[ale] Fedora and RHN?

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Thursday 06 November 2003 03:26 pm, Stuffed Crust wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 06:49:56AM -0600, Preston Boyington wrote:
> > > Personally, I am now looking for a new *nix distro to run my servers
> > > on.  I've been a supporter of Redhat for my server solutions
> > > for a while
> > > now, but $179/year minimum is too rich for me, sad to say.
> >
> > Debian...
>
> Question.  How is Fedora Core 1 any different from, say, RedHat Linux 9?
>
> People are complaining about how Redhat isn't supporting non-enterprise
> users any more, bla bla bla.. but.. they didn't support Joe Random
> Downloader anyway.  If you wanted support from RH you had to pay for it
> before, be it in the form of a boxed set or a commercial/enterprise
> arrangement or whatever.
>
> If you were already paying RH money, you'll keep paying 'em money.  If
> you weren't paying 'em money before, you don't have to pay 'em a dime to
> continue receiving the same level of support they always provided -- ie,
> none.  In short, nothing has changed.
>
> What has changed from the user's perspective?  s/RedHat/Fedora/g
> That's it.

Um, no.  I support my Dad's linux box, and we supported linux by buying the 
boxed set.  Call it $50 every other year, or so.  In exchange we got printed 
docs, a little bit of support, a stable platform, the knowledge that RH will 
provide me with security updates, and we get to run the same code RedHat 
sells to companies.  To continue will cost $179/year (discounted to $89.50 
until April--so act now) about 600% of the original cost (only 300% with the 
discount!).

If I go with Fedora I get no printed docs, no support, a less stable platform 
(in the sense that it is intended to be more cutting edge and have more 
frequent updates--not that it will crash), and I'll be running code that RH 
doesn't think is ready to ship to crporate users.  I would guess that Fedora 
will be just as proactive about pushing out updates, though they are only 
saying they will support each release for a few months after the next one is 
out--call it 8-10 months.  RH supported 6.x with security updates for years!

I think that RH has shot itself in the foot.  The core of RH's business came 
from people that had been using RH at home or on the side because they could 
download it for free.  These people end up using it at work and then 
convincing mgmt to pay RH for it.  It was the standard drug dealer marketing 
campaign--give out free sample then change once your customers are hooked.

RH has lost the ability to seduce new users.  yes, there is still Fedora, but 
the impression is that Fedora is not RH so even if Fedora is just as popular 
as RH was, transfering from Fedora to RH will not be the no brainer going 
from RH to RH was.

Michael