practical difficulties [LWN.net]

practical difficulties

Posted Feb 28, 2011 19:05 UTC (Mon) by mcoleman (guest, #70990)
Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Regardless of politics and licenses, this makes it more difficult for end users to debug kernel problems, as a practical matter. This is a not-insignificant minus in my book.

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The snarky view

Posted Mar 3, 2011 22:47 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (guest, #2203) [Link] (1 responses)

> this makes it more difficult for end users to debug kernel problems

We here at LWN aren't RH's target customer. If you can debug kernel problems you don't need them and should be using a RHEL Rebuild or Debian. If you have a problem you are supposed to be competent enough to file a trouble ticket and wait but that is all. If you know more your employer is either overpaying you or you are working for less than you should be.

RHEL is normally for hosting commerical apps where you can't really see what is going on so any problem is sorted out by filing trouble tickets and eventually getting the software vendor and/or the OS vendor to fix it. And while things are smoking and business isn't happening it is all good, because you have a trouble ticket number which officially makes it an SEP (Someone Else's Problem). Admins in those settings are typically certification chasers, not real hackers.

The snarky view

Posted Mar 3, 2011 23:12 UTC (Thu) by mcoleman (guest, #70990) [Link]

That's a pleasant thought, to be sure. Unfortunately, I live in the sticks, technology-wise, and unfortunately have not yet been able to convince Google to open a branch here, or (say) Ubuntu to hire me. (I wonder how many of us there are stranded here in the slow zone.)

Waaah. Life goes on.

In the mean time, I still try to do the best work I can.