I undstand concerns. No one wants to idly sit back and allow Yet Another Company gain control of the computing market and dictate the options available to advocates everywhere. It's happened quite often. IBM. Microsoft. Sure there were competitors. HP. Boroughs. Sperry. Digital. Lotus. Apathy begat those monopolies and the lack of freedom that has ensued.

I've poked at Linux for quite a while now. Since the 0.96 days. Distributions I've used over the years include SLS (anyone still remember them?), SlackWare, RedHat, and Debian. Being in the USA, I haven't really had any impetus to try other distributions such as TurboLinux and SuSE, although I've read reviews that speak their praises.

The original SLS and Slackware packages were cumbersome. However, Distributions were a huge improvement. Not having to boot Minix to cross compile the necessary utilities. Not having to download all the various sources and put everything together, in the appropriate places on the filesystem. Scripts to tweak for what you had, or didn't have. Obviously that's got certain appeal, piecing together your own OS from scratch, but that gets old rather quick.

Slackware was great for me, because it had more features, and was better put together than the short-lived SLS distro. Sure there were others, such as TAMU, and Yggsdrill (or however it's spelled).. but with Slackware, I could download all the packages, or even a CD, and install on a new 486 computer and be up and running in no time. Tinkering with programs that *I* wanted to, or even just sitting back and reading news and e-mailing my friends.

I then, cautiously, moved to RedHat. v2.03. It was a big step, I really liked my SlackWare. However, RedHat was the new distro on the block, and even Linus used it. I read it so in the newsgroups, so if it was good enough for Linus...

I found that RedHat rocked. And each successive version kicked absolute butt. As I dealt with more and more Linux machines, I saw obvious problems (package relocation, in-place remote upgrades, installing to automounted directory structures, etc.) but many of those have been addressed. Their install procedures have gotten so much better, even my M$ enamoured friends can install it now. It's leagues better (and easier) than any NetWare install (with the possible exception of NetWare 5, but I digress...). There is TONS of support for their RPM format. And if you are using a RedHat derived distribution on non-Intel architectures, it's cakework to grab the src.rpm and --rebuild for your architecture. Can you say Alpha, SPARC and PPC folks? It sure annoys me when only x86 versions are available.

The obvious rebuttle is, grab the .tar.gz dummy! Use the Source Luke! Well, I do. Linux is only 1 OS. There's Solaris, SunOS, HPUX, etc. Their package managment is horrid at best. .tar.gz is the only useful alternative. But I admit, I'd rather --rebuild a src.rpm and have the software managed, especially in an Upgrade, than I would with software arbitrarily installed in /usr and /usr/local.

I have to say that my tastes at this point are more in the Debian arena than anything else. I dislike the complicated debian source build procedure, and I also would like to see DEB more on par with RPM on optional packaging for software, but I understand that it's more difficult to maintain a DEB package than it is to write a RPM .spec file.

What's my point? Well, if you've made it this far, I'm sure you can already infer what the point is. RedHat to this point has only done good. They have helped bring Linux exposure. Quicker than it might have happened. Some of the attention has been brought in the form of Commercial support. I'm not here to debate that issue. There is a real need for Commercial software. I hope that someday there are 1 or more truely free activly developed and supported equivilents of Commercial software packages.

RedHat has pushed certain portions of the distribution envelope. (RPM, GNOME, glibc 2.0, X on Notebook chipsets, GUI configuration for major components of the system, etc.) If at some point RedHat does something you disagree with, then voice your opinion. I'm sure it will have support, especially if it's a real bonehead mistake that they made. If not, then next upgrade of your system, switch to some other distribution that doesn't make you irate. You'll learn something in the process. I know I did in my RedHat -> Debian transition.

And so what, if in thought experiments or reality, that commercial only software is "supported on RedHat only". Support the free software equivilents. If you can't do it with code, do it with documentation. If you can't do it with documentation, do it with testing. If you can't do it with testing, then do it socially (among friends, newsgroups, etc.) Give them Moral support.

If you really need that commercial package, and RedHat has diverged so much from the LSB that it won't run on Linux-Mandrake, TurboLinux, Caldera OpenLinux, Debian, etc. then run RedHat. It's a good system.

I can tell you this tho, Actions definitly speak louder than people who whine.