On Tue, 2004-02-03 at 07:28, Phil Mattison wrote:
> Interesting debate. My 2-centavos: My first experience with RH was RH7.2
> that came with a Dell server I bought. I installed it and signed up with
> RHN. What I got was a constant stream of update notices along with
> suggestions that I "upgrade" my service agreement, as if I had nothing
> better to do than install patches and read security alerts all day long. To
> me this was not helpful. If they periodically offered "service packs"
> similar to what those evil guys at Microsoft do, that automatically update
> *everything* that needs updating, that would be worth a few bucks. Contrary
> to popular myth, I had some fairly vexing stability problems as well. I paid
> full price for the RH8.0 boxed set when it came out, only to find from this
> very community that RH tends to do a sloppy job on major releases, and they
> need a lot of patches, just what I was hoping to avoid. I never installed
> it. Now I'm using Mandrake 9.2 and *much* happier with it so far. But distro
> is not religion to me, so I don't care to debate that.
---
I don't know where you got your info from but this is all bad info from
less than reliable sources.

With RHN (any EL product) 
up2date -u
or in GUI mode, click on the up2date applet in the panel

updates all installed packages with any new updated packages whether be
errata or security releases. I fail to see where this is any more
difficult than Windows update.

Now, the assertion that RH tends to do a sloppy job on major
releases...if I recall, Red Hat was very much praised for the overall
effectiveness of 8.0 release - the only grumbling was from KDE devotees
who felt that KDE got the short shrift because of Red Hat's 'Blue Curve'
configuration and the menu structures for X users.

What you did was allow other people's impressions form your own.
---
> To me, the big reason for using Linux at all, in fact for using a PC, is the
> ability to *do-it-myself* if I choose. If a software package is so
> complicated that it is not practical to do it myself, that is no less
> confining than a conventional license and closed source, and as far as I am
> concerned, no different. So if RH wants to make their customers dependent on
> them I have no problem with that. After all, it is the American way. But
> let's call a spade a spade (no racial slur intended), and not masquerade as
> some kind of New-Age benefactor of Open Source Enlightenment. Maybe at one
> time RH was that, but you have to sign a deal with the Devil to go public,
> and they did.
> --
This is gobblety gook.

Many packages are fairly easy to obtain the source, ./configure make,
make test, make install and that's when you wonder why bother with
things like rpm/apt-get etc.

When it comes to some packages, like updating KDE or Gnome or something
where there are so many dependencies and shared libraries, few people
want to go through the hassle of compiling source. I don't care which
distro you are using, if you are using X and a window manager/desktop
manager, I am certain that you practically can't install them yourself
and if you feel it is no less confining than closed source, welcome to
the cell block #6.

Now - when you talk about RH wanting to make their customers dependent
upon them, I fail to see how anything you said would make Mandrake or
any other reasonably popular distro less dependent upon the packagers.
It is after all, the packaging that makes the distro because the source
is out there for all to use, modify and compile themselves. I stated a
few days ago that the use of a distro is like a contract between the
users and the packagers to give feedback and generally help improve the
concept of how things and which things are being used and which things
need to be changed. Software is after all, never perfect.

And lastly, when you speak of masquerading as some kind of New-Age
benefactor of Open Source Enlightenment (ignoring your comment about
signing a deal with the devil to go public), and while I am amused by
your characterization, I think that it is far from the reality of what
is happening. You are however, entitled to your opinion. My own opinion
is that open source / FOSS - NEEDS Red Hat. They needed some company to
have bundled on various server hardware shipped by the major players
like IBM, HP, Dell etc. which offers consistent packaging, long term
viability, commercial support etc. This is what some businesses want and
Red Hat can offer it. Are there better financial models for this than
Red Hat? Will someone step in and offer a better package for the
hardware vendors and end users? Possibly - Red Hat doesn't have an
exclusive lock on anything except being there at this moment in time.

Craig