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SUSE is forking RHEL

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Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#191

Post by mst »

bonzini wrote: post #27
mst wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time (some years back now, it was a 5.10 patch and a 5.8 rpm) they mis-backported a perl patch to work around a bug in a deprecated CPAN module for one of their enterprise customers and in the process caused a 2x-30x slowdown of lots of other newer code (including the library that had replaced it in the majority of production environments by that point) was 'fun'. Took me a couple years to get together a coalitio…

To be honest it's a pretty good track record if you can only remember one instance of botching a backport, it's many years old, and it didn't have any security impact unlike Debian's ssh key generation.

Given I work for https://shadow.cat/ and we do primarily perl/CPAN contracting, consultancy and commercial support (and don't run RHEL ourselves) I remember this one because I had to help multiple customers and probably by the end three digits' worth of companies via community support to work around the debacle.

I suspect more man-hours were lost to the (now reversed for quite a while thanks to the Fedora team) decision to have their 'perl' package only be half a perl install (and to mass report the resulting problems that decision created to cpan authors without ever sending a single patch) but the original subject was things they botched by accident rather than things they broke deliberately.

Though the uninformed arrogance behind the poor decisions and dismissive attitude to the resulting problems, even when they were impacting RHEL support customers, was very similar in both cases.

Had they responded to realising they'd completely broken a bunch of paying customers' primary revenue generating applications by actually trying to do something about it I would have been happy to file the original mistake under "shit happens." As it is, I don't think 'pretty good track record' applies, I'm afraid.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#192

Post by chasil »

Spooky23 wrote: post #139
tyingq wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RHEL is designed to make forks difficult to do without infringing on trademarks.

Better let Oracle know!

An interesting thing about Oracle Linux...

  $ ssh me@myol7.myplace.com cat /etc/oracle-release /etc/redhat-release
  Oracle Linux Server release 7.9
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.9 (Maipo)

  $ ssh me@myol8.myplace.com cat /etc/oracle-release /etc/redhat-release
  Oracle Linux Server release 8.8
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.8 (Ootpa)

  $ ssh me@myol9.myplace.com cat /etc/oracle-release /etc/redhat-release 
  Oracle Linux Server release 9.2
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 9.2 (Plow)
I guess Oracle doesn't remove all the branding. I don't remember how CentOS handled this.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#193

Post by cloin »

Setting aside the implications of the move Red Hat made for a moment, can we all just appreciate what a perfect storm of terrible messaging they've settled into with this one? From what it sounds like, the announcement surprised a lot internal associates not working on RHEL that are now falling into this trap that Red Hat created.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#195

Post by themerone »

SSLy wrote: post #148
tw04 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US market is primarily RHEL. Historically the EU market and SAP shops were SLES. I admit I’m far enough removed today that I’m not sure if that still holds true.

My feeling is that most engineers outside of Germany prefer RHEL to SLES.

My feeling is most engineers prefer Debian. It's managers that tend to prefer corporate solutions.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#196

Post by chasil »

geerlingguy wrote: post #176
bonzini wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between package documentation and system documentation. Red Hat contributes package documentation upstream, but system documentation is by its nature distro-dependent. Red Hat has contributed work that made distros more homogeneous ( cough systemd cough ) and excellent package documentation for that work; but also got flak for that...

They also have soooo many good articles (which are helpful not just to RHEL) behind a subscription wall. If you do a lot of work in the rpm ecosystem, they're like the Experts Exchange of Google search, with how many times you see an exact bug report, then you get to the page with a tease of your exact answer, but it fades into the login required bit.

If you download the Red Hat developer edition and run a "yum update" once every couple of months, then you will get access.

The developer edition is now more inconvenient, as you have to reapply once a year.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#197

Post by nunez »

Honestly, this is a brilliant move. Fork RHEL and pay to keep the open source community around it alive (Rocky, Alma). It's like EEE in reverse.

Between this and Rancher (which is gaining a lot of popularity within the enterprise), SUSE is really stepping it up.

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#198

Post by rjzzleep »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #151
tw04 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US market is primarily RHEL. Historically the EU market and SAP shops were SLES. I admit I’m far enough removed today that I’m not sure if that still holds true.

Enterprises don't care what distro they use, and SuSE knows that. Enterprises care about the reputation of their professional services provider. RHEL is increasingly seen as threatening its own place in the market, and enterprises want to be sure their multi million dollar investments will be stable over the long term. Paying SuSE for support makes sense if you believe they will support you better over the long term…

From what I've seen big enterprises have thousands of RHEL or SLES licenses and the whole thing is managed by one guy who can hardly migrate from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 because of the huge backlog of work he has.

For the average enterprise switching from SLES to SUSE RHEL means that update will happen in 5-7 years

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#199

Post by cjm42 »

chasil wrote: post #192
Spooky23 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better let Oracle know!

An interesting thing about Oracle Linux... $ ssh me@myol7.myplace.com cat /etc/oracle-release /etc/redhat-release Oracle Linux Server release 7.9 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.9 (Maipo) $ ssh me@myol8.myplace.com cat /etc/oracle-release /etc/redhat-release Oracle Linux Server release 8.8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.8 (Ootpa) $ ssh me@myol9.myplace.com cat /etc/oracle-release /etc/redhat-release Ora…

redhat-release is a symlink to /etc/centos-release:

  $ cat /etc/redhat-release 
  CentOS Linux release 7.5.1804 (Core)

Re: SUSE is forking RHEL

#200

Post by nunez »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #93
freeone3000 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't figure out why RHEL compat is so desirable. Hey, here’s a comprehensive guide complete with commands, expected outcomes, and side effects of each command for setting up a Windows Domain using an RHEL domain controller: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_single... Oh, that’s for 7.5? One that’s 15 years old and no longer under standard support? It still works! Wait, but you’re a new custom…

I wish I could upvote this 10,000 times. Documentation isn't sexy or something. I don't know why Linux documentation sucks so much, but Redhat makes it suck must less. It takes lots of effort, money and writer hours to create the kind of documentation that Redhat maintains and businesses love documentation. A HOWTO or a FAQ are not documentation. I actually prefer man pages and I dropped Linux for my personal project…

Because most devs hate writing and maintaining documentation. Simple as that.
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