RedHat

[Jason Clinton]

Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
> Quoting Jason Clinton <clintonj at umkc.edu>:
>
>
>>You may also find that your life in Linux would be easier if you left
>>the RedHat RPM nightmare.
>
>
> I didn't see anything in his message to indicate he was having any
> trouble with RedHat or RPMs.  I've been running RedHat since version
> 1.<something>, and I've only had a couple of RPM problems, one of which
> was my own fault.  I installed Mandrake RPMs on a RedHat system and
> eventually paid for it.
>
> If you have a problem with RPM's, I'm sure that someone here would be
> glad to help you, but it sounds like you're doing some gratuitous
> evangelical RedHat bashing.

My two biggest problems with RedHat RPMS (and there are many) are that

1. RedHat's update software never works correctly. If an RPM failed to
download in the midst of an upgrade I often found myself stranded or if
I had installed _anything_ of my own choosing (such as the latest
Mozilla) it broke all of their automagical utilities so that I could
never again use their update software. Further, never once in weeks of
trying was I able to get any of the included RPM graphical utilities to
work -- usually because the mirrors were down or had upgraded to the
latest and greatest RedHat and dropped support for my version.

2. If I wanted to install something of my own choosing (like qstat, a
Quake3 game browser) then I had to either find official RPMS (which
didn't exist) or install dependencies from tar.gz that overwrote
versions that other 'RedHat customized programs' depended on or replaced
RedHat's custom version of the library with something that wasn't
compatible thereby killing something as important as Kudzu.

If I had a nickel for every time I tanked a RedHat system SIMPLY because
I wanted to install the latest version of software instead of waiting
for RedHat to get around to it in five or six months -- well, I'd start
a Linux business. That's what I'd do.

This rant omits the following other problems that erk me: it's VERY
difficult to install a vanilla kernel due to the number of
'optimizations' RedHat has made to their included kernel (if they're
that great, why aren't they in the vanilla kernel), RedHat's distro is
such a clunky behemoth that any newbie that has any incling to tinker
with it has to go buy a few $50 books (money and time I don't have) to
understand how it works, and last but not least, they've made it so
freaking user friendly that when it doesn't work the way it's supposed
to (Kudzu) it's damn near impossible to go and make the modification
yourself -- oh sure, you can make the changes to your conf files but you
wont be able to run any of the automatic stuff again!

If RedHat's an ocean liner, Gentoo and Debian are water-powered Jet Ski's.

> Better than 75% of the applications, howtos, tips, and guides on the
> internet are either available for or targeted specificly for the RedHat
> distribution.  RedHat's a fact of Linux.

A misfortunate turn of events I intend to do something about. Linux
should be a diverse forest of distros each filling its niche of a
specific need and filling it well. One distro shouldn't even have 20% of
the market. If it does, there's a problem. ("From each according to
their abilities, to each according to their needs.")

--
Jason Clinton
I don't believe in witty sigs.