Will Red Hat Survive? 158
An anonymous reader writes "Red Herring has an in-depth analysis interviewing industry experts on what the future of Linux distributor Red Hat will likely be now that Oracle is offering cheaper support and services essentially identical to Red Hat Linux. Will Oracle purchase Red Hat? Or is it not yet too late?" From the article: "Mr. Dargo countered that Oracle's move indicated a lack of understanding of the value that Red Hat's support and service provide. But he noted that Red Hat could be vulnerable if Oracle manages to provide better service. 'If the strategy at Oracle works out, Red Hat is going to face some serious issues, but I don't think it is going to work out,' he said. 'There are lots of opportunities for Red Hat to do some aggressive and creative things to turn around.'"
Re:Prices (Score:5, Informative)
Probably not (Score:3, Informative)
In my opinion, most serious developers will keep to a lighter distro, and most newbies will keep to a nice flowery distro such as Ubuntu, which prides itself on ease of use. Red Hat is no longer necesarry. Compettition will inevitably drive it away in the ever dynamic food-web of free software.
Identical? (Score:3, Informative)
Some people [groklaw.net] like to differ over that.
Re:Is this not an anti-competitive issue? (Score:2, Informative)
Fedora will never be a production OS (Score:1, Informative)
As Bruce Perens said it a while ago:
If you need a stable, easy-to-administer, well-established production OS, I would suggest Debian [debian.org].
Re:Prices--Red Hat way more expensive (Score:3, Informative)
Everytime I have approached Red Hat for volume licensing they are **ALWAYS** more expensive than Microsoft. In fact the latest bid is 100% more; that is Red Hat is twice as expensive. (this is not for AS).
Re:Prices--Red Hat way more expensive (Score:3, Informative)
1 CHF (Swiss Franc) = 0.80 US$
If you're a sub-15 people company, and only have one machine, Microsoft Small Business Server is a good bet. You can get the Standard Edition for 800 CHF, and the Premium Edition (includes SQL Server and ISA Server (no idea why you would want that)) for 1300 CHF. Each includes 5 User CALs, So for 15 people you need two more five packs or about 1000 each. This price doesn't include support, though. Also, i'm not much of a fan of SBS because of several restrictions (only a single domain controller, Exchange and DC on the same machine), but these are the standard practice in such small companies.
Microsoft offers their SBS server for up to 75 users. I don't think thats a good idea.
Companies in this size usually don't have any IT staff, so self help is important. With windows, the people at least feel that they can try to fix problem themselves (which they usually can't). With Linux, this isn't the case. (Just because windows server offers a GUI for 80% of it's functions doesn't mean that it's simple).
Windows is mostly the only choice if you are cooperating with other companies. Some might offer their shipping calculation program only for windows, some specialized ERP software might only be available or windows, etc. pp.
I've found windows to offer the best SMB desktop management, everything from redhat etc. seems to be geared at big companies with a standard desktop images. Group Policies are a fucking cool thing.
Our experience with Redhat support... (Score:1, Informative)
OK, actually, it was always terrible. Is this just our bad luck, I wonder? In any case, I wouldn't say that all RedHat support engineers are at the same level as Redhat's kernel developers - to say it mildly.
Re:Prices (Score:2, Informative)
We transitioned to SuSE with very little trouble, and we were happy with their aggressive march to the 2.6 kernel, which RedHat found to be premature. A couple of years later they came by again, and we thought that perhaps they would be a little less arrogant, and willing to talk about prices. Nope. Their attitude was, "SuSE will fail, and you will come crawling back to us."
This particular attitude of theirs wasn't just limited to our business. I heard it from other sysadmins who seemed to be genuinely happy that SuSE has worked out as well as it has. I'm now with a business that uses RedHat and they can't stand them. They are even thinking of moving to Solaris.
Re:Prices (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know if you've ever installed oracle, but some of the reasons why any good admin knows oracle is written by a bunch of incompetent java monkeys are:
#1. It requires a gui to install. (Not the newest XE, but seeing as it's not entirely popular yet, I won't include that here.).
#2. Passwords have no case preservation and use weak hashing. Easy as pie to crack.
#3. Virtually non-existent security team and patches.
#4. Unreasonably resource intensive. Default install will install tons of java, its own apache, use gobs of space even with no data stored.
The list goes on and on...
While a RHEL install has its downsides, an oracle RHEL should be enough to share the shit out of anyone.