[ic] OT: Alternatives to Red Hat

[Barry Treahy, Jr.]

Ed LaFrance wrote:

> Dear all -
>
> I apologize if this is a bit off-topic, but I think that this is a 
> good forum for this issue. As many of you probably know, Red Hat is 
> undergoing some strategic changes which will result in the near-term 
> demise of Red Hat Linux as most of us know it: versions 7.2 - 8.0 will 
> no longer be supported as of the end of this year; currently-shipping 
> version 9 will no longer be supported after April of next year. Red 
> Hat will instead focus on their Enterprise product, which is no doubt 
> impressive - and has mandatory licensing and subscription fees.
>
> For those of us primarily concerned with building and operating web 
> servers, this is a bit much. Red Hats Fedora project might be a 
> possibility, but it's unclear what shape that is taking just yet. I 
> would appreciate hearing any opinions on the other Linux dist's from 
> those whom have had the opportunity to use them for some time, again 
> in the context of interchange and web server services.
>
> Thanks in advance for all remarks!

Frankly, I like Slackware and with the next set of servers we deploy, 
we'll be using that once again.  RH has shuffled and shift the contents 
of the OS so much that I've tired of the moving target and though the 
idea of RPM's was good, they have been nothing but headaches for me 
since much of what I use is built from tarballs...

Barry

-- 

Barry Treahy, Jr                       E-mail: Treahy at MMaz.com
Midwest Microwave                          Phone: 480/314-1320
Vice President & CIO                         FAX: 480/661-7028