Linux migration

[Bill Day]

I have a couple of data points. Not really technical, more in the "Linux for suits" category. 
 
[Data Point 1] 
 
About 6 weeks ago I attended an HP/Redhat/Oracle vendor presentation. There were about 15 attendees. The Redhat guy 
was a no-show. This forced the HP guy to talk about twice as long as he was prepared to about HP CPUs. The highlight 
was the Oracle guy demonstrating their failover technolgy. I cannot describe how mind numbingly boring the HP 
presentation was. 
 
This morning I attended an IBM/Novell/Xiamian vendor presentation. Wow! What a difference. I estimate 150-200 
attendees. Novell ran the show. They couldn't talk too much about SuSE because the merger isn't finalized. The Novell guy 
stressed Novell Enterprise services running on Linux. The Xiamian guy stressed the Enterprise client. The IBM guy... well 
we only had to listen to him for about 1/2 hour. My point is that these guys get it, they spent most of their time talking 
about the data center/network not about boxes. Novell on the Enterprise server, SuSE/Xiamian on the Enterprise client. 
 
[Data Point 2] 
 
Other than an early installation of Caldera, I've alway run Redhat as my Linux client. Last week I was at CompUSA, and 
scored a freebee SuSE 8.2 professional. Having experienced a recent disk crash, I decided it might be beneficial to install 
SuSE before attending today's presentation. I have more Linux experience than the last time I installed Redhat, so maybe 
this isn't fair, but the install seemed to be much easier. Chose a client install, the installer made some intelligent choices, 
and it installed. Redhat (maybe it was me) seemed to give me more choices, which made the install more difficult. I've got 
very little time on SuSE, so the insall is my only experience. 
 
The point of these stories is that Novell/SuSE/Xiamian appears poised to capture the enterprise market. This will fuel 
funding, which in my opinion will make them a long term winner. Steve, I know enterprise computing isn't your application, 
but going with the winner is always a good idea. 
 
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Johnson" <steve.johnson at missionindia.org> 
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 09:49:44 -0500 
To: "Perl Monger''s List" <grand-rapids-pm-list at happyfunball.pm.org> 
Subject: Linux migration 
 
> I have a non-Perl (but open source related) issue. 
>  
> I've used Redhat since before 4.x and have several servers 
> running 7.x and higher.  My primary applications are postgresql, 
> apache, postfix, and antivir (none are RH specific apps, per se). 
>  
> Now the Redhat Linux line (more importantly to me, Redhat Network 
> support) is being discontinued and I'm being forced to migrate to 
> go to either the Fedora project or Redhat Enterprise, if I'm to 
> stay with RH (and/or I can just support my systems by hand). 
>  
> I chose Redhat for three reasons: 
> 1) I've got a lot of experience with it and basically like it. 
> 2) I love the Redhat Network service--my cron jobs kept my 
> systems fresh and toasty for a nominal fee. 
> 3) Redhat looked like a successful, responsible company that 
> understood the principles of open source and customer service. 
>  
> Do I stick it out with RH (I get 50% off on the annual fee for 
> Enterprise for the first year) or move to something else? 
>  
> I don't have plans to move to new hardware, so a simple app 
> migration to new boxes is not currently feasible (maybe in a year 
> or two)--it would have to be an upgrade/re-install.  I'm not 
> "just a sysadmin" (I have many other obligations), so I don't 
> have time to do everything by hand. 
>  
> I'd like my new distro/OS to provide: 
> * A secure platform 
> * A reliable platform 
> * Automatic patches and updates 
> * Security issue notifications 
> * Free or reasonable fee for updates 
>  
> I'm considering just about anything (except Windows or SCO): 
> * The usual big-distro suspects: Mandrake, SuSE, etc. 
> * Gentoo Linux 
> * Debian Linux 
> * BSD's various flavors (especially OpenBSD) 
> * Solaris 
>  
> So at the risk of starting a flame-war: 
> * Who has experience with similar issues? 
> * What would you use in a production environment requiring 99.999 
> up time? 
> * Who else is looking at moving off RH and to something else? 
> * Has anybody seen an analysis on this issue in the press or the 
> web? 
>  
> Regards, 
> sj 
>  
-- 
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