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I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#41

Post by INTPenis »

GordonS wrote: post #32
INTPenis wrote: post #27

[flagged]

I'm curious what features RHEL has over Debian, that make it worth paying for? I used CentOS for years, then switched to Debian, and it's been plain sailing, so I'm wondering what l could gain with RHEL.

Sure, I'm reading from my personal notes since I've answered this question so many times online. And keep in mind that I wrote these notes a couple of years ago.

I work with large clients and having a known corporation behind your product is pretty nice, besides that RHEL-compatible distros are still the only ones supported by a lot of proprietary enterprise software.

I'm not only a RHEL-convert, but an SElinux convert, and I think it's pretty neat. It can completely sandbox an application, but it does have a steep learning curve.

Red Hat are behind a lot of innovation within the entire Linux ecosystem.

Dnf have some features that large clients require, like history and rollback.

Debian apt (last I checked) started services on install, which can be very disruptive. It also means they sometimes uninstall similar services because there's a conflict.

Cutting edge podman/oci stuff, signed container images, and more.

And before you reply with "yes but Debian also has X", keep in mind that Red hat has probably been doing it much longer.

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#42

Post by HL33tibCe7 »

poo-yie wrote: post #7

I'm surprised at all of the drama surrounding Red Hat's decisions. Red Hat is a for-profit company and not a charity. They (Red Hat) don't make any claims of offering RHEL for free to the whole world. If you want that, Canonical's Ubuntu may be a better option for you. Am I missing something?

The point is that this is a stupid decision. It will turn people off Red Hat, and at the same time it’s incredibly annoying and inconvenient for a large number of Rocky/Alma/etc users.

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#43

Post by lagniappe »

donatj wrote: post #24
lagniappe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm asking this non-facetiously: Is there a wikipedia page or a written record of all the people/corps who've been taken to task in court over a GPL violation, or a large company such as IBM? If yes, was the penalty commensurate?

This appears to be a decent though seemingly incomplete list with outcomes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigation

Thanks, this is just what I was looking for.

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#45

Post by springogeek »

donatj wrote: post #10
poo-yie wrote: post #7

I'm surprised at all of the drama surrounding Red Hat's decisions. Red Hat is a for-profit company and not a charity. They (Red Hat) don't make any claims of offering RHEL for free to the whole world. If you want that, Canonical's Ubuntu may be a better option for you. Am I missing something?

You’re missing the fact that they are pedaling GPL software, and thus they are inclined to be offering it for free to the whole world, definitionally.

The source of GPL software can be sold, it just has to be available to users of the software.

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#47

Post by jmclnx »

buzer wrote: post #37
jmclnx wrote: post #35

>Red Hat seems to be upping the limit to 240 sockets per developer as of this writing -- EDIT: I read twitter, seems it may mean number of machines as opposed to open sockets. But a very confusing post. I stopped with RHEL 2 months ago at work, I use Slackware at home. What does that quote mean, if I get a RHEL developer license, am I limited to the number of open sockets ? That almost goes back to the per user licen…

> am I limited to the number of open sockets I assume they mean CPU sockets.

I was thinking the same, if so that is a direct line to how AIX is provisioned, limitations on use and pay more to get more.

I the author of the post says, time stop RHEL support. I wonder if/when the FSF will weigh in.

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#49

Post by eastbound »

xt00 wrote: post #40

Could somebody who maintains a particularly important open source software change the license to say basically “you must release your source code to anyone who requests it free of charge whether they are a customer or not”? Yes Redhat is a for profit company, but them deciding to make a business off of software that has licenses that might change to their detriment is their problem. Oh wait is that what they are doin…

Free has never meant monetarily free. Open-source means you can recompile, and thus maintain after the EOL of the provider, and code secrets aren’t secret. This is already a step above proprietary software.

For example: Wordpress themes are OSS. You must pay the gatekeeper, but you can inspect the code.

But free lunch is something else. Which OSS developers can also require, I’m not discussing that.

Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

#50

Post by volkadav »

teilo wrote: post #13
hospitalJail wrote: post #4

Is this a clickbait title? Or do I misunderstand the word enterprise? They are not done with using Linux for "a project or undertaking, typically one that is difficult or requires effort." or "a business or company." They are no longer going to use a specific version of linux that was made by "a business or company." Do people really care that much about linux distros? Between 2 decades of personal use and a few year…

Yes, we care about flavors of Linux in the enterprise. RHEL is an industry standard distribution that nearly all vendors support. We have a significant amount of commercial software that is only supported on RHEL or its derivates. Not running on a supported distro? You get no support. That’s a non-starter for mission critical systems in the enterprise. We used to be able to run this software, fully supported, on Cent…

Yeah, I'm hopeful the five year support window for Debian LTS releases now will help drive that migration. I suspect though the lowest-effort path for migrating from one commercial vendor to another will be towards Canonical, given Ubuntu's LTS releases and existing infrastructure around commercial support / certified hardware compatibility lists / etc. I may not be a huge fan of some of their decisions over the years but as my objections have tended to be technical rather than business/contractual/ethical I think they'd be nicer to deal with than IBM or Oracle, heh. :)
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