On 05/10/09 22:48, Hugo Mills wrote: > On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 08:34:44PM +0100, John Cooper wrote: >> Most Linux distros these days are fine for package management. Sometimes >> it is better/safer to re-install and the recent versions of Fedora you >> were basically forced too due to adopting latest software releases. >> However, Red Hat are the market leaders in commercial Linux and anyone >> suggesting their upgrade or package management is second class doesn't >> know what their talking about. Their servers run some of the most >> critical services in the world and this would not be possible with poor >> package management. > > That seems to me to be a somewhat fallacious argument: "Lots of > people use <X>, so <this bit of X> must be good." My admittedly > limited experience of the default Red Hat package management (with > up2date) is that it's (still) poor. There are far more persuasive > arguments for businesses to buy and run Red Hat than the package > management being good -- those that make the decision to buy it won't > even care about the package management, but will care deeply about > things like support contracts (from both Red Hat and organisations > like Oracle). > > Given that in practice very little of an admin's time is spent with > package management, putting up with poor package management in favour > of a significant set of other benefits would be a good trade-off. > Therefore, I would dispute your original syllogism. >
But my experience is they don't have to put up with poor package management because it isn't poor. I agree, the reason companies choose Red Hat isn't about package management and it is to do with other benefits which fit their business model. M$ are experts at corporate selling and it isn't how good your product is, it is selling it to corporate minded people. Saying that, Red Hat have to sell against existing M$, IBM and Sun markets so their software has to be better and provide cost saving. Again, the quality of open source software really shows here and Linux is has proved ultra reliable and stable even as far back as Red Hat 9. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Discover Linux - Open Source Solutions to Business and Schools http://discoverlinux.co.uk -------------------------------------------------------------- -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------
