Re: An interesting meeting with IBM
"Scott Burns" <scott@mirrabooka.com> wrote in message news:YS5fc.1457$IH5.62698@news.optus.net.au... > Ronald Cole wrote: > > >Scott Burns <scott@mirrabooka.com> writes: > > > > > 2) many companies, mine included, will still be deploying RH9 for some > time to come. What are our other alternatives? RHEL at hundreds of > dollars a year? Fedora? Hah! Mandrake is dancing with financial > troubles, SuSE just got it's owner replaced and Debian seems to boast > about being actively user hostile. Compare that with a stable RH9, > especially in places which don't bother about updating the OS anyway, > and it's hard to justify any other course (well, maybe RH8). The linux > market is just in too big a state of change at the moment to go making > too huge a change. > Your comments about SuSE suggest they are unstable, and nothing could be further from the truth. The only uncertainty about Novell is in their historical ability to miss the mark on things. But Novell is executing well so far, and even walking away from their own OS. If you look at the latest eWeek articles about Sun, eWeek is even suggesting Sun buys RedHat just to save Sun! Talk about instability! SuSE has a very large installed base, and Sun is OEM'ing SuSE on their desktop. Sun even went into Walmart stores with their JDE, the Java Desktop Environment. So I think SuSE influence will be formidable for some time. We are using SLES8, (SuSE Enterprise Linux 8), and finding it to be very stable. We are evaluating DB2 on SuSE, both SuSE 9.0 Desktop and SLES8 and so far have had no problems with either distro. SLES is $999/8-CPUs, and requires a key to get updates. ( We're required to use either SuSE or RedHat, so the choice was easy. ) > >From where I sit, Red Hat forced the 2.6 kernel on everyone a year > >early, and IBM has been too slow in porting for it. I'd say it's > >going to take the better part of a year before IBM products work as > >well on RHEL3 as they did on RHL7.3. In the meantime, us developers > >are screwed. I'm watching one of my clients move to Oracle on Solaris > >because there currently isn't a fully functioning IBM solution > >(J/Foundation or Java2) on a supported Red Hat OS. > > Do you just take it from RH? When a new kernel comes out do you just take what RH hands you? We never take kernels from SuSE or anyone, but instead roll our own from kernel.org. This completely avoids depending on the Linux vendor and puts our company in control, which is one of the reasons for using Linux in the first place. We'll start out with a version of the distribution, but never expect the kernel out-of-the-box to be what we need. > All of this, of course, ignores my initial point. The situation of > Linux/DB2 is roughly the same as Linux/Informix and doesn't really make > a case for not looking at DB2. > Uh, DB2 is advertised whereas Informix is not, so you're even more in the hole with Informix. And how is it that we have DB2 up and running on SuSE? By pure magic? > -- > Scott Burns > Mirrabooka Systems > > Tel +61 7 3857 7899 > Fax +61 7 3857 1368
"Data Goob" <datagoob@hotmail.com> writes: > Do you just take it from RH? I happen to like Red Hat Network and so does my RH-running clients. The less time I spend on rolling my own kernels/distros and supporting them, the better! And it's easy to maintain a lot of systems remotely with RHN. And if anything got broken by an update (only happened once in three years), I didn't catch the blame. Rather, I became the hero for fixing Red Hat's blunder. All of that leaves me free to do that which I do best (which isn't building and supporting custom distros). -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B
Data Goob wrote: >"Scott Burns" <scott@mirrabooka.com> wrote in message news:YS5fc.1457$IH5.62698@news.optus.net.au... > > >>Ronald Cole wrote: >> >> >> >>>Scott Burns <scott@mirrabooka.com> writes: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>2) many companies, mine included, will still be deploying RH9 for some >>time to come. What are our other alternatives? RHEL at hundreds of >>dollars a year? Fedora? Hah! Mandrake is dancing with financial >>troubles, SuSE just got it's owner replaced and Debian seems to boast >>about being actively user hostile. Compare that with a stable RH9, >>especially in places which don't bother about updating the OS anyway, >>and it's hard to justify any other course (well, maybe RH8). The linux >>market is just in too big a state of change at the moment to go making >>too huge a change. >> >> >> > >Your comments about SuSE suggest they are unstable, and nothing could be >further from the truth. The only uncertainty about Novell is in their >historical ability to miss the mark on things. But Novell is executing >well so far, and even walking away from their own OS. > It depends on your definition of stable. I said their management has been replaced, and nothing about the system itself - I have never run it so I have no real idea how stable it is. In a management sense, SuSE is unstable. IMHO it is a big gamble to invest the time and money to swap over right now. In a year, who knows? But for the rest of the year the safest course for us is RH9. <SNIP> > We are using SLES8, (SuSE >Enterprise Linux 8), and finding it to be very stable. > > If you use SuSE already you are in a totally different boat. What is going to be best for someone with the investment in SuSE is not the best thing for someone with an investment in RH. <SNIP> >>All of this, of course, ignores my initial point. The situation of >>Linux/DB2 is roughly the same as Linux/Informix and doesn't really make >>a case for not looking at DB2. >> >> >> > >Uh, DB2 is advertised whereas Informix is not, so you're even more in >the hole with Informix. And how is it that we have DB2 up and running >on SuSE? By pure magic? > > > I have Informix running on RedHat with a few issues, none of which are show stoppers. I could have done this on SuSE if I did not apply the security updates. You also appear to have missed my point... -- Scott Burns Mirrabooka Systems Tel +61 7 3857 7899 Fax +61 7 3857 1368
Fair enough Ronald. Personally I find RH the most confusing in terms of products but obviously they have an appeal that many find acceptable. Certainly instructive in terms of what the market wants and likes. "Ronald Cole" <ronald@forte-intl.com> wrote in message news:m3fzb6jfea.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com... > "Data Goob" <datagoob@hotmail.com> writes: > > Do you just take it from RH? > > I happen to like Red Hat Network and so does my RH-running clients. > The less time I spend on rolling my own kernels/distros and supporting > them, the better! And it's easy to maintain a lot of systems remotely > with RHN. And if anything got broken by an update (only happened once > in three years), I didn't catch the blame. Rather, I became the hero > for fixing Red Hat's blunder. All of that leaves me free to do that > which I do best (which isn't building and supporting custom distros). > > -- > Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 > Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142 > President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 > My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B
I apologize for missing your point. I can honestly say I forgot my own point! :) "Scott Burns" <scott@mirrabooka.com> wrote in message news:v1kfc.1471$IH5.63460@news.optus.net.au... > > > > > I have Informix running on RedHat with a few issues, none of which are > show stoppers. I could have done this on SuSE if I did not apply the > security updates. You also appear to have missed my point... > > -- > Scott Burns > Mirrabooka Systems > > Tel +61 7 3857 7899 > Fax +61 7 3857 1368