Is Red Hat still relevant? You bet. (Montana Linux) [LWN.net]

Scott Dowdle examines the continued relevance of Red Hat. "I recently attended a Linux Installfest and the primary distribution recommended by those heading up the event was Ubuntu. That's all well and good but during their Linux dog-and-pony-show a statement was made regarding Red Hat that struck me. I don't recall the exact wording that was used but it was something along the lines of... Red Hat used to be very popular but not anymore. I wasn't really offended by the statement nor do I completely disagree with it... but a lot remains to be said about the importance of Red Hat within the Linux community. Red Hat is certainly king in the "Enterprise" space with Novell a respectable second."

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Is Red Hat still relevant? You bet. (Montana Linux)

Posted Jan 8, 2008 11:35 UTC (Tue) by danielhedblom (guest, #47307) [Link] (1 responses)

RedHats way of using Fedora as a testbed for their products is both good and bad. Its bad in
the way that it makes for a distribution thats halfway between normal desktop users and
serious server installations. SE-Linux can really throw sticks in the wheels for desktop users
while its a very nice feature for servers where things are a bit more static than a desktop.
Hopefully Redhats new endeavour into the desktop will fix this since they will have an
internal need for a smooth user experience again.

I wouldnt call Novell a respectable second. Their package management system is just utterly
broken and routinly break my servers, even when doing simple updates. RedHat is really king
and i would rather put debian/ubuntu as a close second.

Is Red Hat still relevant? You bet. (Montana Linux)

Posted Jan 10, 2008 14:44 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]

It's worth giving  CentOS a mention. It's basically Red Hat Enterprise Linux recompiled. You
don't have to pay for it, and can pay whomsoever you like for support or rely on the
community. It is a perfect substitute for what free Red Hat ...7,8,9 used to offer. My
experience is that it is as rock-solid as official (paid-for) Red Hat, and I'd recommend it to
anyone who doesn't need the sort of support that Red Hat sell (or a guarantee that there is
someone behind the product to sue when things go wrong, which I believe is the mentality in
some companies!)

Red Hat still relevant? Definitely. Even if you don't use their products or direct derivatives
thereof, they contribute large amounts of open software to the community. Whatever flavour of
Linux you use, there are important parts of it that originate with Red Hat.