[wellylug] Enterprise Linux

[Cliffp]

On 20/12/13 10:43, Grant McLean wrote:
> On Fri, 2013-12-20 at 10:18 +1300, Neil Ramsay wrote:
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> At work, along with Active Directory authentication, we are talking
>> about moving towards standardising our Linux flavours.
>>
>> Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is an obvious choice for paid support,
>> but we are also looking at a free options.
>
> I'm not an RHEL user but I do end up providing support to people who use
> my software on that platform.  The impression I'm left with is that RHEL
> combines Open Source and "enterprise" in a way that seems to bring out
> the worst attributes of each.
>
> In the interests of stability, the software update rate is glacial which
> means that security updates are backports of patches from much newer
> upstream versions and often introduce new and unrelated problems.  Some
> of these problems linger unfixed for years.
>
> Presumably you have existing applications that you're running on Linux.
> It would be worth looking at the languages these apps are written in and
> what attitudes those language communities have towards RHEL.  For
> example step one for deploying a Python/Ruby/Perl/PHP app would probably
> be compiling your own build of a recent version of the language that the
> community can support.  You'll then be left with the burden of
> maintaining that build yourself and deploying security releases and bug
> fixes as they become available.  At which point you have to ask what
> exactly are you paying RedHat for?
>
I agree with Grant that support for RHEL versions of software is 
unavailable through the community (with the possible exception of the 
Fedora guys). If you post on a mailing list "I have such-and-such 
problem with version X of the software" the first response is "Upgrade 
to a supported version" where "supported version" means supported by the 
developers of the software. If you raise the issue with RedHat you will 
receive support from people who, while they try hard, are not experts in 
all the software that is supplied through RedHat. And it might take ages 
to resolve an issue.

Cynically, though, if you pay RedHat for support and they don't provide 
it, it is, theoretically anyway, no longer *your* issue.

Cheers,

Cliff