I once thought of getting ISDN card to my Linux box. Then I checked the price of an ISDN router (ZyXel Prestige 100) and went for that one. I've never looked back at the some USD200 I paid more for the router. That said, I'm a happy user of Rawhide who welcomes RedHat to Europe. When they open an office or service point or get a contractor to provide RedHat support in Finland, I'm all the happier. Even though I might not need it, that would probably mean a lot to many companies ('Look, we can get OFFICIAL support in Finland in Finnish, and they have these administration courses to get OFFICIAL RHCE like we have these MSCEs.').
Most likely being 'RedHat compatible' means essentially 'compatible with Linux running kernel and libs about the same version as current RedHat (might work with other)'. I think it'd currently mean kernel 2.2.x and glibc 2.0.
Why RedHat compatible? RedHat is willing to use money on some certification procedure (eg. IBM works on the hard and soft, then delivers to RedHat, where a small team hacks it for a while to see if it works with RedHat linux and if they can integrate possibly needed changes to RedHat (and release under GPL)).
They use money -> they get the name. Good for them (most people see "RedHat compatible" leads to them buying it with RedHat linux) and good for Linux and other distributions (released under GPL -> just take the code, integrate it to the distro and it works).
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I once thought of getting ISDN card to my Linux box. Then I checked the price of an ISDN router (ZyXel Prestige 100) and went for that one. I've never looked back at the some USD200 I paid more for the router.
That said, I'm a happy user of Rawhide who welcomes RedHat to Europe. When they open an office or service point or get a contractor to provide RedHat support in Finland, I'm all the happier. Even though I might not need it, that would probably mean a lot to many companies ('Look, we can get OFFICIAL support in Finland in Finnish, and they have these administration courses to get OFFICIAL RHCE like we have these MSCEs.').
Most likely being 'RedHat compatible' means essentially 'compatible with Linux running kernel and libs about the same version as current RedHat (might work with other)'. I think it'd currently mean kernel 2.2.x and glibc 2.0.
Why RedHat compatible? RedHat is willing to use money on some certification procedure (eg. IBM works on the hard and soft, then delivers to RedHat, where a small team hacks it for a while to see if it works with RedHat linux and if they can integrate possibly needed changes to RedHat (and release under GPL)).
They use money -> they get the name. Good for them (most people see "RedHat compatible" leads to them buying it with RedHat linux) and good for Linux and other distributions (released under GPL -> just take the code, integrate it to the distro and it works).