[ic] OT: Alternatives to Red Hat

Jon Jensen jon at endpoint.com
Wed Nov 5 18:08:05 EST 2003


On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Ed LaFrance wrote:

> Thanks for piping in with your opinions. I had also asked this question of 
> a trusted source whom is not on this list, and based on their response, as 
> well as those made here, Debian and Slackware seem to have percolated to 
> the top of the candidates list; FreeBSD is also a close contender, but with 
> the caveats which Mike pointed out above.

Ed,

Have you tried the Fedora test releases? I have, and if Red Hat hadn't
changed the name, nobody would have noticed they're doing anything
different. They're just like Red Hat Linux 10 would've been, without a
box. It's true that the package upgrades situation will only become clear
in time, but because Red Hat's own employees have extended up2date to
support apt and yum as well as Red Hat Network, you can now easily use
standard Fedora tools to update packages without cost, from your own
repository if you like. That solved one of the biggest annoyances for me,
since there's now an easy way to use up2date but still include my own
builds for a few custom packages.

Now granted, I'm not thrilled about the threaded Perl build. But that goes
back to RHL 8.0 and many other distros are going that way too, so jumping
distros isn't going to be a quick fix.

I've been quite happy with Debian and Slackware when I've used them, but I
don't think the Fedora change so far is any cause for concern, but rather
brings Red Hat Linux out of the confines of Red Hat's corporate needs and
to the community. If anything is problematic at this point, it's the name
change that will confuse our clients ...

Jon


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