On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 09:29, William Hooper wrote: > RHL 10 isn't that big of an issue. You still have 6 months to decide what > to move to and test how it will work. Waiting until April and saying "the > sky is falling, Red Hat is EOLing RHL 9" is just plain dumb. > > -- > William Hooper Yes and no. Just keep this in mind. Microsoft, the "Great Satan" in the eyes of many in the Linux community, is STILL supporting Windows 98 even though (A) it's a piece of junk and (B) it's AT LEAST 6 years old if not older. So this "sticker shock" you're seeing is that there's a standard out there. And that standard is that when you pay for software (which RH9 users did if they bought the boxed set or paid for RHN) you get support for at least more than a year. In the case of Windows 98 6+. I'm not saying I agree that that's reasonable; especially when you consider that Red Hat is a much smaller operation than Microsoft (at least in terms of funds). I'm just saying that people are used to buying software off the shelf and getting more support than they received with RH9. RH9 was a very unusual case. They released it and almost as soon as they released it it was EOLed. That's not good for PR. That doesn't make the company look good. Most of us, who have been buying Linux distros forever (I've bought Red Hat 6.something, 7, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, Mandrake 8, 8.1, 8.2 and SuSE 8, 8.1 and 8.2) did so because we believed in supporting the Linux community in that fashion. Now that that model is quickly being replaced (since the companies doing the distros are public and have to answer to shareholders first, customers second) with a model where you're herded into subscribing to more expensive "enterprise" packages. Not everyone is an enterprise. In fact, I would venture that most people who got "hosed" by the RH9 deal were probably small businesses or individuals. They may or may not have the nimbleness to do a switch to a different distro, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be happy or should be happy. Upgrading isn't easy or painless and many of us, regardless of how few computers we have would prefer not to have to do it often. I know for my part that once I saw what was going on I switched to Fedora. Yeah, I have to upgrade more often, but at least I'm not paying to be forced to upgrade. I will never give another company my money again until they can guarantee me a stable product with a stable lifecycle where I won't wake up one day and find out that my OS, my entire computer life, essentially, has been EOLed 6 months out. Never. So I may never buy a Linux distro again. I've looked at Red Hat PWS. I've reconsidered SuSE. But this has been a strange year in which the ground has shifted beneath our feet. And I'm not going to feel safe until some stability sets in. Until that time I will not give these companies a penny. Not because I don't want to support Linux. I desperately want to support Linux. But until someone can prove to me they have a product I can buy and rely on for a couple years at a price cheaper than Win2k Pro, I see no reason to pay for a distro. Preston
