Angry at redhat.

[Skunk Worx]

I really disliked writing that subject line, so I'll just get though writing this and see what kind of comments people post. I hope this doesn't get deleted from the forums.

My background : I've developed software on and off since the early 1980's. Mostly small contract jobs. Everything from CP/M, DOS, Irix, Windows, Solaris and even some embedded work using Forth.

Most recently I contracted a small job for a kiosk kinda thing. It moves XML data around a network ata pretty good clip. I'm proud of it. Someday our product might even be open sourced, but for now it's closed to sell custom branded boxes. Our demos have been going well.

I have modified no RedHat or Fedora code, except as mentioned in another one of my posts. I have given the changes back. Our s/w gets installed in /usr/local, and there are a few /etc config changes. That's it.

There are 1-1/2 of us working on this. We'll be done and moving on in November.

We had to fight to use Fedora. The fact that my co-worker and I had written code on RedHat 9 for a small project a few years ago led us to choose Fedora. We eventually convinced the customers that the lower cost (free OS) would help keep the cost down. They wanted us to use Windows, which both us us have had bad experiences with, but in the end we were able to use Fedora.

Today, I got a terrible email. One of the customers was at a tech expo, and chatted with a RedHat sales rep. Might be an OEM channel, or VAR, I don't know. The salesman really talked down Fedora. He said it was unstable and useless for any commercial venture. He said there were major security issues with it, since anyone can "upload code to the project". He said "open source is dangerous". RHEL is open source!

He pulled up the following webpage :

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/details/e...linuxandfedora

...and highlighted the sentence :

"...the leading-edge, rapidly changing nature of Fedora makes it impractical for use in commercial environments..."

He recommended we stop using Fedora immediately and use RHEL. He said our project was at risk unless we used a tested and stable product like RHEL.

From 1PM today, to about an hour ago, I've been FUD-busting. Pulling up old presentations, guiding my manager and the two money guys to pages like :

http://fedora.redhat.com/About/

...pointing out the page is pulled via redhat's own servers. Noting all the great things written there, and basically trying to rescue my job and my project. I'll probably be FUD-busting for the remainder of the week.

I expect a sh*tload of "I told you so" emails when I get to work tomorrow. There are several other projects going on in my cube zoo, many on Windows, and they are really enjoying this.

Since RHEL would price us out of the market, I know we won't use that.

So that's why I'm angry at RedHat. It seems like justified anger from my POV. I'm gonna go play some music and crash now.

---
John

[Jman]

I would double check that quote came from a Red Hat rep, I'm suprised they used the anyone can upload argument.

If not Fedora or RHEL, CentOS perhaps? Which is basically RHEL with community support.

[ccrvic]

"...the leading-edge, rapidly changing nature of Fedora makes it impractical for use in commercial environments..."

He recommended we stop using Fedora immediately and use RHEL. He said our project was at risk unless we used a tested and stable product like RHEL.

He might be right...

Use a RHEL clone.. I favour Whitebox, but there's also CentOS, as someone else suggested.

These give you all the stability of the RHEL platform, but with none of the cost. The only thing you don't get is the support contract. Regular updates are available from their respective mirrors, or you can download RH's own SRPMs from its FTP site and rebuild them yourself...

Vic.

[InKo]

I would recommend CentOS, too. this distro is very stable and free!

[pete_1967]

Whether he was RedHat rep or not, he was absolutely right, using Fedora 5 on production system would be foolish, if I were your client, I'd drop you off for even thinking of using FC5, SuSE 10 or any other latest distro as a platform to run your project on.

Always stick to tried and tested, stable platform. As above has been mentioned, switch to CentOS and you got RHEL 4 to work on.

[fire-fly]

Whether he was RedHat rep or not, he was absolutely right, using Fedora 5 on production system would be foolish, if I were your client, I'd drop you off for even thinking of using FC5, ..

Well when come to FC5 I agreed! I update to FC5 but fall back to FC4. I am happy with it. I guest FC is getting too "ms" bells and whistle making noise but forgot about stable where the beauty of linux and unix.

[giulix]

As more or less everyone else has pointed out, you should install CentOS on your client's server and provide support yourself. Or do as the RH sales rep suggested and buy support from them: That will get you ass covered...

[bob]

Key to the discussion was "Red Hat Sales Rep". These guys are making their living off of RH and will dis the competition in every instance. Obviously, 'no cost' versions are 'no profit' to them and will be immediately panned. That said, I can't argue with any of the other posters that you should consider Whitebox or CentOS as better suited for your needs.

[drunkahol]

Where I work, we're considering using Fedora Core 5 on some virtual machine.

BUT - and it's a VERY big BUT - the services we're going to run on them are not critical systems. A virtual machine each for a Wiki, Bugzilla, Subversion, Cacti, other RRDTool monitoring etc. None of these services will be used outside the development teams, however.

We will have live versions of all these services sitting on fully supported Red Hat virtual machines. There's no other way to do it in a corporate world.

If there's even a chance that something will fall over, the management always want a support contract in place. I would personally go for CentOS if given the choice, but I always leave the platform choice up to the manager who's ass will be on the line if things go pear shaped.

Fedora's fine to develop on - and even get some practice in for what RHEL 5 will probably look like. But for a live system where some manager's ass is on the line - give them the choice of paid support.

Cheers

Duncan

[pete_1967]

Well when come to FC5 I agreed! I update to FC5 but fall back to FC4. I am happy with it. I guest FC is getting too "ms" bells and whistle making noise but forgot about stable where the beauty of linux and unix.

It's simple: you use latest software with new features, there are bound to be bugs in it. It doesn't matter what distro or OS you are talking about. That's why no one in their right mind would even think of considering to use latest version for their production systems.

[Al3xanR0]

Perhaps you may want to argue that many of the heavily touted features present and future are a result of ongoing developement of Fedora. This was at least in part the original intent prompting RHT to spawn Fedora Core, correct me if I am wrong.

[JN4OldSchool]

My two cents? I dont know a thing about IT or networks or corporate computing. I am just a lil' ole' home desktop user. But what I read here makes sense. I would NEVER use a cutting edge distro in a business environment. In fact, I would probably use Slack or Debian, but thats beside the point...FC4 was rock stable on my small home net for my limited uses, but FC5, while I love it and will not think of using anything else, is far from what I would call stable and rock solid. A big no-no for a business app.

[sailor]

I find it odd that they were dissing the very distro that Redhat Enterpirse is derived from...and although the idea that it is "...the leading-edge, rapidly changing nature of Fedora makes it impractical for use in commercial environments..." is correct. I would think that if you have not had any major problems they should get off your back.
The problem of being "leading edge" is the new applications that may or may not work and can affect the whole machine. I can't see there being that many problems if you are not trying to use every "new " feature.

The guy at the Expo was trying to sell Redhat, which is in reality is selling support not so much the software itself ( I assume you are the support so that shouldn't be a problem).
You could have used any number of distros that would not have had the disclaimer
about it being "leading edge", but I bet the Redhat guy still would have said the same thing.

[tomcat]

You could have used any number of distros that would not have had the disclaimer
about it being "leading edge", but I bet the Redhat guy still would have said the same thing.

I second this.

For production boxes, I always use well tested distros and you should move into that direction as well imho. Which one you want to take finally is of course up to you.

[SlowJet]

Do any of you have any statistically signifigant data showing FC5 (with all the post release updates - as happened with all the othe FC's and Ubuntu, and SuSe, and others distros) that would show it to be more unstable (and of course, unstable would need to be defined) than any other rpm or deb based system?

Also, it appears that the guy's system is working so the rep was using scar tactics with no facts about the system that was running, as are most of you, as you don even know what his system is doing.

The more bugs that are fixed the more stable a system will be, even FC4 needed 60 days to smooth out, but there has ben thousands of bug fixs and hundreds of improvements since FC4 was released, and CentOS is not much better than it was last year, nor is Whit Box.

Generlized opinoins based on culture, preceptions, and snake oil doesn't make them true.
Show me the data. (That does not mean, show me the exception from 2 uears ago from a heersay source). It means show the statistically proof of 100,0000 or more installed FC5 systems are less stable than the others. My guess is that no one can do that.

SJ