[Techtalk] RedHat - Fedora Linux

[caitlynmaire at earthlink.net]

Hi, Telsa, and everyone else,

Thank you so much for the clarifcation.  It seems that support 
(patches, etc..) for Red Hat through version 9 will die.  It seems 
that 9.1 or 10 or whatever will instead be called Fedora Core 1, 
but that it is essentially the same thing.  Of course, no shrink 
wrapped copies and support limited to community and mailing 
lists, but there will be errata (patches, whatever) available for 
download.  That seems reasonable to me.

To the struggling corporate entities who wanted something 
free or cheap, and to small businesses, the new division between 
Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise may not be acceptable.  They may 
choose another distro which has a low cost but commercially 
available support package for small business.  Red Hat 
doesn't seem terribly concerned with this market.

Also, I look at the price points Red Hat has set for Enterprise
3 and I think that a lot of people who saw them as an 
inexpensive alternative to Microsoft will think again.  In that
sense this move hurts those in the Linux community who want to
see Linux as a genuine mainstream alternative to Windows. 
Mandrake is in financial trouble and is therefore quite scary to 
business.  Debian and Slackware are virtually in the same class in 
terms of support as Fedora, though some commerical support for 
Debian by third parties does exist.  SuSe is another possible 
option, but their presence as a company in the U.S. is somewhere
between minimal and non-existant.

I don't know if this will help Red Hat turn a profit.  I seriously 
doubt it.  I also don't think this will help corporate acceptance
 of Linux at all.

In some ways, for individuals, Linux is returning to it's roots.  You 
have small community based distros that may employ a handful of
 people or simply be labors of love.  You have Fedora that has 
commercial backing but are still claiming to be community based.  
We, as individuals, aren't likely to buy an expensive "enterprise" 
distro like United Linux wants to be, and which Red Hat 
Enterprise and SCO (if it survives, which I doubt) claim to be.

Linux may end up once again being of, for, and by geeks.  I 
don't know if that's good or bad.

All the best,
Caity