Re: [tlug] Redhat

["jmglov" <jmglov@example.com>]

Quoth Bruce Howard <bhoward@example.com>:

> Botond Botyanszki> they are dictating the Linux industry 
> Botond Botyanszki> standard with their patched to death 
> Botond Botyanszki> distros.
>
> Come on.  Linus releases the base kernel with well defined and
> rather free terms..  Others are free to take it where they 
> want within the limits of the distribution license.

Sure. And B0ti is not trying to take away their right to do so. One major problem with Red Hat, from the perspective of a guy who sometimes needs to patch his kernel, is that any patch you try to apply is likely not to work against a Red Hat kernel that has already been "patched to death". You can also have problems with libraries: Red Hat's patching can make those libraries worthless to you when trying to link against them.

So the issue is not one of Red Hat's right to patch, it is of their patch-happiness interfering with the day-to-day work of the slightly more hardcore Unix user.

> I have few views on Mandrake other than the observation that 
> some folks I respect seem to like it.  Most folks I know who 
> go for it tend to be from a harder core technical bent [...]

This surprises me greatly! The amount of pain and suffering through which Red Hat forces me when I try to do sysadmin- or
coding-related work is nothing next to the cruelty of Mandrake.

In my world, hardcore techs tend to use a Linux distro like Debian or Gentoo (or, in one strange case, ArchLinux ;), or forgo Linux altogether in favour of one of the BSDs. Why any technical person would want to use Mandrake for himself is bloody well beyond me.

-Josh