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What makes us Red Hat

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Re: What makes us Red Hat

#231

Post by dredmorbius »

kbenson wrote: post #34
digitalshankar wrote: post #27

Red Hat or the Microsoft of Linux is the face palm of linux distros, forget dependency hell, how on earth someone choose rpm over first class Superior Debian package system or distros like Ubuntu? People just buy it for the support even if the Red Hat they use is Gnome 2 and Firefox V.3.0. Then finally RHCA/RHCE courses, i should get certified from this distro to prove my Linux skills for the companies even though i…

> how on earth someone choose rpm over first class Superior Debian package system So, what makes the Debian package system superior? Having built multiple specs in the past, but not any debs, I'm curious. Given that you can often convert debs to RPMs and vice-versa, and can use the different package managers on either type of repository, it's not obvious where one has any specific benefit.

Ultimately, Debian Policy.

The software tools and packaging formats exist only to implement that. It's Policy and the comprehensiveness of the Debian archive (60k+ packages last time I checked, a year or so back), which make it bliss. You simply rarely have to go outside it, and you can configure a system as lean or rich, or anywhere in between, as you like.

What Policy states is that the package maintainer (not the user) must or must not do, including incorporating specified, requiring manpages (though that's not a release-critical bug), so that documentation is standardised. The fact that /usr/share/doc/ has every single package installed listed in it, and they don't include the installed version number in the directory names, as RH still does, means that you can use that directory to recover or rebuild from various packaging failures. (Why would you want to do that you ask? Same reason you'd want to have a doctor or hospital nearby if you had a broken leg -- it's not so much what you'd planned on, but it's damned convenient when you find yourself in that situation.)

Joey Hess and Martin Krafft (see the latter's The Debian System) both expanded on more elements of Debian packaging vs. other systems, particularly Red Hat / RPM.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/debian-system/oclc/640083534&r...

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#232

Post by pertymcpert »

rsync wrote: post #82
ElijahLynn wrote: post #49

Just started working at Red Hat about a month ago. Absolutely love working for this company! Especially that most engineers use GNU/Linux of some sort. Great to see this!

"Just started working at Red Hat about a month ago." I have something I'd like to ask you ... Two years ago, at the RSA convention, I ran into a redhat employee and was chatting about (unix) and I mentioned that I was the founder of rsync.net with the expectation that he knew exactly who we were and what we did. He had no idea and had never heard of us . I felt like I had uncovered an enormous flaw in my outreach and…

Who are you? Are you just using this post as an opportunity to plug your company?

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#233

Post by cyphar »

yeukhon wrote: post #35
Panini_Jones wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software is free, is it not? Red Hat's business model is subscription based.

No, I am referring to Stallman's view on free software. See below. Software free to download vs "free software" from a license PoV aren't necessarily the same. Redhat's products are best to describe as open source software. https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.en.html

You're incorrect. Red Hat (and SUSE)'s distributions are free-as-in-freedom software (or at the very least, the majority of the distribution is free -- the link you posted is complaining about a very small minority of the software that is part of such distributions [which is a problem but is not as big of a problem as you claim]).

The fact that you won't get official updates after a trial period (or if your subscription runs out) isn't against the principles of free software. As a user, you still have the source code and have the freedom to maintain the distribution yourself (nobody does, but the freedom is still there).

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#234

Post by overcast »

bobs_monkey wrote: post #179
overcast wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing software on an OS, shouldn't be something that requires ANY experience. What exactly is the point of an OS without the software running on it? If it's not immediately obvious how to do any of it, for a total noob, to a veteran. Then it's a garbage OS in my opinion.

That's missing the point of Linux entirely. Your average end user isn't using Linux as their day-to-day desktop environment as it requires some skill to maintain. They are using Windows/OSX because they don't have to focus on the platform and are able to carry on with their workflow applications, needing minimal back end maintenance. On the flip side, many sysadmins will not run back end operations on a Windows box a…

Except all I've been hearing about for the last 20+ years, is that THIS YEAR is going to be the year everyone uses Linux on the desktop. That's not ever going to happen with how archaic it is to do basic tasks.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#235

Post by [deleted] »

grkvlt wrote: post #86
oddevan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automattic comes to mind: AFAIK they've built a pretty successful business on WordPress and related products.

Who? They're not even in the same ballpark. RH has 10k employees and USD 1bn in revenue with a market cap of ~15bn, these guys just seem to be a ~500 person WordPress shop.

[deleted]

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#236

Post by xapata »

xapata wrote: post #5
schoen wrote: post #3

More than 15 years ago, I worked for a Linux services company that competed with Red Hat. We sometimes saw them or were invited to see them rather negatively (as the competition), and I particularly remember that an ad agency that wanted our business once shipped us a box containing a burnt red hat (!). Time has shown that Red Hat really knows what they're doing, on many different levels, and they're the most success…

I hope you hired that ad agency.

Funny, both the top and bottom comment in this little thread branch are saying the same thing.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#237

Post by branchly2 »

Jedd wrote: post #119
schoen wrote: post #3

More than 15 years ago, I worked for a Linux services company that competed with Red Hat. We sometimes saw them or were invited to see them rather negatively (as the competition), and I particularly remember that an ad agency that wanted our business once shipped us a box containing a burnt red hat (!). Time has shown that Red Hat really knows what they're doing, on many different levels, and they're the most success…

> ... they're the most successful free software business in history. And yet the word free does not appear anywhere in TFA.

Seems like they used to at least tip their hat (no pun intended) to free software, GNU, etc. --- the whole free software ecosystem on which much of their distribution is based. Though maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

Now I can't find any mention of free software on their site's About pages.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#238

Post by kbenson »

dredmorbius wrote: post #231
kbenson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how on earth someone choose rpm over first class Superior Debian package system So, what makes the Debian package system superior? Having built multiple specs in the past, but not any debs, I'm curious. Given that you can often convert debs to RPMs and vice-versa, and can use the different package managers on either type of repository, it's not obvious where one has any specific benefit.

Ultimately, Debian Policy. The software tools and packaging formats exist only to implement that. It's Policy and the comprehensiveness of the Debian archive (60k+ packages last time I checked, a year or so back), which make it bliss. You simply rarely have to go outside it, and you can configure a system as lean or rich, or anywhere in between, as you like. What Policy states is that the package maintainer (not the…

> The fact that /usr/share/doc/ has every single package installed listed in it, and they don't include the installed version number in the directory names, as RH still does, means that you can use that directory to recover or rebuild from various packaging failures.

Why wouldn't you want the version numbers? That seems like something you would want when trying to rebuild a package database. Also, what do you do if you have two versions of something installed ?

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#240

Post by digi_owl »

m348e912 wrote: post #4

Red Hat was primary reason it took me a lot longer to adopt Linux than it should have. Headbanging experiences with dependency hell and things not working as expected left me extremely discouraged. It wasn't until I dabbled a little with Solaris 7 and finally found Slackware that I realized that Linux could "just work". IMO Red Hat's success was primarily based on the critical mass of support behind it, not because i…

No surprises there. While just about every other package format out there is some variant of a tar-ball with added meta-data the RPM is a custom binary format.

I know someone did a blog or article on the RPM format internals, but damned if i can find it with a quick search. I just get a whole bunch of Fedora and Red Hat links...

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