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Eugenia Loli
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Link is dead. Mod this
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http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/eval/
http://www.centos.org
I’ve just hit upon a brilliant idea – pretty much every site you go to these days wants you to create an account and/or register with their site. It’s first of all time consuming and second of all hard to remember all the user names and passwords you have for different sites.
So the solution is to run a “CDDB” like site that has your name, address, phone, email, (and if necessary your most intimate details should you choose to offer that info up).
Every site that wants you to register should have a quick reg button that simply links to the CDDB server and gets the relevant information – and pastes it for you and then if needed you can post extra info needed by that particular website – for instance if they want to know what OS you run or what bands you like.
What info you add to the regserver (CDDB-like) database is entirely up to you, you give everybody an alias name (unique ofcourse) and tell everybody you live on 123 Mainstreet and that your phone number is 555-1212 and give them a hotmail account.
All registration pages should have a standard format (like the login/password two box system). This way the system can pretty much prefill your info into the standard name/address/email entry fields.
Registration needs to end!. Its useless data to collect.
People already know quite a bit about you by looking at the ORIGIN fields. They know if you’re working for IBM or Microsoft or the US Govt.
I know Microsoft tried it with Passport and failed but if something like this were run by W3C – or perhaps IBM (since they are the universally trusted OSS company) it would be the greatest service after google.
You’re right, they tried that, it was called Passport, and it failed miserably.
IBM may be “the universally trusted OSS company” but that is a very new designation. For many years, people hated IBM. No big business can be trusted with this info.
The download didn’t work for me with Firefox. The screen gave me an error “You don’t have permission to access /info.”
So I tried in IE, and surprise, there was a survey, which I took, and it worked. What’s going on? Anyone else have this problem?
> You’re right, they tried that, it was called Passport, and it failed miserably.
But passport was mainly geared for e-commerce (right?). This is about registering at websites like Redhat’s website to download a stupid 30 day eval version – surely any information that is entered at Redhat’s website is no more sensitive than me posting on usenet with a .sig saying where I work.
> No big business can be trusted with this info.
But this is precisely what we are doing by registering at IBM or Redhat – we’re trusting them with our info.
Been using RHEL as centos 4 rc1 at least I will not get stuck after 30 days. I dont miss the redhat centos has good icons and besides the updates are always happening behind Redhat.
“But passport was mainly geared for e-commerce (right?).”
No, passport was exactly for what the original post wants. It failed miserably (as a follow up post said), because centralized infrastructures fail miserably regarding security and privacy. Coincidentally, you can think about why the “benevolent dictator” (ultra centralized government) is also a bad system of organizing society.
We have been doing some of our testing on it where I work and it has performed quite well. It looks vaguely like Fedora, but they couldn’t really be any farther apart if you tried.
> Centos is just a robber.
True to an extent. We use CentOS on our production servers at work – the only reason why is we didn’t buy RHEL is we couldn’t justify spending so much money on ES lisences, for a product that was essentially dead now (RHEL3). The third party software we run doesn’t support RHEL4 yet, so we are stuck.
CentOS is a rip, but is also a good alternative when it makes sense.
I get really fscking tired of hearing that CentOS is a ripoff. Freely distributing a rebuild is not a ripoff. Who is being ripped off? Redhat? They benefit as much from the GPL as anyone. I actually like redhat, unlike many people who see than as non-1337 greed heads, but I do think that their pricing is a little on the extra-high. I use fedora, but “Use fedora.” is a stupid reply to “Hey, I want to run RHEL, but can’t afford hundreds of dollars for a support contract — what should I do?”
> for a product that was essentially dead now (RHEL3).
If you have a subscription to RHEL3 you have a subscription for RHEL4.
Why would I want to do that? I’ve already got Fedora Core 3 and soon 4.
Enterprise service and support is what Red Hat offer and they do it very well.
The fact of the matter is CentOS is always going to be playing catchup to RHEL so when critical things happen, Red Hat will be there first to hold your hand through the process. I have mates who have used CentOS to study for their RHCE.
IMO by selling RHEL AS ES WS & Desktop, they are selling their ability to provide a secure, opensource architecture that anyone and they know how best to support it. Anyone can distribute the same exact stuff, and rightfully so. But they wont get the insight, best practices or support they need to take it to the top. anyone who has seen the knowledgebase knows RHN is awesome and worth it.
> for a product that was essentially dead now (RHEL3).
I am sorry, but do you actually have any clue what is the point of RHEL? One reason to subscribe to RHEL is because it has a 5 year life cycle. And no, the 5 years are not over yet, and RHEL 3 is not dead.
how is redhat as/es different technically from fedora?
> how is redhat as/es different technically from fedora?
http://fedora.redhat.com/about/rhel.html
If you do this… go ahead and get the AS Server version… there is no difference between all the different versions except for the packages they include.
– The workstation WS version includes only the base plus desktop environments (KDE/GNOME) etc.. and also includes development tools (GCC, etc)…but does not include stuff like a web server, SQL server, LDAP server, SAMBA server etc..
– The desktop version is the exact same as WS but does not have any software development tools.
– The AS version is the primo server version which includes a comple of extra kernels for large memory/smp configs but also includes the EXACT SAME kernel as the ws/desktop version AND IT INCLUDES all the same software as the WS version including KDE/GNOME/Games etc.. as well as development tools and also all server stuff like Apache, MySQL, etc..
Lesson, get the AS version and you get everything that will work good as a DESKTOP or a SERVER.
The AS VERSION is pretty much what you normally get with every other distro in the world plus a special kernel you can install(if you want) thats for large memory boxes.
> – The workstation WS version includes only the base plus desktop environments (KDE/GNOME) etc.. and also includes development tools (GCC, etc)…but does not include stuff like a web server, SQL server, LDAP server, SAMBA server etc..
RHEL WS have web server, SQL server and SAMBA server.
http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/compare/#note1
Packages that are not in Enteprise Linux WS or Red Hat Desktop include: amanda-server, arptables_jf, bind, caching-nameserver, dhcp, freeradius, inews, inn, krb5-server, netdump-server, openldap-servers, pxe, quagga, radvd, rarpd, redhat-config-bind, redhat-config-netboot, tftp-server, tux, vsftpd, and ypserv
> – The desktop version is the exact same as WS but does not have any software development tools.
they are not installed by default but they are all available in WS (use up2date).
i totally agree that calling centos have complete legal freedom to distribute a repackaged distribution, but i am getting tired of the fact that people always call it ‘free version of redhat enterprise linux’
yes i agree that centos does not have any technical differences from redhat enterprise linux, but i think everyone will agree that redhat has the right that no one will use their trademark to promote their own product.
Now that centos have completely removed all references of redhat from their website, i think we should stop calling it ‘free redhat enterprise linux’
As far as my understanding of GPL goes, i think the GPL allows one to use the source code and not the trademark.
I agree. I’ve never referred to it as free Redhat, but I do think that a good rebuild is a good thing. Honestly, I doubt that I’d choose CentOS as my server OS in an enterprise situation. I just think that people who bitch and moan that Whitebox and Centos are “stealing” from Redhat are wrong, and completely so.
If there products are just as dead as their registration procedure…..
I do agree that CentOS is a good rebuild of RedHat, but that is the problem. They do not have the (costly) support of RedHat. So what I was going to say, I work for a School District. Last year, we were paying RedHat for support for all of our servers. But about halfway through summer break, we starting switching our smaller servers to CentOS. Why? because being school district means that the US government gives us money, and we have to budget for that. We just could not keep spending almost 5,600 dollars a year on support. So we just migrated our website and file servers (not very important to the operation of the school district), to CentOS. It has saved us around 4,000 dollars a year. That is what CentOS should be used for, non-mission critical servers. Please for the love of God, and your job, do not put CentOS on your Mission critical Servers, if something goes bad and your can’t fix it, your screwed.
~Alan
I think RedHat has a really good thing going with CentOS. An above poster was spot on in that many organizations will use CentOS for many of their machines that they just can’t or won’t pay RedHat for a support agreement. This means RedHat doesn’t make any money, but you are still getting sucked into RedHat as a supplier.
But this “barrier of entry” makes it harder to keep the Open Source community around your product alive. Many folks see Fedora Core as just a free QA goround for RedHat. There’s no “Eating and sharing our own dogfood” mentality there.
Truly enlightened people will see the situation for what it is. CentOS -IS- the free as in beer version of RHEL, but with a deniability force field around it that makes the lawyers happy.
RedHat bought Cygnus (“The GCC People”) and Cygnus operated under this model with some success. I think it’s just a matter of perception that RedHat can still fix.
…ever heard of bugmenot.com?!
CentOS is not ripping off anyone … they are meeting the requirements of RH to redistribute GPL software.
And, there is a thing called ‘Fair-Use’ with trademarks. Dodge can mention Ford in ads and on their website.
CentOS can say where it got its code to rebuild, it can also compare itself to other Linux products.
It can’t (and doesn’t) claim to be RHEL or contain RHEL … or claim / imply it is supported by RH. CentOS doesn’t do any of those things.
—————
As to using on production servers, it depends. It is the same programs that run in RHEL … things work the same. If you can do your own support (the Mailing lists, IRC or forums) then it is a cost saving alternative for any server.
If you need RH support, then, by all means, pay for it. RH offers good support, albeit expensive.
As someone who uses RH support, I find that the community help provided by Centos is not quite as good as RH, but it is very good, none the less. I find the help on the #centos channel of irc.freenode.net to be timely and accurate … as well as the help on the Mailing Lists ( http://lists.caosity.org/mailman/listinfo/centos ) and the forums ( http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/ ).
If you can support your own linux install, you should look at CentOS.
You might because the SELinux in FC3 is broken and doesn’t do much to begin with. In RHEL4 it’s strong by default, and it doesn’t break the bootup
.
It’s a very nice system, I get it through my university. And No, CentOS is not equivalent. Unless you don’t *need* the immediate security updates.
And seriously, it kind of is leeching. I mean come on, they’re just rebuilding src rpms and redistributing it. Legal or not, it just strikes me wrong. And RH contributes plenty back, ask the Gaim devs
.
If I download the “official” rhel cd’s and play around for a month and do not buy the support.
I decide to keep using it and just rebuild the update src.rpms when they come out, am I leaching?
> If you have a subscription to RHEL3 you have a subscription for RHEL4.
RTFP
I already have redhat EL 3.0 WS and I had just recently downloaded my ISO files of RHEL WS 4.0. My entitlement runs until november of 2005, but I signed up for this just so I can get a copy of Redhat EL 4.0 AS. We use Redhat ES on our servers at work and I wanted to check out the differences between the two. I’m having some problems with setting up POP3 on a recently loaded Redhat EL 4.0 ES “X-Terminal server” and I am hoping that AS uses a different POP3 service.