Scientific Linux 6.0 released

Let's see... you haven't used RHEL at all... because you quit using RHL about 8 years ago and you are still complaining about what happened back then. You are positive that Red Hat sucks and will continue to suck... and offer a warning... that it will never be good enough because it has commercial interests... although it just happens to be the shining beacon of free software and the leading example of a financially successful commercial Linux provider... who has done a rather good job at being serious about and sticking to its FOSS principles... buying up several commercial companies/products and releasing them as open source... and being a significant contributor for years to the kernel, gnome, gcc, xorg, etc. As far as I can see, it is impossible for any commercial Linux to be worthy in your eyes... no matter what.

Notice how I did not denigrate Debian in any way as I do not feel the need to. I have a lot of respect for its developers and its users... and I certainly appreciate the competition it provides with its good work.

I have participated in many "distro wars" type conversations over the years but I'm beginning to grow weary of them. There are many use cases for Linux and no single distro that meets everyones needs.

Red Hat doesn't have a smaller package count than Debian by accident. As you may or may not recall, they intentionally reduced their package count going from RHL to RHEL in order to make it easier to support in a commercial environment. As you are surely aware, they support their releases for a long time... 7 years at least. If I remember correctly, Debian supports their releases for 1 year after the next release is made available. That is a significant difference that may or may not be important depending on your needs.

Please refrain from telling everyone that if they pick Red Hat over Debian that they are doing so because they are forced to by bureaucratic managers. While that might be the case in some instances, it certainly isn't in all.

Also be advised that your suggestion that Debian has the only true community... is offensive to me... and probably others. Fedora has a community that is sponsored by Red Hat. They do a lot of work. Like Debian's community, Fedora's is often consumed with lively debate and disagreements... an actual sign of a healthy and honest community. Red Hat has a community too... and they include users like myself... the CentOS community... and the Scientific Linux community... among others.

While I appreciate your commentary and the thought you put into your comment(s), I think you should be a little more open minded. Debian is a great distribution and great bunch of packagers, but you yourself benefit by a lot of the development contributions done by Red Hat even if you don't choose to use Red Hat's packaging of them.