Paying for Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Go Debian!

Yesterday, one of my managers sent me a two links about Redhat's discontinuing support of 7.x to 8.x by end of December and 9.x by end of April 2004. Alternatively, it leaves out a RedHat-sponsored Fedora project to provide free, community supported Linux distrobution.

While many users (mainly end-users and SMEs, I think) are not very happy by this, my first feeling is that RedHat, being a commerical software company, is doing a right thing at a right time. When I once realize that Redhat is a company, this day will finally arrive, and now it has arrived. I don't feel disappointed, as I don't use RedHat..... I use Debian, another community-support Linux, backed by a non-profit organization, now having a very large user and a good developer base.

I agree that the Debian's installation process is not as smooth as Redhat, the software bundled in its stable version (woody) is not up-to-date as in Redhat (or may be out-dated). And yes, it has a long release cycle. But Debian has a very strict policy that only critical bug fix will only be released, it is a good thing and that's why it is so stable. With Debian you can update your system with security fixes with just two commands (apt-get update; apt-get upgrade), even without rebooting unless you upgrade the kernel. For me using Linux as a server, Debian is a good choice. Current Redhat user should think about switching to Debian. May be Debian community should launch a Switch campaign just like Apple. But those business companies using Linux should continue using Redhat to deploy their systems or applications, Redhat's commerial support and their expertise in Linux is still the first grade among others.