[NCLUG] Looking for user reviews and installation CD-ROMs

[R P Herrold]

On Mon, 6 Nov 2000, J. Paul Reed wrote:

> On 06 Nov 2000 at 22:53:59, R P Herrold modified my mailspool to say:
> 
> > Goodness -- Please don't rely on 'heard' -- Pull and burn the
> > ISOs, or do a ftp upgrade or install ... Decide for yourself.
> 
> Please don't assume that I automatically listen to every slashdot3r 5cr1p7
> k1ddi3 who couldn't get RHAT 7.0 to work perfectly.

... Fair enough; you've changed the terms of your criticism
from "I've heard ..." to "I've read ..." -- but I still don't
see a statement that you've actually seriously _tried_ the
product which you are so venomously tearing down.  The
original poster asked for user reviews, and I offered a user
review, rather than repeating hearsay and running a bad news
clipping service.

... but what does the unconventional spelling have to do with
anything I've said?


You've raised some other criticisms.  I am not a Red Hat
employee; this is my take on them:

The GCC / claimed binary incompatiblity criticism again is
based on the sour grapes of some developers who are unhappy
that Red Hat was unwilling to wait for them to decide the
product was ready, and so it finished it to a releasible
state, differientated it, and released it. -- Tough -- That's
part of what the GPL is about.  A Freedom to Fork issue is
present here.  See:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html at
"Obstructing Custom Adaptation of Programs"

Red Hat install and setup support will stand behind what they
have shipped under the terms of their contract if you've
purchased an official boxed set, I'd assume.  I don't know --
I've never paid a cent to Red Hat for their product, although
I use it all the time, since the 3.0.3 product.  (I've had a
KRUD subscription for a year, though -- highly recommended -
I've no economic interest in Tummy) If you've downloaded a GPL
image, RH'll still sell you support -- as will Tummy, and as
will I at Owl River in the sysadmin aftermarket.

A like inability to reach a current featureset stable revision
caused the GCC/EGCS fork a couple years back -- and the
issuance of the fork caused the GCC folks to finally get off
their duff's and relent to committing long needed patches to
GCC.

The up2date product is not my cup of tea -- as I said before,
autorpm meets our sysadmin needs just fine with the KRUD CD's,
and some support scripting and custom admin FTP pools.  But
(1) I corresponded with the up2date developer two months
before the latest incarnation, and reamed it out -- the reply
was that the marketing folks rushed out the first release,
that he knew its faults (which we discussed), and they were
addressed.  (2) The memory leak in the up2date product was
corrected within a week of the public release of the 7.0
product (it had been identified in the beta-tester product
late in the devel cycle, for there was extreme emphasis on
getting the installer and updater really 'right', less on the
new parts.)  An ordinary end user of that product would have
been updated, and not been affected.

(I would note that the fix was publicly announced, rather
than slip-streamed in, as has been a squable over on the
OpenBSD tech list within the last month.  This is to Red
Hat's credit.)

Don't like the RH update network, or related update daemon?
-0- Okay, don't use them.  That they are installed is not
hidden (they're on the manifest, they're in the online help at
install time, they're in the install log, they show as one
configures services for a given runlevel), and they can be
de-selected during install if one wishes not to have them on
your hard drive.

Because you've seemingly NOT installed and use-tested, I guess
that you are unaware that free, anonymous, non-priority update
services are presently provided by Red Hat -- I don't
understand the criticism of giving away anonymous free updates
of a freely available GPL'd product.

As to the prior install consent issue, an autorpm driven FTP
update does not even install those components.  Personally I
think it is pretty neat that I can bump a 3.0.3 Red Hat box to
7.0.  That is impressive support of their line to my thinking.

Are you also 'disgusted' with the KRUD CD's, or our (
http://www.owlriver.com/projects/ ) projects page where GPL'd
packages are made freely available too? -- Under that kind of
analysis, 'all' Kevin and company do is 'free-ride' on the
effort of others.  It is thus, throughout the Open Source
world.  I disagree.  I know that the compilation, re-building,
integration, and tweaking which go into building a CD are real
work.  I appreciate it.  I pay my way in the Open Source
community by contributing.

-- Russ