Live data from Hacker News

What makes us Red Hat

redhat.com

251–257 of 257 posts

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

1. Generally you rebuild to the latest available versions of yor specified release. APT sorts version deps as it does package deps, so you don't have to.

2. You can reference content under /usr/share/doc/ without having to specify a goddamned version number that a) changes arbitrarily and b) is inconsistently specified every fucking time.

Version numbers are metadata, not directory name elements.

Changelogs, also required, give you the info if you desperately neeed it.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#252
post #132
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but from a corporate standpoint, Mozilla's leadership is pretty abysmal. Take the entire debacle with Mozilla Messaging. It was pretty much the only serious game in town for a decent gui mail client on Linux or really cross platform and they dropped it on the floor instead of finding some way to monetize it. I'd have paid for a decent Linux mail client with sensible calendaring (that isn't evolution aka outloo…

What do you mean that Linux releases lag behind by a few months? Which products? Firefox and Thunderbird are updating constantly and I don't see a difference between Linux and Windows there.

Yeah how long have you used Firefox on Linux? Have you used it since Phoenix / Firebird (before it was called Firefox maybe 2003-2004 I forget the exact dates)? I did, and I distinctly remember when they pretty much shit on all Linux users after it really took off on Windows.

Nowadays their releases are always in sync, but that is a more recent thing. I also seem to recall Linux support was much better with Firefox 4 and after, but that was a long time ago and it is a bit fuzzy for me currently.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#253
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but from a corporate standpoint, Mozilla's leadership is pretty abysmal. Take the entire debacle with Mozilla Messaging. It was pretty much the only serious game in town for a decent gui mail client on Linux or really cross platform and they dropped it on the floor instead of finding some way to monetize it. I'd have paid for a decent Linux mail client with sensible calendaring (that isn't evolution aka outloo…

I get your points on what issues they have. Yet, you were talking about how Red Hat is so huge in terms of labor and money. I was only bringing up Mozilla in the sense that they're a FOSS company making a ton of money with a bunch of employees that goes far in Red Hat's direction. I've got plenty of ideas for how I'd do it way better as a business. We're talking whether they make big money, though.

Ah sorry you're spot on then. Their financials show assets / revenue in the hundreds of millions, so your original statement stands entirely:

https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2015_Mozilla_Audit...

Hundreds of millions definitely counts as big money to a pee on techie like myself!

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike most of Linux fans imagine, Canonical and Red Hat don't compete that much in the corporate world.

Besides that, from the open source perspective, RedHat's contribution is greater than Canonical, especially the linux kernel.

Not just the Linux kernel. Canonical is primarily a consumer of open source that does some really need value add ontop of it (see Juju for an outstanding example). Redhat is primarily an excellent engineering company with good enterprise sales and (compared to Canonical) lousy marketing.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#255
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your points on what issues they have. Yet, you were talking about how Red Hat is so huge in terms of labor and money. I was only bringing up Mozilla in the sense that they're a FOSS company making a ton of money with a bunch of employees that goes far in Red Hat's direction. I've got plenty of ideas for how I'd do it way better as a business. We're talking whether they make big money, though.

Ah sorry you're spot on then. Their financials show assets / revenue in the hundreds of millions, so your original statement stands entirely: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2015_Mozilla_Audit... Hundreds of millions definitely counts as big money to a pee on techie like myself!

Same here! I was looking for it one day wondering how much money an open-source browser was "scrapping by" with... to find... "Holy shit! Hundreds of millions of dollars!?" I can only dream...

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#256
post #252
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean that Linux releases lag behind by a few months? Which products? Firefox and Thunderbird are updating constantly and I don't see a difference between Linux and Windows there.

Yeah how long have you used Firefox on Linux? Have you used it since Phoenix / Firebird (before it was called Firefox maybe 2003-2004 I forget the exact dates)? I did, and I distinctly remember when they pretty much shit on all Linux users after it really took off on Windows. Nowadays their releases are always in sync, but that is a more recent thing. I also seem to recall Linux support was much better with Firefox 4…

I've been using Firefox since Phoenix/Firebird days (crappie 0.x releases), I didn't notice a problem with timing of Linux versions.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#257

This is a pretty timely statement of values and development ideology apropos Canonical's sudden pivot from fragmenting the Linux desktop community.

Having used linux for over 20 years now - the 'fragmenting the Linux desktop' idea boggles my mind.

The entire Linux eco-system exists of competing things. Nginx vs Apache, sendmail vs qmail vs postfix, ... the list goes on. There is no singular 'desktop' when it comes to Linux, and there will never be one. Thinking and hoping there will be is simply not understanding what drives the whole Linux world: options and competition.

Post reply on HN