[NCLUG] a rather different view of the rh thing (a bit about sooze also)

[Mike Loseke]

 To clarify some of what John is talking about here, and some mis-labeling
that I've seen going on here, I'll throw in my 2 bits.

 RedHat's product line, that they plan on supporting moving forward is
this:

 RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), versions 2.1 and 3.0

 The packaging of RHEL is broken down like so:

 Workstation (WS)       - Two or fewer CPUs
 Enterprise Server (ES) - Two or fewer CPUs, less than 4GB RAM
 Advanced Server (AS)   - More than two CPUs up to 16 (currently)

 These distinctions are primarily for support level and cost reasons. WS
and ES are available in standard 9am-9pm EST M-F support. AS, in addition
to this, includes a "Premium" 24x7x365 support option. Premium, as you
would expect, costs more. Support for Itanium and Opteron are available
in WS and AS.

 There is also mention of a "Professional Workstation" version, part of
RHEL, somewhere on their website which costs a little less than WS and can
still use the RedHat Network (RHN) for updates. Last I read anyway - this
one's pretty recent I think.

 These are really the only terms that RedHat marketing is using. I can't
address pricing here, for NDA reasons, but I believe they have the general
pricing on their site (they really could use some better layout and
organization). It is based on a per machine, per year, basis though.

 Both 2.1 and 3.0 have dedicated lifespans of 5 years. This includes
security and bug fixing. The tracks I've seen closely resemble those by
Sun and HP for their operating systems. RedHat is using this 5 year cycle
to convince software vendors that RHEL is the linux version of choice to
go with - and alot of them are. The EDA vendors we deal with on a daily
basis have jumped on that wagon and we spend millions on them every year.
(Lots of tools, lots of licenses for each tool.)

 That which RedHat marketing droids refer to as the "consumer release"
(aka RedHat versions 7.2, 7.3, 8, 9, etc) is moving off to Fedora as
everyone has pointed out. What that means exactly for the free version
users most of us are is yet to be fully determined. I'm looking forward
to see how it all works out and am expecting generally good things. I
expect them to treat it more as a beta release codebase - they've all but
said as much, and that's pretty much how they were viewing the consumer
release when they started on the RHEL track.

 RedHat has made this definitive split to concentrate on the profit center,
like any smart business would. The too-fast release cycle of the consumer
version is too much to keep up with for most tool vendors so they pick a
release and stick with it. Many still say that they only support either
RedHat 6.2 or 7.2 (for library versioning generally). Some of these tools
work ok on 8 but not on 9 which can be a problem. So you can see why the
tool vendors are happy to see RHEL come along.

 Whether or not Fedora will be any less capable, reliable or supported
than RHEL - I don't know, we'll have to watch and see. Community support
will probably spring up pretty fast around it and I'd be surprised if we
don't see a RHN replacement for Fedora before the end of the year.



Thus spake jbass at dmsd.com:
> 
> Daniel Miles <milesd at cs.colostate.edu> writes:
> > For those of us who are a little out of the loop, could you maybe
> > provide a little description of what you mean when you say "red hat is
> > moving away from the desktop?"
> >
> > Sorry, I'm just so curious I had to ask.
> 
> There are several ways to read between the lines here, some view it as
> Redhat pulling out of the desktop, which is false as far as I can tell,
> as they plan to keep a DeskTop product for some time to come.
> 
> The breakneck 6 month release cycles are HORRIBLE, and prevent a shrinkwrap
> software market. A large part of the development Linux community expects
> this, and accepts being on the leading edge. That function is being handed
> over to the Fedora project. It's still not clear to me if they might not
> release the next desktop which has been cycled several times as the beta
> severn this summer and fall.
> 
> The Advanced Server product, which many run know as AS2.1 was a deliberate
> choice to slow the release cycles so that platform interface and support
> stability was managable ... and RedHat could put serious value added into
> and pull a revenue stream from, since it wasn't expected to be free on
> the web site.
> 
> For those who have not been watching the RedHat betas, there has been a
> split in the AS beta, which now includes the WS Workstation, or DeskTop
> version targeted for a different market which expects release and support
> stability for more than 6 months. This appears to be the new RedHat
> supported Destop, priced at about $150/seat retail, and is not likely
> to be freely available on the web site.
> 
> So the strong support for Fedora, is a reasonable strategy, given the
> Redhat DeskTop is very likely to soon be a closed binary with bundled
> value added. If they had tried this two years ago, there would have
> been a huge roar ... there still might be.
> 
> John
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