On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 10:28:29AM +0800, John wrote: > On Monday 12 August 2002 08:33, Rafael Skodlar,,, wrote: > > Redhat made a big mistake with major differences between 7.0 and 7.1 > > where the upgrade was impossible. > > I've never heard that before. I avoided 7.0, but I did upgrade 6.2 to 7.1 and > if that's possible, I don't see why 7.0 to 7.1 would have presented any > difficulty. Libraries and compiler were messed up badly and that caused all kinds of problems at work. When you need to support many systems Redhat doesn't seem to be the easiest. While personaly avoiding 7.0 I had to use it at work and believe me it was not easy. > > > Another reason is that in order to > > quickly download necessary security updates, Redhat charges $60 per > > system per year which is too much IMO when the alternative is free. I do > > not mind paying something for the software but there are limits. > > I've not found a reason to pay for such a service. The updates are freely > available for all. I don't get priority access, but I doubt that's very > important to small users. Even if I did value it, $60 (even $US60) doesn't > seem a lot to pay to get priority access for maintenance for something you > can get for no charge. I don't mind paying for some services but they need to be reasonable. $60 per system is not reasonable when the new box costs $80 or so. Redhat seem to release some of their stuff half baked to generate support calls. While making money from helping people is not a crime, they don't make it easy for anybody. People complain about Microsoft charging for updates etc. but I don't see that any different from Redhat. I have friends who's business depends on Linux to large degree and they too believe that Redhat is releasing poorly tested versions in order to generate income from support calls. Use whatever feels good for you. It's not my intension to turn anybody away from what makes you happy. > > Besides that, membership of RHN is free for your first machine. > > > -- > > > Cheers > John. Linux trade show in San Francisco is just two days away. We'll see what's left from the economic downturn which greatly affected open source dependant companies. -- Rafael