Tom Ryan wrote: > Havoc, > > Points noted.. > > However, what about those of us who purchase a few RHN subscriptions to > support their RH linux? > > Obviously, I realize that you can't answer on this, but maybe you could > push it along. > > The real issue for us (a cheap edu) was the cost differential between RHEL > and RHL. > > I realize you might not care about our money each year, and I realize that > (i believe this was stated) fedora upgrades will be carried via RHN. I > have to ask myself if RH is still the linux we want to use. This is a critical issue for me also. I work for a .edu, volunteer for another .edu, and run a home network. I run RHN demo accounts on 9 systems (the home and volunteer .edu environments) and RHL basic accounts on 4 systems (work .edu). The things that are important to this mix are (in rough order of priority): cost, security, and stability. The things that are not important are support and the latest technology. In the past, RHL boxed sets seemed to provide a reasonable balance: low cost (you only have to buy one set), security updates in a timely manner by RHN (or apt if you relied on external services), and stability somewhere between RHEL and what the Fedora Project seems to be aimed at. This mix seems to be particularly unfriendly to RH now. To get stability and security, we have to dramatically increase cost, and to decrease cost, we have to decrease stability and possibly security. I really like RHL. RPM (lockups aside) is great. The interface is quite good (although better icewm support wouldn't go astray :-). However, because the emphasis is moving away from something that is practical, i will have to reconsider the distro i use when the next release comes out. I really don't like the other options much: - Debian: stable & unstable seem very similar to Fedora & RHEL respectively, and thus come with the same set of problems (except cost), not to mention learning new ways of doing certain important things. - Gentoo: Feels like they conceived the project by saying "let's take the worst parts of the *BSD projects and use them on Linux": everyone has to be a build engineer. (I once watched a work colleague who used FreeBSD spend a whole day breaking his system when he tried to install galeon.) - SuSE: Development process is closed and download policy is not very "friendly". - Mandrake: Didn't they go bankrupt? The list goes on... Can't there be a middle ground? I suggest this: - Provide RHEL binaries & ISOs by download as per current RHL. - Drop support for RHN demo subscriptions. Transition Fedora and RHEL download customers to apt, relying on mirror sites to provide bandwidth. - Provide the option for people running RHEL to take up varying levels of RHN functionality. (The functionality increase from RHN basic to RHN enterprise is insufficent to justify the cost at the moment.) - Provide the option for people running RHEL to take up various support contracts. Most of the other aspects of the Fedora Project seem good, and they could coexist with the above easily, IMO. Paul http://paulgear.webhop.net A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right. Q: Why should i start my reply below the quoted text?
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