The second beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, code name “Nahant” is available for download and testing. Announcement, release notes, download location or from a mirror.
Red Hat Announces Second Beta of Redhat Enterprise 4
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Yep, I’ve kind of noticed. I guess that RHEL 4 is the accumulated expertise from Fedora (read as bug reports from the guinea pigs). Now more on topic, it is mostly Fedora Core 3, but with added patches and stability. I think that it will be a cool product, even if a little bit to overprised for what it offers. Linux shouldn’t be free of cost, so that Companies can make money to develop it further, but I think that Red Hat has totaly forgot about the home user. And no, Fedora is by no means a distro for the home user. Hint: look at SuSE Professional, that is a distro for the home user.
Just my 2 cents.
PS: I know that we’re not on /., but 1st comment!!!
” guess that RHEL 4 is the accumulated expertise from Fedora (read as bug reports from the guinea pigs”
not at all. fedora isnt just a test bed for dumping stuff. redhat needs fedora for a active user community. stop blabbering
“inux shouldn’t be free of cost, so that Companies can make money to develop it further, but I think that Red Hat has totaly forgot about the home user.”
why cant it be free?. you have got that totally backwards. if its free companies can still use it to develop new stuff for free or for cost. redhat never targetted home users. there isnt much of a desktop market for linux. workstations and thin clients are targetting by redhat desktop
“why cant it be free?. you have got that totally backwards. if its free companies can still use it to develop new stuff for free or for cost. redhat never targetted home users. there isnt much of a desktop market for linux. workstations and thin clients are targetting by redhat desktop”
I don’t agree with ur opinion, it’s good to have commerdial Linux, so company can earn some profits for their next products development, it’s clear that talented people are abundant but we need money to hire them to write good programs that contributes back to our beloved open source commmunity.
Why should it be free (as in beer)? There are probably half a dozen very good rebuilds out there, most of them are free as in speech and beer.
While you guys keep telling us how RedHat screwed everyone over I’ll keep seeing them sell more copies and get more users. Apparently some people are happy not that you’d know it listening to posters on message boards.
If what you’re given for free isn’t good enough for you, then fine. When I bum a cigarette I don’t yell at my friend cause he smokes lights. If you did that to me i wouldn’t give you a thing id say if you don’t like my brand go find someone else.
If people actually BOUGHT the $39 copies of linux I bet red hat would still have them, problem is 99.9% just downloaded it. See there is this thing, if you spend more than you take in that is bad.. and if you take in more than you spend, that is good. Most busineses pay attention to that model.
When SuSE starts getting rich selling its $39 version let me know, till then *yawn* Whatever red hat is doing is working cause the competition is being left in the dust. SuSE is a far cry from a serious Red Hat competitor still. Anyway you slice it if people pay for linux they buy RedHat. Don’t tell me i’m wrong either cause SuSE’s/mandrakes sales are far behind.
– “Linux shouldn’t be free of cost, so that Companies can make money to develop it further”
Linux is open source. It is free. It was a community effort in the begining and didn’t include any type of business models. Some people figured out a way to make money off it. Also the final version of all RHELs are free! (you just have to compile it yourself) You just pay for the support. That is the open source business models. Businesses charge for support and consulting!
” And no, Fedora is by no means a distro for the home user. Hint: look at SuSE Professional, that is a distro for the home user. ”
Actually Fedora is a general purpose distro i.e. it can be customized for different target: desktop, workstation or server. You compare Fedora, a free distros (without proprietary stuff) with SuSe Professional, a commercial distros (with proprietary stuff) which does not make any sense at all.
” guess that RHEL 4 is the accumulated expertise from Fedora (read as bug reports from the guinea pigs”
Not just, but also a free hacker version for the one`s that want it free.
If you look at the packages they are more bleeding in Fedora than Redhat beta and that say`s something. It`s like Debian stable vs testing.
And if you look at how Fedora bugs are fixed- normally with a never version of the package, rather than a bug fix- you have to ask your self why that is, when stable (Redhat) is not, well it is to push new features like selinux wich have been tested for a year now ( they use more time on this, than bugfixing) openssl=same version all year long, well tested, while other packages just get`s updated since they know that it will be bugfixed later.
I actually might by Redhat WS for my home box, they only thing I don`t like about Redhat/Fedora is: base is large, they more or less config the whole distro for you vs Debian.
It`s slow, however VERY stable.
and yum vs apt, I am not even going there
If people actually BOUGHT the $39 copies of linux I bet red hat would still have them, problem is 99.9% just downloaded it
How do you know 99% downloaded it. How do you know it’s not just 10% who use RH for free ?
I am a Linux user, but if Microsoft had produced an operating system (Red Hat 9) with one year of support and given you no other option to get security updates, people would be crying foul and screaming all the way to Redmond.
In Red Hat’s case, people excuse the unexcusable. Is it a great company and have they done a lot for free software? Sure and I appreciate it. That does *not* mean that we cannot hold them accountable when they screw up and the Red Hat 9 fiasco was the biggest mess in the company’s history.
The fact that you were able to get third-party updates (through progeny) speaks of the strength of the open source model, but does not redeem Red Hat or excuse their poor handling of their customer’s trust.
And anyone who says otherwise lacks any objectivity whatsoever.
Eu, I think the problem with the Red Hat 9 “fiasco” is that it was the end of RH’s old commercial model (which is basically “make a small profit from the minority of desktop users who actually paid for RH9”) to their new model (“launch a completely free distro for desktops/servers and then have a range of supported commercial products for companies”).
What you’ve missed is that RH9 can maintained as follows:
1. Progeny updates as you mentioned – $5 per month per machine I believe, which is not unreasonable. These seem to be the most frequently updated patches, so are arguably the ones to go for if you want to keep RH9 well up-to-date.
2. If $60 a year is too much, then there’s the free updates from the Fedora Legacy project, but they don’t seem to be as frequent or up-to-date as Progeny’s.
3. Did you know you can actually upgrade from RH9 to (at least) Fedora Core 1 using the “upgrade” option on the FC1 install CDs? Just a thought (FC1 is now in Fedora Legacy as well).
So there are two ways to keep RH9 up-to-date plus an upgrade path into the Fedora Core releases and you’re *still* moaning that the RH9 -> RHEL/Fedora transition was a “fiasco”? Yes, Red Hat may have handled the transition a little more smoothly, but RH9 users weren’t left completely in the lurch.
A bit off topic but does anyone here know when Fedora Core 3 Final is supposed to be released ?? thanks
Eu:
I am a Linux user, but if Microsoft had produced an operating system (Red Hat 9) with one year of support and given you no other option to get security updates, people would be crying foul and screaming all the way to Redmond.
You seem to forget that unlike Microsoft Windows 9x users, RH9 users could upgrade to FC1/2/3 for free. As I recall MS never have gave Windows 9x users a free upgrade to Windows 2K/XP, it just stopped giving them security upgrade. Even worse, being closed source, you can’t pay an outsourcing company (such as progeny) to keep your install base up-to-date. You are being forced to pay full money for an upgrade. Plain and simple.
Gilboa
To Gilboa and Anonymous,
You both have your head stuck up your respective posteriors. Fedora Core 1 was not an upgrade for anyone that had a propertly set up Red Hat 9 server. You don’t venture from the knwown to the unknown without due reason. And when you set up a server, you put the time to configure it properly so that your time managing it is reduced. Time is money.
The fact that I could move from a tested release to an untested one is no upgrade at all, particularly when FC 1 ended up being far less than stellar. And I am not comfortable with the way that security updates are being released under the Fedora-legacy project nor should a paying customer be told by a company to either shove it or rely on a bunch of volunteers for security updates.
It seems the two of you also chose to disregard my comments about progeny. It isn’t about the money and no one has a problem paying $60 a year for security updates. The fact that Progeny offered an alternative is a testament to the strength of the open source model, but says nothing positive about Red Hat.
So, wake up and smell the coffee. I like Red Hat. I think they are an awesome company with many talented developers, but they left their customers by the wayside and the transition was a fiasco.
The fact that so many of you are willing to make excuses on behalf of Red Hat does not help. Believing in open source software does not mean been uncritical or a sheep.
Pd: One last thing, you would do well to compare Microsoft’s length of support before speaking too soon. The quality of the security updates is debatable, but the length is not. Show me a Linux distribution that was supported for a long as Win98 has been. I can’t believe that I am being forced to say something nice about Microsoft, but what is fair is fair.
I agree with everything you said and I am an avid RH fan (burning FC3 right now and going to use it to replace my FC2 machine).
But please, if you are going to compare lentgh of support with microsoft, compare it with RHEL, not with Fedora, while it is still shorter, lets jus tmake sure we are looking at the right stats.
Second, I agree that some customers fell between the chairs since the whole RHL=>FC transition was a complete mess (and still is, as there is no CVS for the community building etc…)
But with all the mistakes that RH did, they still have done (and are doing) the most for linux, and they are still the best commercial distro out there for servers.
“Time is money.”
I find that line very significant. There is a cost of doing business. If you can not afford it, or choose not to buy it cause someone supplys a product cheaper you do it. There is nothing like the lock-in’s of microsoft. Difference is RedHat provided(s) Fedora absolutly free of charge and free of royalties, you have many RHEL knockoffs you could upgrade to aswell, or other distros. Lots of options here.
It comes down to this. Many people believe RH makes the best product, and they are upset they can not afford it. Or could afford it, but want it free anyway. If RH wasn’t such an excellent distro people would just switch to Debian/suse/etc and be done with it, no bitching, no moaning, just a happy ex customer. But no, they want kickstart, kudzu, anaconda, 3rd party support, patched kernels and certifications all for free like its their right or something.
FC3 is already released (before RHEL4 beta2)
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2004-November/m…
You RedHat lovers can keep going on about how RedHat does a lot for Linux, but it has done nothing but harm it’s uptake. All it has done is taken away resources from truly free products like Debian and placed an expensive pricetag on Linux so others can compete against it. RedHat has done nothing but taken a whole bunch of free programs and tried to sell them at an outrageous price. I just feel ashamed that such a subpar product is the defacto standard for Linux.
All it has done is taken away resources from truly free products like Debian and placed an expensive pricetag on Linux so others can compete against it.
That price tag is why Red Hat has innovated and Debian doesn’t innovate anything. If all we had is Debian we’d be running 2.2 quality kernels with no SMP, NPTL, clustering, O(1) scheduler, O(1) VM layer Starting and stopping 100,000 threads used to take 15 minutes, now it literally takes one second. How many propriatry company’s has Debian bought then GPL’d the code for us? Did Debian create a legal defense fund for all linux developers and throw 1 million bucks in it? Does debian spend 100 million a year on GPL’d R&D? Did Debian set up Freedesktop.org? No, but we got apt-get! cool! Gee how could we have ever doubted you Debian is the one writing all the software and red hat just “took free programs and trys to sell them” nearly all of those major “free” programs you’re talking about like Mozilla, Open Office, Kernel, GTK2, GCC, Glibc, metacity, Xorg(xfree) All of those have had simply major contributions from RedHat how can you say they only “Take” Is silly.
I just don’t understand this hostility towards RedHat. Pretty much everything they write is open sourced, yet people still complain about how expensive RedHat is. Waaaaaa. If you don’t like RedHat, don’t use it.
And don’t blame RedHat for Debian’s problems. Debian’s problems are of their own making. There is a lot of talent and passion in the Debian project, but there also seems to be a complete lack of focus in its management. Debian just doesn’t meet the needs of most Linux users. They’ve never had a decent installer and their release schedule is seriously hosed (last stable release was July 2002 using the 2.2 kernel).
It seems the problem is not with Red Hat lover as you said, it is with your avid need to bash a company. Since I came to OSnews, you cannot resist to post something negative on any Red Hat post.
I totally disagree with you, Eu, about FC1 not being “stellar” – once you’d waited a few months for the early issues to be ironed out, I found it to be spectacularly rock solid (it’s the basis for RHEL3, remember). Of course, if you’re stupid enough to test/upgrade only using the initial FC1 release without waiting a while for things to settle, then you’re going to get a worse impression of FC1 than if you’d waited. FC1 has the “advantage” over FC2/FC3 or the forthcoming RHEL4 in that it’s the last in line of the 2.4 Red Hat/Fedora-based distros, so its kernel is quite mature – throw in some Fedora Legacy updates and you’re set for one of the most stable Linux server releases around.
It should be noted here that RH9 paid updates to Red Hat or Progeny were only $60 a year – what Eu doesn’t like is that Red Hat couldn’t make any reasonable profit on $60 a year from a small minority of paying RH9 users and if they’d have kept that model going, they could have ended up in the same quagmire that Mandrakesoft did. Yes, I do think RH should have kept the RH9 $60-a-year updates going for an extra year or two to ease the transition – but stop selling the boxed RH9 once FC1 came out – (and maybe some of their engineers should have been seconded to Progeny to give an official stamp to that when the time came to put RH9 to bed within the RH setup), but eventually RH would have ended up where we are now (Fedora+RHEL).
One serious mistake RH has made, though, is not offering something inbetween Fedora and RHEL, IMHO. What I’d like is RHEL with *just* the updates (via an annual fee – ISO downloads and RPM patches – don’t need to ship media or paper manuals) and no support – would be priced about half-way between the old RH9 Professional and RHEL 3. I think this would drag a lot of small businesses back into RH’s folds again – RHEL 3 is just simply too expensive to run for small companies and can even, in some circumstances, end up costing more than a Windows solution.