European marketing director Paul Salazar admits there have been plenty of screw-ups along the way but that Red Hat is now working hard to please the open-source community and investors alike.
Red Hat: Walking the Linux tightrope
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Eugenia Loli
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redhat used to be a pretty good distro, up to version 6.2. then things began to stink. i remember the graphical package manager (a front end to RPM) being flawed in RH 7, 8, and 9. and 8 was the nicest, as it stopped working out of the box, just after you installed all the packages.
then came fedora… and right now it might be one of the worst distros i’ve ever seen. it’s a resource hog like suse, as difficult to get configured as slackware, and comes by default with gnome, wich i personally dislike.
hope they’ll get things on the right path. i don’t want another mandrake in the history of linux…
Good interview overall. I like RedHat, but RPM still scares the hell out of me.
They have my respect, my thanks for their OSS contributions, and my wishes that they succeed, but at the moment, they’ve got some catch up to do.
That’s your opinion, I’m still most happy with Fedora. Yes it’s not perfect and a little rough at times, but it’s still closer to perfection than anything else I ever used.
If you don’t like GNOME, that’s not the fault of Fedora. There aren’t many other distributions out there which are based on GNOME, completely Open Source and designed to “just work”. Maybe the new Debian based distribution jdub is working on will become a possible alternative.
Nice interview they got there!
I hope speed and resource useage are at the top of their list of priorities, coz that’s all that’s keeping me away.
Frankly, I doubt they’ll give much consideration to such matters, as that not where their priorities lie, for various reasons. Let me just say to anyone from Red Hat dev, on behalf of the innumeral users like me, that would switch to Fedora if they were to greatly improve peroformance: if you want us as users, you know what you’ve got to do. (Hey, I can dream, right?)
I agree that Red Hat may have problems, especially from individual/home users’ point of view. However, individual, home & hobby Linux users are not Red Hat’s main customers. Red Hat targets big enterprise and business customers mainly, who are ready to pay for support etc – and it seems more and more so too.
I suppose that for customers that run commercial servers, or who run mostly just standard desktop and office software, Redhat may still be a good choice. Like SUSE/Novell and Sun JDS too. They are big commercial distributions with lots of commercial and other support availabe.
Also it’s true that the bleeding edge “test version” of Redhat, Fedora, may have too many problems from a typical home/hobby/individual users’ POV too.
i don’t want another mandrake in the history of linux…
What’s wrong with Mandrake? IMHO, of the three main RPM-based big distros Mandrake is the best for individual and home users (free ISO downloads, easy updates and upgrades, good community etc.). They seem to have overcome their economic problems too. Mandrake may have some bugs sometimes, buts bugs are not too uncommon in other distros either…
Anyway, personally I would nowadays recommend non-RPM distros for individual and home users (usually they suffer less from dependency hell too), something like Debian Sarge with its great new installer, or also Slackware, Gentoo and Arch Linux if those other three would suit someone better than Debian.
They went from a system that had the RPM problems and other similar things to one that is easy to configure and install, faster, and seems to be on the right track to improving or fixing the problems surrounding RPM.
I personally think it should be done another way. But you got to admit, its hard to compete with the complete system RedHat offers. And they don’t show any signs of slowing down.
I haven’t even looked at FC2 and there’s talk of implementing the NSA’s SE components in the 2.6 kernel, better KDE/GNOME integration, etc. I’d say they are right on schedule. By the time AS becomes obsolete by another Linux distro they’ll have the Fedora Core to harden into another server product. Its like having Debian’s stable and unstable and offering customization and support for the stable product to meet market demands.
RedHat already offers about as much automation as Gentoo, Debian, BSD, etc. And soon they might have better GUI and DB tools to automate network support on their server line, similar to the way SuSE is headed. Both will meet the desktop at about the same time, though I would imagine SuSE has more focus on that target right now.
that Mandrake and SuSE are both based on RedHat and RPM. How much they have diverged over the years I dunno.
I just realized I misspelled innumerable in my last post. ROFL *dork*
Mandrake and SuSE are both based on RedHat and RPM
SUSE was never based on Redhat. The only things in common are that SUSE uses RPM packages and has similar business goals. From Distrowatch: SUSE “was originally based on a German distribution called Jurix, which is no longer maintained”.
Mandrake may have originally been a KDE-based desktop version of Redhat but it’s been much more than that for many years now.
I just realized I misspelled innumerable in my last post. ROFL *dork*
It’s ok; we won’t hold it against you.
Suppose you’d rather use RH’s tested and debugged corporate desktop GNU/Linux OS instead of Fedora — is it just a simple “download and burn your own iso” affair? Has anyone tried this?
Red Hat’s a really good distro, and as far as Linux goes, better than most. What they were doing with the earlier versions was interesting, the graphical installer and desktop were really professional. But like most distros, it’s hampered by a strained design, making it difficult to move from one point to the next without awkward configuration.
Linux is basically straining itself, trying to cover too much ground, too thinly and too casually, and the end-user experience become unsettled because of it. It ends up seeming like an introduction to the world of Unix, rather than the all-powerful desktop and server solution that it makes itself out to be. The further it’s stretched, the less secure it becomes.
That’s why I’ve got BSD installed. It’s firewalling features are excellent, as well as all its other security aspects. Its precise design makes it possible to configure and use without having to continually check forum postings for instructions on configuration. Basically, everything works properly, including its ports collection. Its also got an array of advanced features that make it exciting, like its CVS upgrading and source-based compilation, that you only find in a few Linux distros.
Basically, if you want technology to work, you need precise design, and the more advanced the better. So, if I have a look at Fedora, it’ll be for interest’s sake. I’ll be sticking with BSD.
No, it’s more like a compile from source sort of affair, as that’s the only way you can get it, short of buying a liscence from RH.
OTOH, I think the White Box distro is basically a rebranded RHE, compiled from sources. They *do* have ISOs you can download.
I like Redhat for so many reasons.
1) In 1999 they gave me a way to get away from Microsoft. I had to learn to make my sound and printing work but I figured it and many other things out. It just wasn’t right to pay all of that money to MS. I bought several boxed sets, 7.3, 8.0 and downloaded 9.0 over the next few years.
2) Got mad at them when they quit selling a user version (for $40?) but I switched to Fedora Core and it was just fine. I got it buy signing up for WideOpen Magazine for $39.95/year. I think that was the amount. Fedora Core 1 came with the magazine. Then after the first edition of the magazine they must have had some trouble because they refunded my subscription price but promised to send the magazine for free in the future. I haven’t got a second magazine yet but I got a free Redhat Cap in the mail the other day. I really like that.
3) I did order a set of Fedora Core II cd’s from a download service for $8.99 the other day and when I get a spare Saturday I will rebuild my computer.
All in all I am very Happy with Redhat and their direction. I am not a techie just a home user that thinks the operating system the world runs on should be open source for so many reasons.
Redhat seems to have principle to me.
Well, I guess it is when you go to install it. However, if you go to the nice custom selection screen, you can *gasp* choose KDE instead of GNOME. You don’t even have to install GNOME if you don’t want to. It’s really very simple.
I used to be a hardcore Debian user. I got tired of the outdated packages, arrogance of package maintainers, etc. I tried Gentoo for a while, and while I liked it, it was just a little more work than I was interested in. I started on Slackware when I first used Linux, so I already knew I didn’t have enough time or patience to go that route. So, I gave Red Hat a try again. My first experiences with it were in the 5.x/6.x days, and I did not like it. However, this next time I tried RH8. Hmmm, it was pretty nice and everything worked mostly out of the box. I then switched to RH9. That was even better. So when Fedora came out, I jumped at the chance to use that.
So where am I today? There’s really no other Linux system I’d rather work on. I love the ease of which you can install the distros in a variety of environments. I love the continuity of administrative tools that Red Hat has put forth. Hell, I’ve installed it on everything from desktop machines to corporate workstations, from servers to routers/firewalls. They’ve done an awesome job, and I can only see it getting better.
Do they have problems? Of course they do! But I’d rather the problems be because they’re trying to push forward and offer a better, more reliable experience for the user. I know that with using RH/Fedora/RHEL, it’s going to just work 99.99999% of the time.
I tried Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, Corel Deluxe (not too bad actually for the time), and a few others and none of them did it for me. But then I was spoiled with OS/2 at the time but looking for something else due to lack of games, etc.,
I bought an iMac version B with Mac OS 9.x. It was pretty good but still not OS/2.
Then I tried Lindows 3.0 (NON Root) and paid the $50 for Click-n-Run. This was easily the best Linux distribution that I’d used and I was starting to take it seriously. But I was seeing the new G4 iMac “lamps” with OS X 10.2 and bought one of them.
A few months later Lindows 4.0 came out and that was even better than 3.0. Then shortly after that my PC died. With my iMac doing everything I wanted I didn’t spend the money to get my PC fixed. But if I did I definintely would be running LinSpire on it.
You can’t even compare Lindows to Red Hat because Lindows is not really Open Source. It’s fine that they try to offer something that’s competitive with mainstream desktop OS’, but it’s just a completely different story.
And when it comes to non-geek/non-developer home users, Red Hat is very honest in that they don’t believe their OS to be the best choice for this market _yet_. And to be honest, I really wouldn’t know any convincing reason at the moment why such a user should go with any proprietary Linux based OS, unless they are on a budget and don’t have any Windows yet. While Windows might be insecure, getting some clue, a virus scanner and a few sane applications instead of IE/Outlook would probably be less work and cheaper than getting Lindows anyway.
“You can’t even compare Lindows to Red Hat because Lindows is not really Open Source.”
Could you please explain? Do they violate some of the OSS licenses they’ve committed to upholding by distributing OSS software? I’ve downloaded source packages from them before.
Maybe you just mean they don’t provide binary isos for free…? I really am interested though.
“You can’t even compare Lindows to Red Hat because Lindows is not really Open Source.”
I agree with Nate on this, Lindows/Linspire not only contributes finacncially to alot of projects that you probably use. (KDE, KDE-Look, Wine/Codeweavers–old relationship) but they also either are are in the process of releasing Lsong’s and LPhoto under the GPL. So what is your definition of OSS?
But I like the old Red Hat distro more.
I agree that Red Hat may have problems, especially from individual/home users’ point of view. However, individual, home & hobby Linux users are not Red Hat’s main customers. Red Hat targets big enterprise and business customers mainly, who are ready to pay for support etc – and it seems more and more so too.
That’s a misnomer I’m afraid. The vast majority of people using desktop Red Hat these days are the home users and individual hobbyists. Apart from Fedora (which doesn’t count), Red Hat don’t have a recognisable commercial desktop distribution to put in front of people. I hear this argument of “Oh, that’s not our target market – we’re going for business customers”. The business customers are not coming, and to get them to come you need a distribution that fits together well for individuals just trying it.
The more people respond by saying “That’s not Red Hat’s or Sun’s JDS target market”, the more people will miss the stuff that really matters entirely and ensure that nothing actually happens on the business user front.
You can’t even compare Lindows to Red Hat because Lindows is not really Open Source.
So what? If you target business customers, that’s the question you’ll be faced with. How will you answer it, and how will you define ‘not really’ to them?
And to be honest, I really wouldn’t know any convincing reason at the moment why such a user should go with any proprietary Linux based OS, unless they are on a budget and don’t have any Windows yet.
Err, because Sabon said it was much easier for him/her to use and generally get up and running? Maybe you misread.
Linspire is hardly proprietary. It is based on a normal Debian distribution, with a customised KDE desktop and some proprietary bits and pieces on the top. That’s the sort of thing people apparently want to encourage. You know “Oh, people want to write proprietary applications and the LGPL is the best license for that rather than paying a Trolltech tax…” You know, the sort of stuff people usually bring up over such issues.
While Windows might be insecure, getting some clue, a virus scanner and a few sane applications instead of IE/Outlook would probably be less work and cheaper than getting Lindows anyway.
So what’s the point of using Linux at all then? I’ll rephrase:
While Windows might be insecure, getting some clue, a virus scanner and a few sane applications instead of IE/Outlook would probably be less work and cheaper than using Linux in general (Mandrake, Suse, Red Hat, Xandros or any distribution) anyway.
You can insert anything you like in here, and I’m sure Microsoft appreciates the advertisement because you don’t like the fact that Linspire (or Xandros for that matter) has a couple of proprietary applications on the top. What about Suse and Red Hat shipping Real PLayer? No, it isn’t Helix Player, as it is used to play proprietary formats.
What makes it proprietary is that there are components which you need a license for, and which basicaly prevent free distribution of it, so it is proprietary. Otherwise people would be able to share the isos they download for Linspire. Ditto for Xandros. Redhat, Fedora, SUSE, Mandrake, now those are truly free.
What makes it proprietary is that there are components which you need a license for, and which basically prevent free distribution of it, so it is proprietary. Otherwise people would be able to share the isos they download for Linspire. Ditto for Xandros.
Yer – which is the sort of stuff people who complain about proprietary software development (long flames, long threads etc.) license issues want to encourage. There are per-seat support costs and contracts, especially with Red Hat.
Again, a business customer will say “So what?” People talk a lot about these mythical business customers, but it’s quite clear that they don’t have any idea what questions they are likely to be asked or what is actually going to matter to them. Arguing about some proprietary bits and pieces isn’t, as difficult as that may be to swallow.
Redhat, Fedora, SUSE, Mandrake, now those are truly free.
Until people actually develop proprietary software for them, which is a sign of demand.
Come on I purchase 8 ES Advance server 3 liceneces and spent over a month sending emails and posting helps request to their “official” channels and the only reply I got back was “I will have someone contact you” which never happened. The reason for my request. Postfix ships “OpenLDAP enabled” but it does not work and my customer refused to accept custom compiled code (thats another nightmare) in the end Red HAT US side got the stateside contract for the project so they fixed it and I got the fixed RPM (get this) through my client. The last Red Hat I liked was 7.3, but this was the icing on the cake I now use SuSE for almost everything (and am looking pretty intensly at Debian, Slack and a few other – SuSE is great but it doesn’t fit every install.
I installed Fedora x86_64 the other day, and it was pretty poor to be honest. I’m a mandrake user, but I was dissapointed with Mandrake’s AMD64 version (mostly because of a lack of third party packages). So I download the Fedora DVD for AMD64, and the install was smooth. I log in to Gnome, and get a message that nautilus has crashed. Good start, the file manager/desktop won’t start. The mixer volume keeps sliding down and muting. Various other apps like to randomly bomb.
Hmm, so I update with yum. Most of these problems go away (nautilus works again, yay). Then I try to add mp3 support. Again we have a lack of 3rd party packages for AMD64
I can get xmms-mp3 support pretty easily, but the gstreamer-mp3 plugin is harder. I try freshrpms, which seems to have a lot of AMD64 rpms. But they conflict with others I got from a different repository. So I uninstall the ones from the other repository, and install the freshrpms, and boom it works (though rhythmbox still crashes).
Fedora still feels sluggish, even for AMD64. It could just be GNOME that’s slow, but my i586 mandrake on the same computer running KDE 3.2.2 feels SO much faster. KDE is way faster than GNOME IMO, and always has been.
Bottom line, I’m still looking for a good AMD64 distribution. Meanwhile I continue to use 32bit ones :/
A week ago i’ve installed Suse 9.1 prof. (over my rh9 installation) – it was one of biggest mistakes of my life. This distro did some unexpected crashes (at diiferent ocassions) – simply it locked up and i could not do anything with it – keyboard didn’t response, mouse too. Next day i installed rh9 back, did some updates via apt-get – and.. it just works without ANY problems.
IMNSHO Why would anyone care if the distro is open source or not, leave that for Mr.Stallman. Customers want cheaper and better products, ease of use and good support, and, I believe, don’t give a **** about “open-sourceness”.
Customers want cheaper and better products, ease of use and good support, and, I believe, don’t give a **** about “open-sourceness”.
Great generalisation. Some *do* care about that, but they’re a minority. They’re especially a minority in the home-end user environments. On corporate environments the numbers are most likely different.
you give people a free os and they think they have the right to complain. take what you can and like it. if you want quality then pay for it you bit*htards.
With a clown like Szulic as CEO, that Red Hat faces an uncertain future should surprize no one. In its previous incarnation there was never an end to its misrepresentations and its business school schleeze. Why should that be any different now that their so-called “model” has changed? Frankly, I’ve been relieved hearing less and less about them over the last several months. Hearing nothing would be even better.
jlowell
Considering what a tough market it is, and how hard to please everyone, Red Hat really does very well. Give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, their software all remains free, even if they don’t want to let hardware vendors and ISPs take them for a ride easily.
Marvin,
If you can use slackware then why are you having trouble configuring Fedora? I’m using a heavily modified version of 3.0Test1 with development RPMs for everything the kernel and glibc (compiled each for i686 instead of the default i386) to GNOME 2.7 to Evolution without a problem. It’s almost as easy as Windows XP now to configure, and I think I have a pretty good idea since I have Windows XP installed on the first partition
Fedora is not perfect, but it is IMO a major step forward from RedHat. I’ll agree with you that it tends to be a bit of a resource hog, but I personally don’t mind that. It doesn’t hog resources on my box (Athlon XP 2400+/512MB of RAM) the way that Windows XP could on a bad day. Maybe I just haven’t had a really “bad day” yet with Fedora, even though I’ve used every official release and 2-3 of the development releases.
“you give people a free os and they think they have the right to complain. take what you can and like it. if you want quality then pay for it you bit*htards.”
Everyone has the right to complain. Don’t be ever silent, speak what you think and complain, otherwise nothing will change. It’s a very important thing to do.
Sleeze? Pardon me, but on-balance, RedHat has been a very non-sleeze company. They made quite a few gafs with the transition to RHEL and Fedora, but I’d hardly call that sleeze.
Care to share some knowledge?
At first, I was put off ( okay, I was !@#$!@#) when Red Hat discontinued the personal edition you could download for free or buy.
They were and are a company focussing on the enterprise market since that is where the profit is.
Red Hat, like IBM and HP, contribute heavily to open source but they cannot continue to do so if they go out of business.
Creating a community distro like Fedora and rolling the best into their enterprise line makes sense for all.
Instead of continuing to complain about the situation, I see the larger picture where linux gains additional market penetration and robustness through corporate contributions.
At first, I was put off ( okay, I was !@#$!@#) when Red Hat discontinued the personal edition you could download for free or buy.
—–
Redhat Linux has splitted into fedora and redhat enterprise. if you want it for free you can download and use fedora or redhat clones like caos/taolinux/whitebox build from redhat EL srpms.
That’s a misnomer I’m afraid. The vast majority of people using desktop Red Hat these days are the home users and individual hobbyists.
—–
any stats to back up your claim?, guess not
“Linspire is hardly proprietary”
a distribution which includes proprietary software like CNR is generally considered to be a proprietary distro. whats your definition./?
Yeah, they bungled the transition in terms of PR and helping people really, really understand what was going on.
Of course, the alternative was the RedHat would eventually go under because they simply couldn’t keep up with demand for their old products. They made very little money off of RHL, which they subsidized for a long time. Eventually, without change, that subsidization would kill them and they knew it.
Fedora is still mostly a RedHat product, though they’re trying to grow a community. I think it’ll work out in the end, but only time will tell.
After working with Mandrake, Redhat 6.2 until 9 and Fedora Core 1, then switching to Suse 8.2 and 9.0 and also having fun with Gentoo I have come to this conclusion.
Of the mentioned distros there is non more professional than Suse. Remember that you can download Suse 9.1 Personal E isos from the net, and you can install Suse 9.1 Professional E from different FTP-servers.
Just the font settings is miles ahead rest of the linux dists, and very much in par with Windows. Their Setup program is the best in the market. Their nvidia driver installer and their dual screen settings and tv card support …
I liked fedora core 1, but I like Suse better. Fedora is simply not tweaked and brushed as suse.
Unlike Fedora core which will not play mp3s and some other multimedia from the start, SUSE will do that and much more.
Of course there are som small details that are irritating when switching to SUSE from Fedora like default settings of VIM, but no major problems.
If you are thinking of a linux to work with, look up SUSE!
I think it’s all about personal preference. I think Fedora has a major advantage on Suse because it has support for YUM/APT, adding several big software repositories to the distro. NExt to that apt is stable and easy to use. YAST2 on the other hand is still pretty bad doing package mangement.
SUSE has its good sides, but so do other distributions.
anonymous,
Sorry I haven’t responded until now. Hope you’re still there.
Explain please how instituting an annual fee for user updates and then abandoning the arrangement midstream is as benign as a gaff. I call that sleeze, purely and simply. Szulik certainly knew the direction in which he was taking Red Hat when he authorized the program that began charging for the updates. Happily, I was never stupid enough to permit them to charge me in the first place; I dodged that bullet by finding another distro. But there were a great many that were caught in that trap and complained bitterly about it here and elsewhere. I think sleeze is being kind, frankly.
Regards.
jlowell