51–60 of 221 posts
If they think they have the most compelling Linux offering out there, why go to all the trouble of explaining how close you are to Red Hat?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Disclaimer: I had a hand in a lot of this) That's not quite the intent. Look, here's the deal: I know we all like to think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests actually messes stuff up. But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company making sure that you get your security updates in time. No one else is providing that. Oracle happens to be doing so, and we'…
Still no good answer... why is Oracle doing this? I don't see how this story doesn't end with a whole bunch of people having to convert back to CentOS when someone at Oracle questions the value in offering this distribution for free.
Normally centos users would "grow into" payed support from RH. Now Oracle claims to give them that support without cost.
Unbreakable Linux was never an attempt to have their own distribution, it was to undercut RH, and now they're found a new way to do that through Centos. It may cost Oracle money, but it costs RH more money, because, after all, they actually build a distribution.
Ideally, kill/buy RH, phase out Unbreakable, and cram in proprietary Solaris. But for now just destabilizing the RH ecosystem has to do.
I'd call anyone claiming this strategy a looney if it weren't for the fact that the company doing this is Oracle and I'd put nothing below them as far as a business strategy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I stand corrected, but why on earth not add a link to the main page or the landing page linked to in this HN post?
An excellent question. Honestly, because the page was intended at people already running CentOS -- I thought people would be much more inclined to switch a system they already have than to reinstall a brand new one. Clearly I was mistaken :)
I take the point that the script and the reversion of the changes introduced by the script could be tested on a development box running CentOS.
Disclaimer: I am not part of the target market for your product. Just a desktop RHEL clone user.
I've known companies that used CentOS for all the dev boxes and Redhat for production to save money. That has downsides because you are running different distros in the end (there can be subtle and not-so-subtle differences) and, if you have a problem on a non-prod box, your forced to use community support.
Oracle Linux will become a viable alternative here. Run the same distro on all boxes and only pay for production boxes. Then, if you have a problem on an unsupported box, you can bump it up to supported without altering the box.
The key here, for Oracle, is whether that support is actually worth paying for.
I've run 200+ server environments on centos4, a 40+ server cluster on centos5, and now run a 50+ server cluster on rhel6. I'm pretty much dead on their target audience here. This seems almost mean. Its a billion dollar company calling out a volunteer group of a couple of guys for being slower than them. Part of the reason I switched to rhel was exactly this graph, I didn't have a lot of faith in centos as a going con…
(Disclaimer: I had a hand in a lot of this) That's not quite the intent. Look, here's the deal: I know we all like to think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests actually messes stuff up. But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company making sure that you get your security updates in time. No one else is providing that. Oracle happens to be doing so, and we'…
I'm not in the least a fan of Oracle, but I think this could still be a safe move for a free EL distribution. It don't see a major drawback here: - You get faster and more reliable updates, especially important for security updates. - The release schedule will be more predictable (I know a lot of people moved to ScientificLinux while waiting for the CentOS6 release) - It's binary compatible with RHEL (and therefor Ce…
What's their track record with Java, MySQL etc?
The OpenSolaris community is also thriving, and Oracle's partnership with Google has helped move Android forward leaps and bounds.
Oh yeah! Please lock me in to your crappy Red Hat knock-off so you can screw me royally if Larry changes his mind and wants to extract some money from its users. IMHO, Oracle is certainly the LAST company you should use any product from unless you are absolutlely forced to (like Java, unfortunately, or their bloated DB if your are in the financial industry). Once you are dependent on them, no matter if you are a part…
But, if I wanted a better alternative to CentOS, wouldn't I just go and use Red Hat? Why would I lock myself into a company that has this bad a track record?
Because with Red Hat you have to pay for access to updates.