[Techtalk] Redhat vs. Fedora -- why I switched away

[EevaJärvinen]

On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 02:23:28PM -0500, Brenda Bell wrote:
> I remember this being a recent topic of discussion on this list and thought
> you might be interested in the interpretation posted on another list I
> participate in.  I'm posting the unedited text here with the original
> poster's permission:
> 

(snip away quite a lot)

> FreeBSD has dome similar to the implementation that
> Red Hat is attempting to do for years.  They have
> FreeBSD -Current for people that want the latest
> stable packages.  This is equivalent to Fedora.  They
> have FreeBSD -Stable for the people that want the
> stable version.  This is the equivalent to Red Hat
> Enterprise Linux.  The main difference is that Red Hat
> is now charging for their stable branch.
> 
> People really need to read what is REALLY going on
> before screaming that the sky is falling."

The sky is not falling.  RH just isn't going to support Fedora like
they did RHL.  I liked the backported patches, but RHEL (i.e. stable)
is too expensive.  Had I wanted totally cutting-edge there's always
Debian unstable, Gentoo or something else.  RHL didn't need much
configuring to keep it up-to-date, and the service they offered (RHN)
for USD60/year was good enough.  And the major versions of packages
didn't change every month or so.  I don't need the very latest; I was
happy.  Now I'm running SuSE, which did need its own tweaking to get
it to work nicely.  YaST2 does the updating now, and I don't have to
think about it very much at all.  Also, software major releases do not
change, just like RH.  No need to keep my brains so very up-to-date: I
don't have the time or the inclination.

I guess the clamor was coming from two sources: people like me who
can't get the service they got for a fair price, and from the people
who didn't want to pay but wanted some sort of stability without very
much knowledge.

Fedora seems like most other community-supported distros: I'm sorry
but I like a bit of corporate backing in my distro, especially when it
comes to packaging and package selections, and I'm ready to pay for it
(yes, I bought the box).  I'm not competent enough to use
community-supported distros.



Eeva

-- 
Ja nyt minä painun ruusutarhoihin
jotka puhkesivat tänne
ennen syntymääni.

                                              Mirkka Rekola