I'm the systems engineer for a software company whose product is bundled with Redhat Linux and HP Proliant servers. The recent Redhat changes are bad news for our product. For the past few years, we've migrated former AIX, SCO and HP-UX customers to HP/Compaq servers with appropriate versions of Redhat (7.x, 8) and our software on top. Luckily, the software is easily portable and can run unmodified on any unix variant. Redhat 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 have proven to be the best match for our software/hardware solution. The hardcore Compaq/HP Proliant server hardware support (for ML370's and ML570's) is there. HP's agents add temperature, SCSI/array and environment monitoring to the Redhat setup. The OSes are stable. We use(d) up2date to keep on top of security patches (openssh, openssl and sendmail are my only concerns). It was nice because we could give the customer a real Redhat box with media and manuals (not that they used it... but it's nice to have the packaging). As a vendor/reseller, we paid for the boxed media and of course, the Redhat Network subscriptions. Now, I have 100+ Linux servers around the country, and a stream of new customers. I've frozen new deployments at Redhat 8.0 because Redhat 9 was a bit unstable for us and didn't allow me to use the HP/Compaq-specific hardware agents/drivers. So, we've everything from 7.0 through 8.0 in the field. Over the past few months, Redhat dropped up2date support and patches for Redhat 7.0. I feel guilty installing 8.0 on new boxes because I know support for it will be dropped at the end of the year. By Dec. 31, all of my systems will be "unsupported." This looks awful because we're starting to get more corporate customers, and I've receiving calls from their CTO's like, "wait, we want to make sure you'll be installing a SUPPORTED version of Linux if we buy your application." Grrr.... I don't wish to buy into Redhat's Enterprise Linux because I don't understand what I'm paying for. *I'm* the Redhat support. I just need something that will receive patches and support for more than one year. The 5 year lifespan of the Enterprise versions is nice, but I've NEVER called Redhat for support. I don't plan to. I also build the kernels for each of the servers. I use vanilla kernel.org 2.4.21 source with additional XFS patches. We sell 2, 4 and 8-way Proliant servers. Am I missing out on anything from the "optimized" Redhat Advanced Server kernels? I downloaded the RHEL 3.0 kernel and looked at the 200+ patches they make to the plain 2.4.21 source. Other than the hyperthreading patch, none of the enhancements will make that much of a difference in my company's application. Would using my stable kernel setup with RHEL negate the purpose of using that OS? Patching XFS on TOP of their already heavily-modified kernel is close to impossible. I think it's confusing because we initially chose Redhat for the accountability aspect of having a corporation behind the distro. Now, I'm not sure who they're targeting. I would imagine that most firms that select Redhat Advanced server and are willing to pay the price (>$1000/license) would have a staff talented enough to support it. So why the mandatory support costs from Redhat? It's a bad move because 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 are great matches for our hardware. HP's support for RHAS 2.1 is even a bit spotty (old kernel, etc.), so HP concentrated in supporting 8.0. I'm afraid to recommend RHEL 3.0 for these critical servers because the userbase is going to be tiny, and we'll essentially be flushing-out bugs..... in production. That's not a good situation.... * Sidenote: After looking at Redhat's Enterprise kernel's default .config, I'm surprised that they still enable HAM radio, PCMCIA, ISDN and other rarely-used (at least in the US) functions by default. I mean, I choose to compile my own kernels.... but I'm pretty sure that their target market for RHEL won't bother. Odd. Either way, since these servers are humming along without incident, I don't have much motivation to reinstall and move to an untested (by my application's need) RHEL. Having continued support for RedHat 8 would be very useful for those in my situation. I know this project is in its infacy, but I think that 7.2-9.0 are must-support distributions. Please advise. -- Edmund William White http://www.djedwhite.com ewwhite@xxxxxxx
