This is exactly how I feel...My home box is alreday slack, and I am pushing the whole of the faculty where I work to change over to either Debian or Gentoo ( I would be Gentoo if I had a broadband connection). I think that RH really shot themselves in the foot here, there is going to be so much backlash from the community...

Go with Debian. Gentoo is too easy to break - and you may spend lots of time fixing it. Which is kind of the point of it really...

Gentoo is not appropriate for a large faculty - or any large organisation at this time. It is more of a pure Linux enthusiast's OS - or in otherwords Linux at its most pure.

Just my 10c worth... I don't see your faculty congradulating you if you have to spend 3 days at a stretch maybe twice a week working through minor compiler bugs...

Maybe its a very liberal faculty though...

Q

I am just a lecturer, it is the sysadmin that has the final decision when it comes to the migration. I suggested Debian especially for its stability, and then I added Gentoo since I heard so many good things about it. I have to admit that I have never tried it, at work I don't really have time to fiddle, and at home like I said I am on dialup, so emerge would be a pain, esp. with the kind of data rates we have in SA.

heh heh - maybe they got tired of the British Govt. calling for support. It is an odd thing to say tho. where did you get your source lokee?
anyhow - I wonder if the SCO lawsuit has anything to do it - the Judge ruled against them. It could their way of saving face - pulling the code out and switching the name. I am sure they have to do something about that ? Can anyone confirm my suspicion??

I've had Gentoo for ~6 months and I haven't managed to break it. Nothing that I didn't do intentionally.
It's just as breakable as any other distro. Less so, since you can always remove a package and add it back again.
No minor compiler bugs, just don't use the newest gcc that Gentoo comes with.
Read the docs, they actually warn you of that , and forums on gentoo.org have a lot of activity about that too.
Fun part with emerge, you can install it at work, emerge --fetchonly to get the packages, put them on a CD, and use them to a normal emerge at home

I have used Gentoo for 9 months. I have seen many things break and have fixed them all. It took time and dedication. Conversly you have had no such problems. Who's experiences are most valid I wonder? I think perhaps both...

It depends how much you like to mess with things, tweak things, change things etc... Gentoo gives you that kind of complete control. If you are really a very competant linux user, or a developer, you are unlikely to run into any major problems.

Q

Consider reading the many comments at the bottom of that article. Many of the people there point out where the reviewer is wrong and that she did several embarassing mistakes.

Or Fedora Legacy.

What makes me tick was that they said 'Linux' in general not 'RedHat Linux', they decided for everyone... screw them for their bad publicity.

As for sources check out the pages at:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie...nG=Search+News

If you want direct acces to concrete info, check out:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5101690.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/33766.html

Why, Why? I liked you RH, why did you have to mess everything up?

Well, Szulik is right about Linux and the consumer market. It is not ready yet for that target group and needs more time. If you disagree, you need to explain in detail.
Why? Why did you seem to misunderstand what Szulik tried to point out?

Mandatory reading:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1372650,00.asp

But would Steve Ballmer admit that Windows isn't ready for mission-critical servers? I don't think so!

Steve Balmer? Who is that? The only two guys heading MS I know of are Morpheus and Neo.

That's like comparing apples and oranges. Do you see media hype about running Windows on mission-critical servers? Do you see that Windows customers complain loudly about "Windows not being ready for mission-critical servers"? Szulik wants to avoid false expectations in the home consumer market. At the same time he points out that Linux can exceed expectations on the corporate desktop.

I'm not argueing whether it was clever to say it or whether the opportunity was chosen well. I just think he's right and he doesn't need to play the same bad game as Microsoft does. And somebody, who disagrees and claims that Linux (in general) is ready for the consumer market, should give good explanations as why that would be the case.

I gave Red Hat the benefit of the doubt and downloaded the Fedora Core 1. I find it to be the same basic distro that RH9 was. While I liked RH 9 alot, now that RedHat is cutting all the RedHat Network paid subscribers off, they have lost my business (but stole my $65).

I have recently switched to SuSE 9 on my laptop and desktop client machines and I am loving it. Better hardware support than Red Hat and a prettier skin on KDE. I will continue to use RH 9 on my servers (and 7.3) until support becomes a pain, then who knows. But SuSE has won my heart on the desktop that's for sure.

This is sorta responding to a lot of things on this thread.

First- I've used Linux for 3 years. I've used Mandrake primarily, RH 8 & 9 (for at least 2 months each), I've tried SuSE 7.x and 8.x, and I've now got Fedora running on my desktop. The servers I administer are Mandrake 9.x.

Regarding RH's decision- I feel for any sysadmin who has sold his Linux to his PHB's (Pointy Haired Bosses) on the "free as in beer" aspect. I know there are quite a few people who have juggled RH and RHN to run their servers on the download edition.... they've got some issues ahead, obviously. Mandrake? Debian? RHEL? SUSE? All have pluses and minuses. No easy answers.

Now as an individula desktop user, I've got no beef with Fedora or RH's decision. I've installed Fedora, and it has performed without flaw for a week now. In fact, in a few simple ways, it has actually simplified some things that were a problem under Mandrake 9.2- probably due doe a lack of understanding on my part, but still- works out of the box. I've never actually bought *any* distro, so I can't complain. I just appreciate the fact that RH set up the Fedora project. I hope the community gets involved heavily and eventually makes it a stable, supportable *free* choice that could fit production environments.

Errata works better for me than in RH9. In RH9, I had to register. With Fedora, I don't. (You'll get that notice if you click the up2date icon from the desktop- I believe it's in bugzilla. Just Alt+F2 and run up2date.) Add to the mix yum, and it's *way* better for me than RH9 was. No mp3 in xmms? Set up your yum.conf file like this one (http://fedora.artoo.net/faq/#FedoraYumRepos), then simply do yum install xmms-mp3. Want gxine? yum install gxine. Painless. This is a *great* addition to Fedora, and adds the single feature that made Mandrake so appealing to me (urpmi).

As to the comments the RH guy made on using XP as a general user desktop in Great Britian.

Deep breath......

He's right.

Hold on, hold on before you hit the reply button. I use Linux as my desktop every day. I have for 3 years. I find there is nothing I can't do because of it. I prefer it to Windows for a multitude of reasons.

But I also work with users. Not "users" like people who read Linux message boards and try new software and like to tinker and add RAM to their box. I mean "users" spelled with a silent "L" in front. These are the people who are astounded that *every* program saves files by using "File | Save". These are users who never understand that you can actually write a memo in an e-mail itself, and not do it in Word and attach it to an e-mail.

Simply put- most users of this type are computer illiterate. And don't bring up training. The reality is companies either do really good training for computers, or none at all. Most take the latter course.

We spend a great deal of time in my company dealing with people who can't even use Windows properly. The user doesn't care about OSS philosophy, or stability, or advances in ease of use. These people need tech support on an etch-a-sketch.

I've actually seen 1 user who has done the same job for 9 years. But if you arrange the icons on her desktop wrong- she can't work. After 9 years, she still only knows a little more than you could probably teach a monkey. "Click this, enter this, close that, open this, click this, enter this...." It is a HUGE mystery to her. No attempts to connect action to logic have worked.

The most dumbed down OS I know of is XP. And users don't get that very well. So you want to sit them in front of a Linux desktop and expect to not have a support headache? We already have that.

So the choice is either dumb down Linux, or train users better. Or both.

The issue is not whether Linux is ready for the desktop. It is *very* ready for the desktop.

The real issue is user familiarity and comfort with the logic of computing. See it from the users view. Sit someone in front of a Linux *or* Windows desktop that is properly set up for the users limitations and they won't care what they use.

That's how Linux wins the desktop. By being simpler to use for the "lusers".

Flame away.

A very well thought out arguement I must say. You are exactly right about the average user. I cringe when people see my laptop and ask me to set up Linux for them, because I know if I do my phone will never stop ringing. I love Linux, but until there are waaaay more gurus available to handle the idiot calls, I don't want to see it get too popular. My life is busy enough...