On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 6:13 AM Simon Matter <simon.matter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> As I found out yesterday, the fragmentation of the "Enterprise Linux"
> ecosystem just started to come true. I expect this is only the beginning
> and Red Hat may also start to completely hold back sources of non GPL
> software which is part of the "Enterprise Linux" ecosystem.
>
> I'm really wondering, how will this help anybody and how will this help
> Red Hat in the long run?
Competition in the Enterprise Linux space is a good thing. If a
company or community other than Red Hat starts serving a market that
RHEL can't, it forces Red Hat to evaluate and adjust. It keeps
everyone pushing and developing solutions that hopefully benefit end
users and customers. If everyone is fully participating in open
source and upstream, it makes them all better inherently.
> I've been using and promoting the Red Hat "(Enterprise) Linux" ecosystem
> for more than two decades. But, who will I promote in the future if this
> ecosystem becomes fragmented?
Is it different from the non-Enterprise Linux ecosystem? What do you
do there given the large variety of Linux distributions?
My personal take on this is to think about what I use and why I use
it. How does something solve my needs? Does it need to be better?
etc.
For example, long before I ever worked at Red Hat I was a Fedora Linux
user. I love that project and distribution. I literally owe my
career in some part to it. In recent years, I don't use Fedora
heavily. Partly because of my day job, but also partly because my
personal needs changed. I do still install almost every release in
some way and try it out though. If someone asked me for a
recommendation on a community Linux distribution, it would still be at
the top of my list. Not because of what it was like in the past, but
because of what Fedora is today which is far better than it ever has
been.
If someone asked me for a recommendation on an Enterprise Linux
operating system, I'd say RHEL. Yes of course because I work on it,
but also because I firmly believe it is the best on the market. It's
what I run on my main machine every day. If someone asked for a
community Enterprise Linux project, I'd suggest CentOS Stream because
of the direct ties to RHEL, but also because I believe it's a
relatively young and growing project with a lot of potential to do
really interesting things. However, I would probably ask what their
needs were and then I'd earnestly try to make a recommendation based
on that.
> I'm still trying to find answers but it's quite difficult.
It is. It's difficult for an individual to decide, and it's difficult
for a project or company to continuously push themselves to make sure
they are the best option for the broadest number of users.
> How do others, who were using and promoting the Red Hat "Enterprise Linux"
> ecosystem, handle this new situation?
Respectfully, I don't think it's new. We've had RHEL, SLES, OEL,
CentOS Linux and Ubuntu for more than a decade. Rocky, Alma, whatever
SUSE's new RHEL fork is, etc are certainly newer but the situation
itself is not new. I see it as an expansion of options, but the same
set of considerations still applies. Which distribution and community
aligns best with your needs, goals, and beliefs? Which one would you
tell your friend to use?
For me, it's still Fedora, CentOS Stream, and RHEL.
josh
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