment.
Ubuntu is still small time in the "real world"
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
If it does die, it will reincarnate itself as a similar company with a different logo.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Stop the presses! :)
I was one of those disaffected desktop users, but I still use RHEL (er...actually CentOS) for server machines that do real work. If you don't need bleeding edge desktop gadgets, it's still OK for desktop use as well. Ragging on RedHat because they had the temerity to focus on the part of their business that generated profit for them seems a bit harsh. There's plenty of other distros to choose from, including Ubuntu, if you want to live in the fast lane.
Cheers,
What coporates want is support. If something breaks they want someone on the end of the phone that will fix it and stay there as long as needed. They don't want a mailing list where someone might reply. For the home user/semi-serious that is fine but if you have a system that is making a million an hour then you want to have the reassurance there is someone there that can help out if needed
Cheap UK and US VPS
I'd rather go for a distro that doesn't have quite such an aggressive turnover in major versions, or at least makes the upgrade less of a chore (apt dist-upgrade).
You mean like this?
The article itself is a joke, and does not actually detail any valid reasons about why Ubuntu will displace Redhat in the market. The 5th and 6th paragraphs are nothing more than "I want to brown-nose Mark Shuttleworth" crap that also does not feed the main argument of the commentary^H^H^H^H rant. THe last two paragraphs which barely have any meat on them are nothing more than rants not backed by any citations, evidence, deep analytical thought, etc. The crux of the article revolves around Redhat alienating their desktop "not paying a penny freeloaders", which is retarded because a) redhat's revenue shotup when they mandated fees and b) umm, whats Fedora again ?
While I commend Ubuntu and everyone else for their efforts on the desktop front I think it is very important to note that beating Redhat is going to require quite the effort, skill and resources. Redhat still commands other distros in the areas of Income, Innovations, and the holy-grail-of-almost-everything: Marketing. SUSE has been trying to beat Redhat for how hard and how long ?
(Maybe this company is trying for the "Dvorak-angle", which is to write something dumb and generate lots of attention to a whole lot of nothin')
I think that he is wrong about the corporate market. There is too much momentum there. The corporate market needs experts when they ask questions like, "I'm running a 400 server farm, fiber switched, ..." As long as Redhat provides that expertise to corporate users, they will keep selling. Where Ubuntu will gain share is in the small office and growing organization markets, where choices have not yet been made, are made by newer system admins, or are strapped for cash.
well, I see some bashing coming, but what the hell.
this is precisely why I choose gentoo some years ago and never looked back. There is no such thing as a gentoo 'release', and the upgrade process is incremental. As long as you don't leave your system too long without catching up with the latest and greatest, it works like a charm.
You have to change your profile (easy) and gcc (kinda boring) once in a while, but thats about it.
``If a program can't rewrite its own code, what good is it?'' - Mel
Am I the only one that read that "The first place Red Hat would point the finger" ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
But certainly not very soon. Red Hat has a serious server presence, and even with its debacles in the home, it still has a sizable hold on the home-based Linux market. While Ubunut is climbing, it still has a long way to go... But maybe someday...
Student Manager - Take control of your education!
Look up Canonical. Mark Shuttleworth is trying to avoid exactly the pitfalls of Red Hat, and now Novell/SuSE, i.e. keeping a clear separation between the community developed Ubuntu environment and the paid-for support and corporate development side. In fact, this very clarity should help reassure corporate types.
Pining for the fjords
A company...making money and concentrating on things that make money??? My word, what is this world coming to? What happens when Ubuntu wants to make some serious money?
died, retired, along with their known OSs, or became managers.
and, in their place, enters a bunch of MSCE-types.
that can't be avoided, as the IT thing grows widespread, the average IQ of the involved with it drops drastically... The smart-to-dumb ratio of the general population is pretty low.
``If a program can't rewrite its own code, what good is it?'' - Mel
Ubuntu is very nice. But it's server edition doesn't have the sanction of the interest of the rest of the world. Indeed for better or worse, RH has the attention of many entities, ranging from Oracle to IBM.
And to say that Ubuntu's server must be excellent because its desktop-focused distros are is like saying that Ford's trucks must be great because their cars are cool. Outwardly, it would appear that could be the case, but in reality market forces are completely different in cars and truck markets, just like they are in server and desktop distribution.
Ubuntu has done a rational job (and still incomplete) of making a viable desktop-focused OS. Yes, admins use it. Yes, they tend to use in one place (desktop) what they know for another application-- the server. Yet Ubuntu isn't that far away from RH. And the number of admins using strictly Linux is still very small, although growing a bit each day.
Summary: the lines don't join together in the logic. Yes, Ubuntu is cool, but it in no way spells the end of RH and it's juvenile to think so.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
if you love open source, I don't think you wish goodbye for Red Hat!
I'm using Ubuntu for desktop, Red Hat for server and Novell for workstation (collaboration), that the way they fits, Ubuntu being good for Desktop means only its good for desktop
plus! no boss will risk running a system no one certified to administrate
"Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
... is they live in a dream world.
I wonder when the last time was that any company got Microsoft to fix *any* bug they found in a released version of software?
It seems like even giants of industry can't get them to fix holes any faster than peons.
The Ubuntu "server" install is pretty much the same as a Debian base install. It drops you to a command prompt and you just apt-get what you want from there. It doesn't hold your hand any more than any other distro. Anyway, just because things are complex doesn't mean they have to be painful.
I look after a bunch of RHEL servers and workstations, and I would much rather have a Debian based distro instead. Ubuntu 6.06 as a server, with its Long Term Support, looks pretty attractive to me. I'll have to start dropping some hints.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
As both a bean counter and a programmer (yes, I've bother with a degree in each), I call bullshit.
/. responses are knee-jerk. "OH EM GEE, teh Red Hat is making teh profitz!!!111!one". Just because they've grown into an OSS company that wants to make it their living (aka get paid to do the work and have others paid to work for them), why should they be demonized? Wouldn't you want to work on your pet project all day and get paid for it (if you don't already)? What if you could also make a share of profits too? Can you say right here, right now, that you wouldn't do that?
As many have mentioned, a support base is a key demand for a for-profit company. Why is it wrong to want help to keep your systems up, it pays the bills for other techs too. Reliability in your IT infrastructure keeps up productivity, which in turn makes for revenues. So would you as the sysadmin rather use Red Hat and call them when something goes wrong (which you can tell upper management), or rather have to hope for a reply from the community or fix it yourself, all the while being hounded by upper management because it's not fixed and the company is loosing money?
Secondly, these
I'm not saying their product hasn't gone downhill. I stopped using Red Hat shortly after Fedora. If they don't improve their product, then something will replace it down the road. But what will? No one knows, but I'm doubting Ubuntu, at least at the moment.
On a side note, has anyone managed to successfully install Ubuntu on a Toshiba M70 Satellite?
Yes. I'm using Ubuntu on that exact laptop right now. I had no problems, but I installed with an early Ubuntu release candidate back in April.
Have you tried the text based installer?
I left Red Hat after RH 8. Every so often I download the latest FC and load it up, but with all the tiny issues I have, I find myself restoring Slackware...
They aimed at the desktop, and yes, they were the first to do a real good desktop linux distribution, but I fear they are heading in the wrong direction. They should concetrate on what made them great: the desktop. Unfortunately, I've often read that they don't want to include some apps that are really pure and nice desktop apps, like F-Spot, Helix Banshee, Beagle and Tomboy in their standard CD-based distribution. This is because of capacity problems. If this is really true, this may lead to an even smaller niche -> no real desktop focus plus no real enterprise focus.
It reminds me of this thread on elderscrolls.com where a mod creator was trying to improve the sounds of the game. Someone suggested using Creative Commons material for the thunder sound, from one of several CC catalogs. The mod creator wasn't interested at all at first, saying something along the lines of "Well, in my experience most of the free stuff is crap."
So here you have a modder creating a free mod for a game, who thinks his sounds are superior to the ones that came with the $50 game, saying that most free stuff is crap.
I wonder where people get so ingrained in thinking that free stuff is crap. From Windows shareware/demos? From their email spam offers?
Why do so many people say that Ubuntu's not acceptable to enterprise because it doesn't have support, there's no one to blame, etc? Has no one ever gone to ubuntu.com and seen that big friggin' link at the top of the front page, which says "support"?
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid
Alternatively, has anyone ever actually used RedHat support? *I* wasn't impressed...
Is it me or are there several stories a day anymore on "the end" of what is obvously a well established, entrenched, and supported technology? It seems very short-sighted for such technologically driven people. As fast as things do move in this field, established technologies don't disappear. Next we'll start believing Hard Disks can't get any bigger, geekiness is hip, and that we won't find any more use for a faster processor.
Eh, personally I pretty exclusively use CentOS for my Linux server needs, but Ubuntu would certainly be me desktop of choice these days (if I didn't have powerbook). Either way, yes, Redhat screwed up in my book and it does look like they will suffer for it.
Of course if Redhat goes down, CentOS goes with it. No big deal, OpenSolaris is looking quite nice these days and there is always Debian/Ubuntu
Finkployd
One advantage Fedora has over Ubuntu is that Fedora releases a multi-disk set of packages. I work with computers that can't connect to the Internet, and I've found that the Fedora CDs almost always have all the packages I need. That's a huge benefit for those computers.
I guess I could be saved by utility that analysis the entire set of packages I'd need in order to install a given package on my computer. If I had a utility like that, I could walk over to an Internet-connected computer, download those packages onto a CD-R, and then install them on the computer that can't connect to the Internet. Or.... Ubuntu could start putting together CD/DVD sets that contained a larger fraction of popular packages than they can fit on one CD. Either development would let me kick Fedora out of the picture.
...at least not real soon.
My company is a Dell shop. Dell supports Red Hat Enterprise products. End of story.
I do use Gentoo in a non-critical, monitoring role, but wouldn't dream of putting it into the core production group. Anyone who has dealt with a Dell PERC driver probably understands why.
Interesting idea, but the wrong target. Red Hat have spent years and much skill building up their strong position in the enterprise and no other Linux outfit is likely to be dislodging them any time soon.
Much more vulnerable are Novell/SuSE and their rather hamfisted "me too" strategies and lesser distros like Mandriva. Those are the ones Ubuntu is likely to take market share from. SuSE could be especially vulnerable since their OpenSuSE "community" distro is arguably just a corporate sham with very little of a true community about it.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
and I might agree. For the past 3 years, RedHat's activities have aroused quite a lot of suspicion and consternation. When they had the Desktop market ready for the taking (specially after Lindows aka Linspire bailed out, again suspiciously), RedHat went in for some shady dealings with SCO and generally fizzled out from the Desktop and Home user segment.
Ubuntu has taken these segments by storm, they have drivers for most Big Brand PCs that come with the Built For Windows crap sticker. The laptop segment, which has grown faster than desktops, is again well-served by Ubuntu, and RedHat just doesn't have any mindshare / marketshare on laptops.
Microsoft... well, they seem totally confused with laptops since 2000. The Tablet PC was botched... so many broken standards and half-assed attempts later, nobody seems to know or care what MS intends to do with these things, come Vista. How many laptops are gonna have 128MB VRAM or 2GB RAM on the motherboard? My guess is less than 10% of the market.
While RedHat has carved out it's own space in the server segment and has cut off Microsoft's top-end, Ubuntu has encroached on the lower end Desktops and the Laptops segments. With Vista's hardware specs (let alone drivers) still unknown, with about 6 months left... lack of clarity on certified Vista drivers etc., I think Microsoft has more reasons for worry than RedHat.
My $0.02, of course!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Did anyone actually find a defense of his central argument in that "editorial?" All I saw was a bunch of Mark Shuttleworth cheerleading. Now, here's why he is wrong:
1) RedHat is a large Linux vendor and gives business people someone to deal with reliably.
2) RedHat has an entrenched userbase.
3) RedHat Enterprise Linux is a good distribution in its own right.
4) RedHat has great support from "enterprise vendors" such as Oracle.
RedHat is threatened, but it's manageable. It's the sort of competition that will make them better, not threaten their ability to survive and thrive.
I've used Ubuntu and think it's easy to use and all-around great. That said, I use Redhat and Fedora distributions extensively. I like the amount of big-picture experimentation, cutting-edge tools/libraries, and directly funded improvements (everything from the kernel to eclipse) that make it into the Fedora releases, and I like the known quantity, high-end hardware support, and commitment to long-term maintenance of the Redhat releases.
Friendly rivalries should stay friendly, especially when core foundations of the free software development model are under attack from government mandated and enforced DRM in hardware, extortion threats to the north american internet infrastructure, and increasing attempts to tie popular hardware APIs to closed platforms.
How do you get to the text-based installer? It boots graphically, and I couldn't find any option to install text-based.
Note to self: Make a funny sig.
You'll want to download the "Alternate Install CD" instead of the "Desktop CD"
The low end always wins (eventually)
PCs (nearly) killed mainframes. Windows nearly killed unix, until free unix came along. Linux is eating into windows server. Ubuntu is eating into Red Hat.
Eventually the mass market product overruns the corporate product, but it takes a lot of time.
Ubuntu is better than Fedora in Desktop Market? People keep saying, ubuntu is cool, but I really don't see why it is? To me it is torture. Worse than Fedora on default fonts selection, official repositories do not have recent versions of software. Fedora do not have meaningless patches for should be default and consistent interfaces (like nautilus, add panel dialog etc.) It's way easier to find rpm of a release than .deb version. Also what's the point of having something installed and waiting hours for internet download time, instead of downloading a DVD while you were sleeping, and get everything at once.
For me ubuntu is no more than a buzz word, which uses Debian as a source of fame.
1) Create Linux Distribution ...
2) Gather Community
3) Create Server Version
4) Slashvertise with 'Other Distros Will Die' Prophecy
5)
6) Profit!
Writers call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. For those unaware of the term, it means that if the prophecy had not been spoken, it wouldn't have happened. But the very act of speaking the prophecy sets into motion a chain of events that will eventually cause the prophecy to come true.
I was planning to switch my (messed up) Slackware server to Ubuntu server a while back, but I got lazy. This made me remember that, and got me a little hyped on it again. Until I realized that it was simply a slashvertisement. (Yes, for a free product. Slashdot has sunk low this time.) My fever has abated, but I will still probably work on that tonight.
I noticed ubuntu.com/server wasn't coming up... I'm guessing their own server didn't survive.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I've been using the distro for roughly a month now and I have been so completely satisfied with it. So satisfied in fact, I've essentially parked my powerbook for other things like project usage. My Ubuntu equipped Thinkpad T40 keeps me happy. Full hardware detection at boot, sound, wireless, etc, all the critical functions of the machine were recognised and are functioning very very well.
I starting using Redhat back in the 5.1 days (circa 98-99) and then on to 6.1 Milestone release when it came out. By the time 7.1-3 hit the streets for RH, I was convinced no other OpenSource OS could be considered even half the flagship that Redhat created. Then Everything changed with the release of 8.0. Some thing was missing: An essential 'hardcore' part of the OS that kept a lot of us coming back for more at each release. I soon grew tired of Keverything KredHat Khad to Koffer.
A few years, have gone by and in order to stay up on Linux, I had switched to Mandrake simply because of the widespread use of NDISWrapper: The wireless detecion and driver usage that uses window drivers for wirelss function on many laptops. Yet, in the midst of of this, a large part of mandrakeH^H^Hiva has left a person wanting more from an Open Source Distro.
In walks Ubuntu. From the second I booted the 'Live-Install' cd, I knew this distro could set itself apart from every thing else out there in so many ways. From Synaptic Package Manager, to Automatix, to the simple fact that I the Cisco card in this Thinkpad T40 was recognised immediately at boot and was ready for internet access as soon as the desktop loaded. That's classy. Oh, and did I mention, the ubuntu theme had been playing the entire time, just to let me know we had sound support form the very beginning. Thanks guys!
Since my first install on an HP nx6110, I have propegated the Ubuntu distro across 5-6 other laptops. All of them, minus the exception of some failed audio hardware on one machine, are functioning and functioning well with wireless, all keyboard, and mouse function, are working niceley. Each of them keeps me fully informed about recent updates, and oh, don't even get me started on how much I like the Advanced area of the Package Manager. Every thing a person could ever want is found in the 18,000+ packages available. Some one shut me up now, I keep gushing over Ubuntu!!!!
Ubuntu wins. No arguments.
I went through the exercise to register at freesoftwaremagazine.com to download their magazine...and nothing. No email. Then I remembered I've tried this before. Very frustrating. Their registration system is broken.
Coming at this from a SysAdmin-who's-never-quite-made-the-switch point of view, there are a lot of us that haven't taken the Linux plunge yet. We fiddle with it and have installed Linux a few times to see what the hype is all about, but at the end of the day we work in a MS World and so we haven't "crossed over" yet. But we know we have to and so we're going to find the easiest, most powerful, and troublefree distro we can find. I recently downloaded Ubuntu 6.06 at the behest of a friend just to see what it looked like and liked it overall. I might even install it and play around with it, which is saying something because I've seen tons of distros that haven't really caught my fancy.
It's a brilliant strategy...one that big bad Microsoft has known for years. Get them hooked on the desktop and they'll go for the server. Ubuntu is just starting out and has nowhere the time in game that Red Hat has, and as such doesn't pose as large a risk as the article might have us believe. But still...it's a deadly strategy they're using and Red Hat (among others) would be wise to take note.
Considering that I used to load red hat on everything and now dapper since I have gotten so accustomed to it I would say this is absolutely correct. Still have to run red hat on our oracle systems and such but the article is dead on the money. It is not going to happen over night but
it is happening already.
Got Code?
Use the Smart Package Manager. Better than apt, supports APT, YUM, RPM dumps, YAST, Red Carpet, yadda yadda. All kinds of package management schemes. Integrates them all, handles complex setups better than APT, and can easily be used to upgrade distributions.
Use SMART. It works great.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Usually the problem with Ubuntu on labtops it the framebuffer. Try to remove the "quiet slash" from the boot options in grub. /boot/grub/menu.lst after installation.
Do it manually during installation, and edit
Once installed, update the system, and you will most likely be able to reenable frambuffer bootup if you like.
"to focus on their corporate customers and making money"
No! You don't say! Someone trying to make money??? How dare they!
Next you're going to tell me how they're trying to find food for their families. The fiends!
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Install from the "Alternate CD" to get text based install, and disable ACPI and APIC (Should be help in the options menu for those, I forget what they are) just in case.
/dev/hdc" to disable dma on your cdrom if you have lots of read errors in your dmesg.
You may have to go to a console and do "hdparm -d 0
They have a point here. For example, my main group of sys-admin friends turned to ubuntu after a failure with the recent Fedoras. Ubuntu works pretty fine (referring to the package administration system, as the rest is pretty the same in most distros). RedHat seems trying to beta test with desktop users using Fedora, and showing up some problems and never fixing them. Ubuntu doesnt have that kind of issues... and they are not beta testing with our productin systems.
For one I doubt that a project that has the financial backing of a one man band will knock RH from its throne. Even if the man made $500M (minus the considerable cost of his little trip into space). RH has ten digit assets, a ton of A list partners and it actually has solutions besides the OS. The Enterprise needs solutions. A new kid on the block with a DVD will not cut it with the Global 2000. You need the building blocks that help these players to achieve their objectives. That means professional services, training, 24/7 support, certified hardware and, again, partners that they need to integrate these pretty complex solutions.
Several of Tony's arguments seem to be creative at best and lack substance. Did the packaged version of RH flop? Looking at RH today I tend to disagree as their packaged offering was the precursor of the succesfull business model they now have. It's called Evolution. You try something, shave and mold and hopefully get to a point where it works better. And it seems RH got it right given the fact that they are the leading vendor in this space. Were they too expensive? Well, if something like $100 for a packaged version is too much for a company I think that company should reevaluate their existence. According to Tony the Fedora split was "underfunded and the "community involvement" was patchy and disorganised". Besides the fact that any new project will always have growing pains, in the end it's the result that counts. Maybe Tony should install FC5, subscribe to the mailing lists and browse the ton of helpful websites focused on FC. I did and I see a vibrant community that is delivering a distro that gets better all the time. So in what way did RH "abandoned its desktop audience, to focus on the more lucrative corporate market"? What do you call the free Fedora Core distribution? What do you call the commercial desktop solution that RH offers? Seems they have been successful in sponsoring and creating solutions that will cater to more instead of less.
Tony continues to be creative with his statement that Shuttleworth "divert tons, and tons, and tons of GNU/Linux users away from Red Hat Linux, and towards Ubuntu Linux". Looking at RH's latest quarterly results I don't see them loosing "tons and tons of GNU/Linux users" to Ubuntu. Googling around I found no supporting information about the mass defection of RH customers to Ubuntu like Tony suggests.
All in all Tony has not presented a single fact to support his statements. He only makes bold claims which border on unsubstantiated RH/FC trashing. His feable attempt at writing an "editorial" should be taken with a rock of salt of similar size used for Maureen O'Gara's poo.
I work directly for the CFO.
Me: "I'm thinking of setting up a Linux server for [insert reason here]. RedHat has been the corporate standard, but Ubuntu has better [insert reason here]."
CFO: "Well. (sips coffee, still looking at his computer screen) RedHat I've heard of. Ubuntu? Better stick to Red Hat."
Me: "But Ubuntu has better [insert reason here]."
CFO: "RedHat will be around next year. If you're not around next year, we'll have to find a replacement IT guy that can support Ubuntu. Better stick to RedHat."
He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. -- The Sphinx, Mystery Men
System administrators are going to do what is right for the company, not what is right for the open source community. In the end, Red Hat and/or SLES have proven themselves to be viable server solutions in a wide vareity of environments. The day an administrator switches his servers over to a "less supported" solution, is the day that he adds monster.com to his delicious account. In the end it comes down to suppport and marktet penetration... =>Hexzero
Even with the recent "logng term support" release of Ubuntu, the support cycle is only five years on the server, and nowhere on their website (unless I missed it) do they define what they mean by "support"; i.e. are they going to add support for new hardware during the lifecycle, or is it strictly security updates. Red Hat has a well-defined seven year product lifecycle.
Nothing against Ubuntu. I'm typing on a machine running it now, but I don't forsee switching allegiance from Red Hat Enterprise or CentOS for my servers anytime soon.
As in, all the tools I need. Not some, not most, all.
As in, the vendors who only reluctantly permitted me to move to RHEL 3 from RedHat 8.0 last fucking year.
I strongly suspect that no one is holding their breath on any of this.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
... i wanted to install a Linux Dist (coming from WinXP i didn't care whch one. maybe not gentoo :-)) on both my old desktop and my even older notebook. i hab problems with lots of dists: suse, fedora,... not one installation worked. but ubuntu not only runs on my desktop but on my notebook also! i think its great, even if i don't have lots of other dists to compare (except fedora, that i use now too)
This is a pretty good step-by-step guide to getting the non-free parts of Suse 10.1 working properly. http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7527984757. html
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Even if RH does lose some serious market share to Ubuntu ... so what? As long as there are a few distro's out there that comply with enough standards so that all the training and development that people have gone through are still valid, who cares if you use RH, Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, or whatever.
For the record, I use Slackware. I haven't touched RH since the days when they were trying to compete with windows 95. Trying so hard, in fact, that they kept mangling important libraries and generating the vast majority of the (few) bugs/security flaws that tarnished Linux' otherwise good name. I found it klunky and difficult to manage back then, and to this day, I still don't understand why RH chose to set things up the way they did. But to say it's going to die because of the latest fad in distro's is just silly.
Pretty myopic view there, muftak. Red Hat was popular because it was so widely available. By widely available, I mean to users who might've otherwise not heard of Linux (or Slackware, or Debian, or whatever). Red Hat makes money on corporate support, so it stands to reason that corporate users are interested in not only what they get in the box, but the support they receive from the vendor.
I'm one of those alienated system administrators. I've been working with Red Hat as my primary $WORK distribution since 1997. This year I started putting Ubuntu on servers and find it to be so much less hassle. Each Ubuntu server saves my employer probably thousands of dollars a year not just in licensing costs but TCO as a whole. And the sysadmin team here actually enjoys working with it rather than griping like "WTF did RHAT do it that way?!?"
Red Hat will still be king in some markets but Ubuntu is going to eat its lunch in the mainstream in the next few years if they don't make some major changes to their business model soon.
Oh, GOD.
Now I'll get EVEN MORE "omfg!!!!!!!!!!!1111one! What's this going to mean for using JBoss?
We should hide under a rock and never, ever look at OSS again!" class emails to deal with.
I love business undergrads...they always convienently forget important business theories and principles when it suits them...and then completely miss the point.
The point of the article is clear: Ubuntu will replace Red Hat in the server and desktop market because it is a BETTER product.
Economic Priciple: The 'better' 'cheaper' and 'most efficient' product will be chosen over a clunker.
Here is another economic principle: Free Ridership. Both Ubuntu Desktop and Server are FREE.
And another: Lots of money can be made by creating a value added service to a free/cheap product. (Eg. Tech Support...letting cattle graze on BLM land)
Your point: Switching infrastructure takes lots of effort.
My point: Its worth the effort to switch to Ubuntu at this point, given the drawbacks of RedHat, which I am not going to list here.
Where would Ubuntu be? Microsoft (MS seems to enter every conversation here on /. so I'll follow suit) has a war chest of money and they earn money, but they didnt' start that way. Ubuntu has a lot of money by way of a very wealthy individual. If he took his money elsewhere for whatever reason, what is Ubuntu's business model? Red Hat is earning money by way of their actions and they've been doing so for a long time now, relatively speaking. RedHat also has the experience, especially in the enterprise market. That isn't to say that Ubuntu couldn't but a company looking to transition from one platform to another, for example, generally chooses a company that has a proven track record.
I think I agree with others in previous threads that Ubuntu is a buzzword much like Gentoo and it'll take more than being a fresh name to unseat a stable company like RedHat. Further, how many of us switch distro's on the server side anyway? Has RedHat treated us poorly enough on that front to warrant a change? For those who are looking two switch, maybe a fresh company worth trying, but I don't think those of us who have already made a choice are that fickle.
i'd say is because of spam, or better said because of the trick-you-into culture that spam is a deployment of... 'not such thing as free' makes free a pretty scary word...
on Ubuntu, I won't be installing anything but CentOS and RedHat 4 on my servers. I installed Ubuntu on my brand new laptop and I run it on my desktop mind you.
Yes, IBM DB2, is certified to run on Ubuntu and IBM will support it. Same thing for MySQL but until something like Tivoli Storage Manager or WebSphere Application Server or BEA or any other host of products are certified and are listed as "supported configurations" by vendors, Ubuntu will only be for non-commerical applications in the corporate world.
Our model is RedHat for stuff that requires a support contract (WebSphere, TSM) and CentOS for development boxes or things like our Apache servers, CUPS servers and what not. It provides the same interface and knowledge as the RHEL stuff so there's no need to document something different.
I honestly think what's going to eat RHAT's lunch in the smaller markets is CentOS.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I am a linux SA for a fortune 250 company. We use RedHat on 500 servers, not cause I like that distrobution the most, but because its certified with our applications, jboss, oracle, webjet, etc. We can't do billion dollar database transactions and be SOX compliant with out being able to show certifications of applications. Thats just how it is folks
They're the new Sun anti-Christ-- RH is. It used to be Microsoft. But it's hard to sue an OSS maker.
Oops-- sorry, forgot about SCO.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I think he's doing something we see a lot on /.: extrapolating from a few data points (mostly self and friends) with the assumption that the rest of the market would behave as he would. I'd probably say the same if I were forced to make a prediction about the future most-popular home-use GNU/Linux distribution. But, thinking about it...
I'd say that Ubuntu is easier than Fedora Core for mainstream use because I've moved from FC to Ubuntu 5.10 and 6.06. But I don't know a huge amount about Shutteworth's plans to move Ubuntu into the enterprise: LTS with 6.06 and Ubuntu Server edition are moves in the right direction despite people chiming Debian-remnant horror that he might acutally make money from Linux, and maybe I don't read the right places where adverts for Ubuntu reach managerial people.
My conclusion, though, would be based on Red Hat apparently having better mind share in the business market and somewhere obvious for people to pay money for support. But I'd at least admit that it's speculation based upon hearsay.
a lovely generalization you've got here. I am running Debian on servers and desktops alike. I wonder where that puts me in you scheme of the world.
Calling on memories of Red Hat alienating their desktop user base to focus on their corporate customers and making money Damn those companies trying to make a profit. If we were all just willing to work for free, live in tents, not have children, and give up the whole eating thing this wouldn't be a problem. I don't think its fair to blast Redhat for trying to build a company (which takes money) and be successful.
There's IMO no question, Ubuntu will become the major distribution yet this will take some years. It's a slow process but IMO not reversible anymore. Ubuntu currently draws users from other distributions since as the article mentioned it, this distribution is done right!
I guess the first distribution which sees this loosing users by large numbers will be Debian. Ubuntu is simply far more convenient for the average user. Yet Debian might still stay alive through its vast developer community albeit its outcome isn't clear. RedHat and also Novell/Suse or similar distributions will notice a drop in ordinary users but the drop in corporate users will come far later. It takes some time until Ubuntu gets established in the corporate market. On the other side Ubuntu won't affect Gentoo or Slackware since their users aren't interested in convenient usable. In the end Ubuntu won't demise all others but it will finally become the major distribution.
Yet since Ubuntu has the power to draw users from other distributions the question arises if it also has the power to draw users from Microsoft Windows. I think not, at least not in large numbers. The problem is Ubuntu as a distribution is just one part in a desktop system. Ubuntu can only be as good as the Linux kernel is, as the current desktops and all the applications are. Yet I'm rather pessimistic about the quality especially of the application but also about the desktops.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Redhat's enterprise support is a joke, they will find any excuse to not "support your configuration".
When I call Novell, I talk to actual engineers who can help me, not some dipship $5.15/hr college student who is reading from a queue card.
Generally I agree that RedHat is a crappy product compared to other Linuxes like Ubuntu and Suse. The flip side is that with Novell i.e. Suse AFAIK you don't have a project like Centos, which is binary compatible with the RedHat ES/AS product but is free and you get patches. This can be an advantage if you want to create a test setup for a product has been certified for RedHat ES/AS but are on a shoestring budget and don't want the hassle of dealing with the issues that can arrise if you try to install that same prodcut on Fedora or Ubuntu. Oracle products are a case in point. Installations of Oracle Application server, Database... the list goes on... that go without a hitch on RedHat ES/AS and Centos can be problematic on Fedora. Pracitcally every manufacturer of commercial Linux software certifies his products to work with certain versions of RedHat ES/AS so it is hard to avoid using Red Hat unless you are willing to put in the extra time it takes to debug an installation of your RedHat certified Linux software on an uncertified Linux distro.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A few people have mentioned Red Hat's recent acquisition of jBoss, which I think is important. But something fewer people have mentioned is their certification program. The RHCE exam is a no-nonsense practical, and consistently rates highly in the marketplace: Cert Cities recently named it their number one cert for 2006.
Organizations which are paying the not insignificant cost of a RHEL subscription likely want to make sure that they're hiring people with some basic competencies to manage them. The RHCE cert at least provides that, probably better than any other certifications out there.
(Disclaimers - I recently became an RHCE, but the only Linux distro I'm currently running at home is Ubuntu.)
Red Hat isn't popular with corporate customers because the sysadmins like it and want to use it - if the sysadmins were choosing the operating systems, Red Hat would have been steamrolled out of existence by all of the Red Hat killer distros that have come and gone. Red Hat survives because they sell something that makes managers happy - not the guys in the trenches. Red Hat survives in the server room because it's a great compromise - you get to Run Linux, but still have all the commercial goodness that makes management happy.
You actually made the article's point. You don't use Redhat (CentOS != Redhat).
Anything is possible given time and money.
I don't begrudge Redhat their money, but I do think their market is harder than it used to be. I knew CentOS was a thread to their cash flow when my company started adopting it instead of Redhat Enterprise for our engineering machines. There will always be high rollers who want the full support package, but for non-mission critical applications, CentOS works fine and handles RHEL certified apps without issue. Redhat also ceeded the desktop (as several posts note) and left Fedora Core to hold it's own. So, they're losing the desktop space, and there's a non-support-paying alternative for the small-end corporate space - it'll be harder to grow like a mad fiend when your being pushed into more exclusive product spaces. I wish them luck, they've done much for the FOSS community in their years.
- Tash
Vrooomm....
For point of reference, I've been using Linux for almost ten years, and I have written (not just started and stopped) server software for both Linux and Windows.
I was pleasantly surprised by Ubuntu Server recently. After install, I went in to remove all those packages I was used to removing in Debian after install as part of the hardening process. No ports open. Nothing. Just a clean, working system: a blank slate.
All in all, it was a clean system. The items I couldn't remove due to dependencies were things like evms and lvm. For a server, I find that reasonable. Note, not that I couldn't remove them, just that I would be overriding the system recommendation. In other words, it made recommendations, but did not lock you in.
It has bugged me for years that Debian ships with an SMTP server (exim) even when I don't want or need one. Not a basic mail client. A full SMTP mail server. Maybe I'm just annoyed because I'm a Postfix man, but it has always bugged me that I have to install and configure a piece of software when I'm just going to have to remove it soon after.
And with the lack of cruft on install, Ubuntu Server boots fast. Really fast. When the system slows down during boot, you can't help but realize that it's your own fault, not the basic OS. Already a step up from Fedora and Debian in my book.
I used to think that Debian was only good for servers, and Ubuntu was only good for desktops. I'm changing my tune. Debian still sucks for desktops (it can be done, but it's not fun). I still admire the Debian team for what they've accomplished, and I know that Ubuntu was built upon the strong foundations created by Debian, but the child is quickly outdoing the parent.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
This whole discussion about whether Redhat will be unseated or not seems pretty US-centric. Is Redhat the most dominate linux server world-wide? Maybe it is, I don't know. However, I would expect, that in Germany, for instance, it wouldn't be, but I could be wrong.
I have no doubt that Redhat is the dominate linux server in the US and will be so for a very long time. However, that is also Microsoft's most secure installed base. What about all of the second-world and third-world countries that are now just joining the computer age? You hear a lot of news about linux being used on desktops in those countries, but it's other distros besides Redhat. It would seem logical, then, that the server distro would be different from Redhat, too.
We keep hearing how the linux market needs to consolidate from all these many distros. Well, in the business, world, it pretty much has. There are only a handful of distros that are considered business class, with Redhat, Suse and Ubuntu being in the top five (not that others can't/aren't usuable). The top business class distros need first and foremost a support infrastructure, either internally provided or through external partners (and not just from a user community). Redhat has IBM, Suse has Novell and Ubuntu has Canonical all of which are tier 1 support providers.
Anyway, my point is that if you are talking about the top of the heap of business class linux distros, there are really only a handful to choose from. As such, it wouldn't take much for Redhat to be replaced as the leader. Will that replacement be Ubuntu? Maybe, maybe not. Will it happen in the next year or two, probably not. Does it even matter? Definately not.
I can guarantee this. If any of the contenders of being the leader are focussed on unseating Redhat as their goal, instead of meeting their customer's needs and improving their distro, then they are sure to fail. Redhat got where they are by being the first one to really define and shape their distro to who they saw as their customer base. That's a sound business practice, open source or not.
Ubuntu seems to be doing the same thing, even if their view of their customer base is somewhat different than Redhat. If they are correct, then they will be successful, too, maybe even more so. Only time will tell.
It's not rocket science and usually works.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I haven't bothered to read the article because the misleading headline pissed me off too much.
Redhat lets me play MP3s out of the box, Ubuntu needs a funky update. I spent 3 hours and 2 reboots on a Live disc to figure that out.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
To the idea that Ubuntu will replace Red Hat I say Red Hat has a better name. So 'baloney!' is right. No suit would ever authorize the install of something with an anti-globalization-sounding name like Ubuntu (Well, okay, maybe in California...) What's next? A board meeting in a sweat lodge? Sheesh. Guy would get croooocified if anything went south. I personally am cool with the Ubuntu group hug thing. However, I use Vector Linux myself.
Ever wonder why Opera lost to Firefox? I mean, What is the cool factor of something named Opera? Even if it is a better browser.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
At least, not that way. I don't intend to start a religious war over distros but... I've tried Ubuntu and was not that impressed. I don't care for Gnome, and yes I know you can get Kbuntu with KDE instead. It also had problems running on my older test machine - couldn't get the video right and a couple of other minor issues. (Note, I was able to configure Knoppix properly on the same machine and Suse worked right off the CD.)
RH, in my humble opinion, in going after corporate installs, is doing us all a favor. It is helping to "legitimize" Linux as more than just a hacker/hobbiest toy. It is hard to fault them for picking a market segment and going after it, supporting it. I think that is better than trying to "focus across the board" which really is no focus at all.
I agree that RH will probably suffer on the desktop merely because some of the other distros are more oriented towards easier user installs, administration, and desktop use. But from my experience, it won't be Ubuntu they'll lose share to. I believe it'll be something like Knoppix (which worked better for me) or Suse, which is corporate backed and very slick on the desktop. I actually run Suse, Knoppix, and RH at home on various machines. Although, maybe I am an example of what the author is talking about. I do intend to put Suse on the machine currently running RH FC2... Then I'll just be a two distro house...
--- Just another Code-Monkey
redhat won't die
Sys Admins usually don't choose the OS in large corporate or government environments. They administer the servers chosen by others, who through procurement departments, arrange for what gets loaded on the servers, and some guy who likes Ubuntu and is ticked off at RedHat's perceived slights is not the decision maker in this chain of events.
I run CentOS on my Laptop as a developer, At home I have an Ubuntu box and a Mac OSX system. These systems all work fine.
I develop for a large telecommunications company. We run Redhat on all our servers as a standard. When you run hunderds if not thousands of blades in distributed data centers it becomes impossible to maintain a server OS that is very much in flux. Red Hat enterprise is typically "older" versioned software that has been tested in the field and then certified by redhat. We run Apache 1.3xx PHP 4.xx and MySQL 4.xx. These are quite rock solid which is how we like it. (People get very upset when they have no dial tone or the cable TV is out...)
This is not about redHat vs. Debian vs. ubuntu etc... This is about the fact that it is very valuable to NOT have the latest of everything on your servers. OTOH: on my desktop/laptop machines I like to have the latest stuff so that I can take advantage of the latest hardware; software etc...
It is a whole lot less if a problem when my self-written addressbook crashes then when our backbone goes down because of a vulnerable DNS server. (Like any other large company, and being a telco especially, we are a target for people with malicious intent)
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
Some facts on RHAT finances.
Year Revenue Profit
2001 79 -140
2002 91 -7
2003 125 14
2004 197 45
2005 278 80
(all numbers in millions)
Obviously, 2006 numbers are not in yet, but the only reported quarter (Q1) for 2006 has revenue 38% higher (84 versus 61) than 2005 and profit 11% higher (13.8 versus 12.4).
Interesting to hear about Ubuntu on the server, I'll have to give that a try. However, my experience with Ubuntu on the desktop matches that of dazed1: it seems like it might be a great distro for grannies, but I know it's not for me. I run a Debian desktop myself, and I'm very happy with it. I'm not sure why you'd say "it can be done, but it's not fun", unless you're thinking in terms of running Debian stable on every desktop in an organization, in which case I might agree. But for my own use, on my current machine, I installed Debian's AMD 64-bit version over a year ago, and the only config issue I had was installing the nVidia drivers for a GeForce card.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ubuntu still relies on Debian for most of its packages, i.e. if (unimaginably) Debian went away, Ubuntu would be scrambling to replace what Debian does for them. Hardly a "child outdoing the parent" situation: rather, Ubuntu is doing with Debian exactly what Debian is designed to support. I'm glad Debian doesn't focus on making the base distro more granny-friendly, because that would likely cut into its flexibility and usability for non-granny-running purposes.
Also, read this piece for reasons why Ubuntu shouldn't even want to "go it alone" and cut its dependency on Debian.
I used Redhat for a very long time, I cannt even remember which version I started with. When Redhat changed their buisness model all that did was say they are no longer officially supporting home users. Most home users never needed support or didnt want to pay for it(this is true for any home user be it for Windows or OS X). For this reason they created Fedora. After Redhat 9 I did switch to Gentoo but that was because I like the way that you can really customize Gentoo. Ive put Fedora on my grandparents computer and its been rock solid, I have to do no administration(only if I want to update between the cores) and everything just works. I tried Ubuntu on my school computer and personally I think Fedora is leaps and bounds ahead of it.
You mean like this? ;p
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If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
I guess I am clueless.
Reasons I prefer "Redhat".
1 - The distributed packages work TOGETHER.
2 - I like SysV startup scripts.
3 - I don't want to rebuild EVERYTHING on a Pentium Pro 200.
4 - I want everything I will need for a server ON THE CDs. I don't have unlimited bandwidth.
5 - I don't want problems building the occasional program (snobol4, squeak, etc.).
6 - Most of my customers use RHEL.
I actually like Slackware; but those are my reasons. So, label me clueless.
YMMV
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Ok, I won't buy the theory that Ubuntu is killing Redhat.
:) which at $0 tends to grease the wheels better than a possitive dollar amount....(yet as Mandrake found out -- does not pay the light bill :)
However, I would say that Ubuntu is pushing many of the other distros into obscurity.
From a business standpoint the Redhat solution is really the main option and will remain so for the long term. They have earned that -- and the choices made to commercialize Linux prove that they are cashing in on what they have earned - fair enough.
From a hobbyist/desktop perspective -- it is fairly evident that Ubuntu is cleaning everyone elses clock in a sense. They have inertia, strong user support, great reviews and are the darling of the free software industry (alternative desktop) right now -- and these kudos pay the same dividends in "street cred" that Redhat has turned into dollars and cents.
Ubuntu could end up being the best option at the best time for desktop users. Who knows, history will tell. A few years ago I would have said that Mandrake was prime for that position....But the lack of mass acceptance of Linux seems to have killed off Mandrake....Which would most likely have died off anyway, because most of the mass accepters (sic) would be in it for the cost
So bottom line -- Anybody with deep enough pockets, a love for linux, and no need to profit could at one time in history be the kings of the Linux desktop.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Just use slak, the perfect server AND desktop distribution.
... two mints in one ;).
... Standards and Practices !
Two
PenGun
Do What Now ???
It's the application support provided by the actual application vendors themselves. such as Oracle. Try and get paid support for Oracle on Ubuntu. You can't. They allow you to download a package specifically for Ubuntu, but htye won't support it.
Support for the OS is relatively easy to come by. Application support is another story.
Umm, there are no drawbacks to running a Red Hat shop. In particular when you compare it to Ubuntu, but I guess you haven't used Fedora or Red Hat to base your decision on. I don't think you realize the level of integration that Red Hat has in the server arena, and the major Vendors that work with Red Hat so that things are seamless. Not to mention that Red Hat has been commended for their support year-over-year, and their CEO was recently named the best CEO that other CEOs like working with (or something like that, I forget exactly what it was called). Red Hat also does the majority of development on many major open source projects, GCC and the kernel being two of them. Now that Red Hat has JBoss, they can provide even more integration in the stack. There is not a single advantage to running Ubuntu over Red hat (especially if you use the Red Hat Network (RHN) which blows anything similar away), but there are many advantages to running Red Hat over Ubuntu. You might pay a little more than with Ubuntu, but it's still cheap (cheaper than MS and similar pricing to Novell). When you're running the kind of high-end servers that Red Hat typically runs on, companies want to know that they'll be getting the best support in the industry. Red Hat also has an astounding track record for security, in fact one of the reasons Linux has such a good reputation for security is because often times Red Hat hauls ass getting patches out the door. The community uses a ton of code written by Red Hat, and if Red Hat ever did cease to be in business, you'd see open source development grind to a halt (or very slow pace) over night. I think you underestimate Red Hat's role in both the OSS community and in enterprise.
Regards,
Steve
You like SysV and Slak? Does not compute. Maybe clueless I dunno.
... Standards and Practices !
One of the reasons I prefer slak is BSD init. A far superior init scheme. Much easier to script for one thing.
PenGun
Do What Now ???
I don't know whether to characterize my response as "no," "yes, but," or "yes, and," ...
Absolutely name-recognition amongst the PHBs of the world is gold for selling to the people who sign the POs. But one way to get that name recognition is to win the mindshare of the geeks who work for them. This is how Google dislodged Yahoo! in search; let's not forget that at one point only Slashdotters had heard of Google, and then suddenly (it seemed instantaneous) everyone used Google.
Has it worked for Firefox? To some extent, but not dramatically, in my view. Whether it will is an open question. But Google and Firefox are both consumer-facing applications (though Firefox is seeing some enterprise uptake).
Would it work for Ubuntu in the enterprise? Maybe. Ultimately PHBs do listen to us. They might say "no," but they listen. And listening (even while saying "no") starts the "name recognition" process. And then once enough profiles of Shuttleworth appear in CIO Magazine and its ilk, don't bet against it.
So you're right for now, but I'm not completely certain you're right for the future -- and I am not "on" anything. :)
There are already plenty of free Linux distributions that work OK. RedHat has two things going for it that keep everyone I know with licenses buying them.
The web-based management tools that are available as part of the RedHat network are pretty good. You can inventory all your machines, see who hasn't been keeping their systems patched (and push updates to them if you want), find out exactly what hardware is in the system, all sorts of useful things right from the admin web interface. I've even used it to lookup the Dell service tag for a system. One place I worked with found it worth buying the RedHat subscription just because of how much these features reduced their Linux TCO by letting administrators manage more machines efficiently.
The second thing is the more important one. RedHat puts a lot of work into keeping their Enterprise products stable for a long time period. That's one of the reasons so many application vendors have standardized on them: they don't have to worry about totally uncontrolled package upgrades.
An example will illustrate what I'm talking about here. Some months ago, I was doing work on a RHEL machine that involved installing some PHP software. When reading through the requirements, I discovered there was a security exploit in the version of PHP installed on that system (php-4.3.9), and got a bit paranoid about it. Upon checking further, I discovered that RedHat had backported the security fixes into the older version of PHP they ship with the system, and the exploit I was concerned about was in fact closed. Most vendors in this situation would have just upgraded everyone to php-4.3.10 because backporting takes considerable resources to do, leaving the customers exposed to whatever functional differences there are between 4.3.9 and 4.3.10.
It's fine for my PCs, but when I'm in a situation where I'm supporting lots of machines, the thought of users being to get a whole new set of packages with who knows what changes just by running some variant on apt-get gives me the willies. RedHat's pace is just fast enough to stay useful in a corporate environment, while going out of their way not to upgrade any more than is necessary. I'm curious how the Ubuntu server plays out in this situation; the desktop version is clearly far too quick in its pace of upgrades for any of the RedHat customers I deal with to be comfortable with it.
Up until 3 weeks ago, I have been a windows user. After reading so much about Ubuntu on /. I gave it a whirl, and now all the systems in my home are running ubuntu. The last time I tried Linux, it was with Red Hat 5.0. It lasted for about 3 days because after that it was too frustrating to get everything working (sound drivers/video drivers/etc...) I am sure Red Hat distros have improved so far...but I've already got ubuntu working and now there is really no need to change, as nothings broken...(Except Photoshop CS2, Dreamweaver, MWS, and iTunes...) Prey works awesome as well.
~CYD
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
It is more than just name recognition. Ever since the dot-com implosion, corporate purchasers are leery of small companies. They can go away. They can get bought. Yeah, I know with open source you can say the source is eternally available, but enterprise buyers like to have a vendor behind it and they like that vendor to have a certain scale, size, and market acceptance before they commit their $$$. Red Hat is a $4 Billion dollar corporation and it qualifies. Novell is on the borderline because they're smaller and struggling. Anybody else doesn't qualify.
This is from an IT Managers perspective.
So far from everything I have seen about Ubuntu is that they don't get it. A stable release needs to be stable and supported for 3 minimum and maybe 5 years. And I'd prefer not to see a new release but once every 18 months. I don't want tech's going around installing the latest version, because it's the lastest version. I don't want to argue with them about it. I don't want 6 didn't version of an OS running on my desktops and servers.
2nd with this continuos release cycles your never going to get software providers to support the platform. It would be financial suicide for the software company or cost prohibitive for the end user. "Sure we'll support Ubuntu but it will cost 2x what it cost for RH or Windows".
I think Ubuntu and Fedora have done some great things for the linux community as far as moving it along, but when they say they are ready for the desktop (General desktop usage) then they are way off.
1) They do not have a mainstream Office Suite that can replace MS Office. They have something that's close OpenOffice, but it is currently not capable of replacing MS Office in 70% of the environments where I see MS Office in use. Why? Because it does not support document sharing of Excel or Calc sheets. Everywhere I've been either small, medium, or large size companies they use sharing of Excel documents. I've gotten to the point where I've quit showing OpenOffice to other people because invariably everything is fine up until the time you tell them that OpenOffice does not support sharing.
2) Very, very few companies support/build software for Linux OS. There are too many companies out there that have coders who are only versed in Visual Basic or Visual C++.
So until there is some break through in an application that is a got to have it, and it only runs on linux I don't think we will see a big swing over to linux.
But between now and then nobody is going to make that effort unless they have a platform that is going to be stable for at least a couple of years. That's where RH is doing something very right.
Let the ubur geeks have something to play with Fedora, Ubuntu, but provide a business product that's stable and developers can count on.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
Yes, being an old-time Solaris guy, I like SysV.
Yes, Slack uses BSD inits... Which I am not fond of. What I like about Slack is its simplicity. It reminds me of using BSD 2 on a VAX. Nostalgic.
As always, YMMV,
I remain... clueless.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
it's not about being compensated, it's about playing the blame game.
"oh noes! mission-critical microsoft software fucked up!"
"if microsoft messed up then it must have been unavoidable. this is internet stuff is harder than it seems, hey? also, all our competitors were probably hit too. not to worry."
"oh noes! mission-critical red hat/suse/big name distro software fucked up!"
"i can understand why you thought this linux stuff would be ok, what with all the big companies supporting it. you did your best trying to save money for the company, but it didn't work out. we'll go back to microsoft, but no hard feelings."
"oh noes! mission-critical obscure/community supported distro software fucked up!"
"this is all your fault for thinking you could use crazy untested hippy software in an enterprise environment. clear your desk."
my password really is 'stinkypants'
It's going to be a still further uphill climb.
I see three camps:
1) I can do it myself, why the hell do I need RH when they're expensive; Ubuntu is a convenient Sarge; SUSE/OpenSUSE, Fedora, ad infinitum do very well, thank you, then
2) I'm rolling out massive applications and my management says I need a commercial distro because they don't want a perceived house of cards and
3) I learned Active Directory, Please Don't Hurt Me and what is that grep crap all about?
#2 is a very powerful persuader. Ubuntu isn't as catchy, nor is it really marketed very well. What's inside is without a doubt very nice. But it's not going to easily gnaw away the suit-and-ties marketshare that RH has. Sorry.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I don't think the author was accusing RedHat of any wrong: just saying perhaps they made an unwise decision. Of course there's nothing wrong with RedHat focusing on where the money was. The point the author makes is that if an OS takes the desktop market, sysadmins become more familiar with it (since they use it more), and are prone to use it for their servers rather than use 2 different systems. I know that I'm used to Ubuntu now - if I was to set up a linux server for something, I'd probably use Ubuntu because I'm already familiar with its configuration and administration. RedHat would have to have lots of VERY substantial benefits over Debian for me to take the time to learn how to administrate it.
Google (as an example) uses a customized version of Ubuntu as their internal desktops. Rumors of moving the server farm to Ubuntu server were also in the air... Wheater or not we will ever see "Goobuntu", why Google seems to be chosing Ubuntu instead of Red Hat?
I hope that Ubuntu does grow and RedHat does die. I used to buy RedHat for the desktop and never, ever needed any of the complimentary support. I bought it even though I could have downloaded it for free, just to support continued development of the distribution. It wasn't the cheap downloaded-by-someone-else-and-packaged-in-a-cheap -jewel-case distro, but the official RedHat distribution in the shiny color (well, the hat was in color) box. At the time, it was an excellent desktop distribution, considering the state of Linux at the time.
As far as RHEL goes. it's ok. From the command line perspective it's excellent - they provide many scripts to make a lot of tasks one would write shell scripts for anyway to make the admin's job easier. But the GUI - good lord, I've never, ever seen such a disorganized user interface in my life. Sure, one could argue "but it's a server, don't run X on it" but when getting the initial setup together, it makes things go much more quickly to do the initial setup in X, then go to the command line and tidy up config files and turn X off, then create a disk image of that configuration for deployment. The RHEL gui is pain to the extreme. If you want to see a GUI done right, check out SuSE/NLD with KDE, or check out ubuntu. They are organized in a logical manner.
I refuse to pay for RHEL. I now run CentOS on one box because I needed RHEL for a proprietary application, but am unwilling to pay for RHEL. I'll gladly pay for a great distribution (I pay for every release of SuSE, and I'd pay for Ubuntu if I could). Here is the real reason I truly hate RedHat: check out the CentOS web site and you will see: "prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor" - this is because RedHat threatened to sue CentOS over mentioning that CentOS is derived from RHEL SRPMs. WTF? Crediting a development company for their contributions is NOT trademark infringement, no matter how you look at it. RHEL, IMHO, is a pack of litigious bastards who should be run out of business. They love to proclaim "open source, open source, open source" but when someone actually exercises the rights granted by the license and actually credit them for their conributions, they threaten to sue? WTF?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Actually, thanks to the GPL, that is totally false!
If Redhat closed its doors today, the source would live on. Granted, CentOS or someone would have to pick up new development.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Gentoo is obviously the end-all be-all answer to linux distros, I can pimp it out just like my '86 honda that I spent more the stereo system on than the car is worth!
Seriously though, I don't foresee any one distro putting an end to another distro. It's simply the design of linux to have many different distros suited around the likes and dislikes of smaller sub-communities. I use several different flavors depending on what I'm trying to accomplish, what software I need to run, etc... That's really what any good sysadmin does (or should do): evaluate your needs first, preferences second, and budget third - then choose your best solution. Be it Debian, Fedora/Red Hat, Ubuntu, or yes - even Gentoo.
http://www.accelerateglobalwarming.com
RH WS _is_ the upgrade. It's $100 per year (and you get access to _any_ base version, just 1 year of updates).
They changed their model from a boxed-release every year, to a tiered, per box-per year system.
You could have just switched to CentOS. It doesn't bite.
Or you could do what we do. Buy a few licenses with the upgraded warranty for some servers, and use the media and packages on all the rest.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Just curious, but how do you feel yum compares to apt-get? As I understand it, apt-get is to yum as dpkg is to rpm, but I've not had much experience using yum yet.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
We're seeing articles about companies competing for Linux revenue streams. Yes, think about that. There's money to be made in open source and this is one more example of that. I want to see both of them thrive.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Red Hat damn well knows that it's support sucks. That's not why you're paying them.
You pay them:
1) To convince companies like Broadcomm to open up drivers to chipsets so they can patch them into the kernel and get them in the next kernel release.
2) To assure your resident PHB that there is someone outside the organization that they can blame and wait for callbacks on when things go wrong.
3) To provide a channel for you to make comments about what you think is important and should be supported. For example, RHEL 3 added a customized LAuS from SuSE (not something normally done between update releases) because a bunch of customers asked for it.
4) To employ people to work on gcc, glibc, and keep the kernel up to date.
5) To feel like you're contributing back because you're actually running CentOS on your production systems.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Interestingly:
:-/
We find ourselves using Fedora a lot for development. If it works on Fedora it tends to work just fine on RHEL. We also have a few Solaris, Slack and Ubuntu thrown in the mix to keep it interesting. Anything that tests out on two out of the N platforms is likely to smoothly easily in production.
I think the one thing that makes us choose Fedora over anything else for development is package names. Goddamn package names.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I meant a choice during the install procedure, when I finish a install of fedora I can have my system correctly installed with all the options I need, gcc, dev packages and etc.
:-D
Yes, because how hard is it to pop open a terminal and type the following lines to solve your problem:
apt-get install gcc-4.0
apt-get install make
apt-get build-dep gnome
There ya go--all the gnome-dev headers, gcc, and make. Just about EVERY program in the Ubuntu and Debian repositories honors build-dep.
Also if the program is already packaged I usually don't need to compile it, so the apt-get command you refered is not very usefull, but it is good to know it exists.
See above. Obviously build-dep would be useful in the very circumstance you mentioned in your previous point.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I'm a LONG TIME Redhat fan. I started at 4.0 and stayed on until FC4. There are several things that Redhat has stopped doing, owed to their business-school strategy that just doesn't work, here.
/etc/ldap and installs with enough "database" to get you started. Even without the nice LDAP GUI that Redhat made, I think this might be simpler and quicker. No complications, no stupid Java behemoth, just good native code like it should be.
:)
XCDRoast: the author of this program has his stuff together; he makes it available for many distros and in most places it works, but at Redhat they see fit to edit the code to get along with their SUID plan. It works, but are they going to shoehorn all packages like this? There are _thousands_.
LDAP: the OpenLDAP rpm that comes from the Fedora repo is at least 2 major releases old. Worse than that, it breaks. And it breaks in a way that leaves it completely useless. But I suppose that since they bought Netscape Directory, a bloated, oversized, shotgun-approach to flyswatting, they won't allow anyone to bring the smaller, tighter core product up to speed. In short, if you need LDAP, you use ND or recompile your own from a tarball. Hey, they've got a business to run!
And all those Linux games we *bought* hoping to keep Loki alive? You'll have to fight to make them work, and each time the libraries get upgraded, you'll need to fight'em again. Not in Ubuntu.
Ubuntu has some strengths that are surprisingly wonderful. Very little translation (if ANY) from author to end-user. Using a *better* package manager, rolling projects in, editing the configs, and rolling them back out are painless. No dependency problems.
LDAP lives in
Remember those Loki games? Check the docs for the details; it's, as they say in these parts, "Breezy".
Their DOCUMENTATION. It's a Wiki. Not stuffy paperwork that never seems to be complete enough, or out of date. It's a living, growing document that helps us all enjoy the experience. Reading these docs made the LDAP install close-to-instantaneous. It made the Loki libraries the same way. It showed me in far more simple ways how to deal with Apache, which I thought I understood before.
I think it's because Ubuntu has no commercial bias; no reason to do anything other than the author's intentions with their code. There's no reason to do something that you and I don't need, because they have to make a headline. THIS is the right way to do Linux.
I've tried telling them at Redhat, but won't hear me.
Just like TribalVoice with PowWow, just like PCNews or whatever it was, and just like SCO, before they were sold to a (now dying) entity. But the Redhat-of-old was a warm friendly place for many of us to get started, and I'm thankful for that. Now Ubuntu can truly take us into the future, to do even bigger, brighter things!
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Personally I don't care what succeeds commercially. The distro that works for "Aunt Tilly" (and my non-geek girlfriend) is the one that will rock the world.
So far neither Fedora nor Ubuntu is there yet, but Ubuntu seems to be trying harder for that audience.
(According to their toolbar) Netcraft Confirms the popularity of the following operating systems' websites thusly (overall site rank in parentheses):
SUSE (546)---Sun/Solaris (904)---FreeBSD (1284)---Red Hat (1289)---Debian (1719)---Fedora (2235)
Ubuntu (3208)---OpenBSD (3883)---OpenSUSE (5355)
I suggest that such figures can be assumed to be closer to the truth than either those of Distrowatch or (obviously) the opinions of Slashdot commenters, as to who's beating whom.
- Groupwise
- Mono
- EDirectory
- Identity manager
- Real basic (commercial)
I'm sure they braught other stuff, but this is just off the top of my head.Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You know, I heard all the hype about Ubuntu. I heard how great it was, how it was the microsoft killer..so I downloaded and installed Kubuntu which, according to them, was ubuntu with kde.
ummm yeah. It may be great for the slackware crowd, but Ubuntu is NOWHERE near the stability and ease of use of SuSE or Redhat. Just the configuration tools in Redhat and SuSE set them far far apart from ubuntu.
If you don't want a clean and polished interface...if you don't want centralized configuration that does the job and does it well...if you don't want consistency across the desktop....then yes, Ubuntu is for you!
I'm just waiting to see everyone saying that slackware is going to take the desktop market by storm now...
Think of someone of "average" intelligence. Then think... half the world is dumber than that.
Tip: Don't implicitly criticize others' intelligence with a false statement. Average is not "in the middle". That is median.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Not quite accurate. Average can be mean, median or mode. You're right that the quote is median not mean, but average and mean do not have to be the exact same thing.
;)
Yes, I'm a pedant. It's how you know I belong on slashdot
Actually, I think that package selection after installation is better. It's easier and faster to get a base system running, such that you could ssh in and finish the install remotely. It's also more consistent. If you want to install Apache during install, it's not the same process as later. In the after-install model, it's always the same command.
I went through years of configuring a Redhat system and saving configs on disk. Then I went to Debian and now my system config is a few apt-get lines I cut-and-paste into the terminal after install.
Many times you find things you want in fedora extras. It's easy enough to pull the source RPMs and get it to work on RHEL since it's already conditioned for the target environment.
:-)
And we use CentOS for testing.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I read through a lot of the opinions that were expressed regarding one person's opinion on the future of a new and popular distribution. I remember back in slackware's heyday you would see the same kind of comments made about this new thing called red hat. I lost interest in red hat over 5 years ago. Mostly because they lost sight of the "vision". Since then I have gone back and forth between slackware and knoppix. Now I am using Ubuntu. I like the idea of debian because it is supposed to be a "pure" form of linux. I like slackware because of its legacy. It is the first distributuion that I used. Most of the pro Red Hat commentaries read to me just like what any Windows advocate would post regarding the use of their favorite product. Well if you are just a corporate stooge, peddling mediocre skills, and have no desire to do anything more than is required to survive in your job, this opinion makes sense. However if you aren't, opinions that prattle on about the wealth, respectability, and pedigree of a distribution are meaningless. Experts that only have knowledge of their own little vested universe seem so eager to bash anything that poses an alternative to their safe little world. The world is a big place. Granted the American economy is huge. To claim that some little podunk company in North Carolina is destined to be "The Player" in the server market just because you use it is a tad dillusional. Linux will probably become the metric system for the world and we in the States will continue to demand that we buy milk by the gallon (Windows). Sure it is likely that Red Hat will be a big player in the states. Something else will more likely be what the WORLD uses. To dismiss this kind of speculation is obtuse. Then again you can't see past your NOC's glass door so why am I wasting my time reading your opinions?
Go TEAM!!! GO
See The usual AQK diatribe
To wit:
Re: Wireless Adapter Suggestion
Yeah, well I have a Motorola WU830g ALREADY.
And it works FINE with Windows XP.
Windows recognized THE MOMENT it was plugged in.
I just got the latest Dapper Drake, and installed it on the same PC, thank goodness with a dual boot.
I still have to do this Google stuff in Windows. Ubuntu doesn't even KNOW I have an 'unknown' wireless USB port.
And you expect me to try and slough off this Linux s--t on my elderly aunt who wants to "surf that web thingee"?
Good luck Auntie. Buy a Windows machine (or possibly a Mac.)
Sorry, Shuttleworth...you have your work cut out for you, even if Yahoo and EWEEK did give you (HA HA) rave reviews.
Grrrr... Stick it up yr tarball.
Auntie: "Goodness! What's a tarball?"
- Tony (aqk) www.tonyking.tk
.
- aqk
F U
Or whoever they get a support contract from.
A lot of companies know this and are taking advantage of it, from being locked down to one vendor now, finally, as it should be, they have the choice of who holds their hand when there is a problem.
If you think the suits are not questioning why it should not be so in the desktop as well, you are misinformed or working in small companies only.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Then at least I would know if he has experience in a enterprise environment.
What many folks supportive of the FLOSS movement lack is precisely that.
Systems Administrators very rarely select the operating system that is deployed in a big company.
I may have all my home machines running Ubuntu (last year everybody was running Gentoo I recall) but my boss or most likely a guy 2 or 3 levels above him, will decide based in many variables (do not underestimate the golf meetings) which OS will be deployed.
This Tony guy is starting from a very shaky premise: that actually system administrators are the main purchasers.
In big companies that is not the case.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I guess I should add "- Anonymous" to the end. That is unless you know who was the first to say it...
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
Bologna is a lunch meat.
Sheesh... some peaple.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy