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Oracle Linux Adopters Suffer Backlash
atbarboz writes "One of the first converts to Oracle's support for Linux said it has endured a public backlash since its decision to drop Red Hat. 'Melbourne company Opes Prime Stockbroking told ZDNet Australia that in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux enthusiasts phoned, e-mailed and wrote about the company online to complain at the decision. "People called us out of the blue to tell us we were idiots," said Opes executive director Anthony Blumberg.'"
'Linux is an operatings system kernel'
Linux is an operating system. The kernel is the only and only component of the operating system. Everything else is just a library, application, or memory resident application that runs on top of that kernel. You must be confusing an operating system with an operating environment for users, those are called operating system distributions or just distributions.
The confusion in these terms have been inappropriately spread by Microsoft and Apple who refer to their distributions as operating systems because they do not allow competing distributions based upon their operating systems.
Linux is an OS, not a religion.
That is where you are wrong.
It appears that the need for religion is hardwired into human beings. If they reject religion, they tend to find a new one. Some believe in global warming. Some in their political party. Some in Linux.
Also, remember that since the 60s we live in a society where rudeness is rewarded.
What the Baby Boomers taught us was that you can be a total jackass and if you claim it is for a good cause it is not only excused but celebrated.
Hardware support is going to be an issue for anyone that chooses to run Oracle Linux. Hardware vendors certify only certain OS makes and models on their boxes, and so far I haven't seen Oracle Linux on the certified lists. It's no fun fighting with your vendor for support and being told you have to install a supported OS before they'll acknowledge that the error you're seeing is caused by their hardware and not the OS that you chose to run.
Oracle might think they're onto something here, but I doubt it's going to catch on until they either A) sell their own hardware and support the entire stack from top to bottom, or B) get their OS certified by most or all of the major hardware vendors -- including card manufacturers like QLogic, EMC, Emulex, and Intel, who like the box vendors, only certify to certain OSes.
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A true Linux user has a moral responsibility to spread awareness of Linux and all its wonders to the wandering souls of the world. Were it not for the Enlightenment brought forth from these Disciples of Torvalds we would all be condemned to an eternity in the fiery pits of welded-hood doom. Amen brothers!
Linux is not the problem. Oracle is the problem. But then, Red Hat fanatics are bar none the worst fanboys in my ever-so-humble opinion. Gentoo users are often like rice boys, but they're using the system and I have no beef with them. I'm a Ubuntu user these days, so clearly I have nothing against Ubuntu users (I'm not one of them self-hating types.) But Red Hat users, which I stopped being around 6.1, are clinging desperately to a distribution that doesn't care about them unless they have shitpiles of money. That goes for Fedora, too. ObDisclaimer: This is all my opinion. You may feel differently. If I think you're being a bozo in your reply to this comment, I may flame you. You have been warned.
Oracle is one of the great anti-freedom evils of our time simply because they backed the national ID database. Corporations have no heart - Oracle is willing to get behind such a proposal simply to sell their product.
You are welcome to forget! Everyone else does anyway. But Oracle is bad and wrong and supporting Oracle is therefore bad and wrong.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Correction Linux is the Linux Operating System's kernel. That's right Linux is a kernel, an operating system, and an operating environment.
Because we're free to use GNU/Free software as long as we stick to the GPL, which lets me call the OS Fred if i want to.
In fact I can create a new operating system, call it something like Penguin OS, use a Linux Kernel and the GNU utilities. Because its mine call whatever I want. And as long as I stick to the terms of the GPL, (And other trademarks regulations), there's nothing RMS (_|_) can do. The correct name for the OS is what ever I call it, because I put it together.
So RMS is free to call his little distro whatever he wants, but neither him nor his lackeys have any business telling the rest of was what to call it.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Meanwhile, McLaren told ZDNet Australia Opes had acquired Red Hat support subscriptions with the purchase of two servers from channel partner Dell. The hardware vendor then was responsible for providing Red Hat support to Opes.
I guess nobody reads the articles anymore, but appearently they weren't even RedHat customers. The ran RHEL but only by way of Dell. It would seem to me that if they wanted the best support maybe they should actually have tried paying RedHat for a frickin support contract. RedHat is a mighty generous company but they're not going to call you up out of the blue and offer you support just for the hell of it.
My personal opinion is that they are going from one bad support situation (DELL) to another (Oracle), but it's their business and they have every right to make dumbass decisions. As for people calling them out of the blue to tell them how retarded they are, I have to call bullshit. I don't think anybody knows or cares who these people are or what distro they run.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
I've noticed that too and I certainly won't apologize for them. However, just like Microsoft, their upper tier support is considerably better. I.e., try calling Microsoft as a home user or a small business and you'll get a lot of requests for credit cards and attempts to send you over to the hardware manufacturer. Call them with an enterprise account (like the medium-sized company I slave at) and it's a different story. The techs actually listen.
I know a lot of people in the linux community (as well as being a LUG pres.) and I've only run across one person in the last 15 years that was a complete asshole about using Linux and nothing else. Actually, he didn't limit that idealism to just linux - it was basically whatever he was doing was the right way, and everyone else was wrong. That's a pretty small percentage of nut jobs. Take a good look through Bruce Peren's petition*, you'll see the exact opposite of what Opes is talking about. This is also something that has upset and angered a lot of people, but the vast majority of signees (3000+) have kept their comments reasonable. This seems to be more in line with the Linux community I know of.
[*] - http://techp.org/p/1
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
The problem is this. In the United States, RHEL is the standard Linux Distribution for business. Whether you like it or not, those are the facts. They have the market penetration. They, as a company, survive off of support licenses. This is for patches, upgrades, whatever. This includes the guarantee to backport security fixes into dead software (Have RHEL3 and support, you are getting fixes for packages that the original coders have long since abandoned as they've moved forward with releases). It gives you the ability to tell your boss that 7 years from now an RHEL 5 system will *STILL* have vendor support for all security issues. That is something that Microsoft isn't doing. (Want a DST patch for Win2k - you'll have to pay MS for it, even though it is only a 7 year old OS). The problem is. Unbreakable linux is *NOT* a distribution. It is a support agreement to provide support for RHEL systems. They are directly support RHEL3 and RHEL4 via a separate patch path. This undercuts Red Hat and their pricing, basically taking a company that while strong, is hardly rock solid (I believe they made somewhere around $450 million dollars and had a $50 million dollar annual profit). The fall of Red Hat will also (quite obviously) mean the fall of RHEL, and quite possible the Fedora project (Their supported test ground). Where does that leave Oracle? Oracle will no longer have anyone to support, since they are basically using the GPL to abuse the Red Hat porting process and merely paying for an alternate distribution path. When Red Hat dies, Oracle Unbreakable will die as well. The end result? They kill the goose that laid the golden egg. This is why the move by Oracle is dangerous. Getting into the business is one thing, but they are taking direct aim at Red Hat, and abusing the GPL by taking Red Hat code modifications and redistributing them via their own network and charging for it. This is also why there is a general disdain for what Oracle is doing among the linux community. Now, how much of this paragraph turns out to be true, and how much is fud is where the crux of the issue lies. Perhaps Oracle will have their own teams doing backports, and perhaps they will eventually move off of RHEL support onto their own distro, but until they make this move, you can be certain the RH crowd is going to continue these unfortunate tactics.
Absolutely right!
How come this is news? Just tell them to fuck off.