Which Linux?
Neil Truby
abandonning unixware and moving to linux.
is there a concensus as to the best flavour of Linux or version?
our linux customers are all on a variety of redhat from 6 through 7 to
enterprise 2.
my favourite linux from ad admin point of view is suse though ....
thanks
neil
Paul Watson
date. Suse.latest was fine though
Cheers
Paul
--
Paul Watson #
Oninit Ltd # Growing old is mandatory
Tel: +44 1436 672201 # Growing up is optional
Fax: +44 1436 678693 #
Mob: +44 7818 003457 #
www.oninit.com #
Andrew Hamm
We've got truckloads on RH7.[23], and the team using it has been deploying
RH8 lately. Apparently RH9 has some kernel issues (what, on RedHat? No
WAY!!!) that stop Informix from working properly.
Another team has deployed some SuSE and has no problems especially kernel
drift. They are happy with that. Don't know anything about any other flavour
of Linux.
Scott Burns
>When I lasted tried (Oct '03) SE didn't work on RH9 and IBM had no fix
>date. Suse.latest was fine though
>
>Cheers
>Paul
>
>Neil Truby wrote:
>
>
>>one of our (se) customers is buying a new server, and is thinking of
>>abandonning unixware and moving to linux.
>>
>>is there a concensus as to the best flavour of Linux or version?
>>
>>our linux customers are all on a variety of redhat from 6 through 7 to
>>enterprise 2.
>>
>>my favourite linux from ad admin point of view is suse though ....
>>
>>thanks
>>neil
>>
>>
>
>
>
IIRC one of the security upgrades to SUSE broke Informix, basically
putting you in the same boat as RH (corrections anyone?). Not too much
of a problem as anyone with support, after a bit of tooth pulling, can
get a beta of the SDK etc which willould run on the new glibc.
Having said that, I think you would be better with SUSE, not because I'd
recommend it, but because I would no longer recommed RH. We are a long
time RH shop, having just retired out last 5.2 box, now running from 6.2
through to RH9/RHEL3.0 but it's hard to justify today's expensive
versions of RH when we don't usually apply the updates. As always, YMMV.
--
Scott Burns
Mirrabooka Systems
Tel +61 7 3857 7899
Fax +61 7 3857 1368
Neil Truby
news:vGTXb.753$KW.4...@news.optus.net.au...
> Having said that, I think you would be better with SUSE, not because I'd
> recommend it, but because I would no longer recommed RH. We are a long
> time RH shop, having just retired out last 5.2 box, now running from 6.2
> through to RH9/RHEL3.0 but it's hard to justify today's expensive
> versions of RH when we don't usually apply the updates. As always, YMMV.
That (RedHat's push towards supporting only its paid versions) is of course
one of the considerations. As a correspondent to UK's Computer Weekly put
it recently, just as Microsoft has finally acknowledged it has something to
fear from Linux, one of the major suppliers has rocked the boat.
Fancy Redhat wanting to make money out of their distribution. How vulgar!
Thomas Ronayne
System V," and you don't have to contend with a modified kernel.
Informix 7.x works just fine in Slackware (don't know about 9.x, but I
can't imagine anything different). My experience with Slack is that it's
easy to install, solid, dependable, and everything just works.
Obnoxio The Clown
> You might want to look at Slackware. The design philosophy is "most like
> System V," and you don't have to contend with a modified kernel.
> Informix 7.x works just fine in Slackware (don't know about 9.x, but I
> can't imagine anything different). My experience with Slack is that it's
> easy to install, solid, dependable, and everything just works.
I do have to say, many years ago when I first discovered Linux, I used
Slackware and it was simple and brilliant, reliable and perfect.
Just like me, really.
> Neil Truby wrote:
>
>>one of our (se) customers is buying a new server, and is thinking of
>>abandonning unixware and moving to linux.
>>
>>is there a concensus as to the best flavour of Linux or version?
>>
>>our linux customers are all on a variety of redhat from 6 through 7 to
>>enterprise 2.
>>
>>my favourite linux from ad admin point of view is suse though ....
--
"C'est pas parce qu'on n'a rien à dire qu'il faut fermer sa gueule"
- Coluche
Richard Kofler
today's testing:
SuSE 9.0 installed rigth out of the box
IFX V9.21.UC3 install & run, no problems at all.
Same goes for V9.40.UC2
I never had any prolems using SuSE & IFX, apart from the
well documented upgrade of the glibc in SuSE 8.0, 8.1, 8.2
and the funny memory size defaults of 3GB in the Kernels
used by SuSE.
But then they allow to set /proc/$PID/mapped_base ....
so you have your shared memory limited much like
on a Sun (3.75 GB), but at approx 15% of the dollars ;)
dic_k
--
Richard Kofler
SOLID STATE EDV
Dienstleistungen GmbH
Vienna/Austria/Europe
Ronald Cole
> That (RedHat's push towards supporting only its paid versions) is of course
> one of the considerations. As a correspondent to UK's Computer Weekly put
> it recently, just as Microsoft has finally acknowledged it has something to
> fear from Linux, one of the major suppliers has rocked the boat.
I'm not so sure that Red Hat is on the up and up with their Enterprise
product support. RHEL3, for example, doesn't support ISA sound cards
(whereas RHEL2.1 did), bindconf is horribly broken to the point of
being completely unusable (and still hasn't been fixed after four
months), the sendmail-devel rpm isn't included (so no sendmail milters
can be built unless you build the sendmail src.rpm and install it
yourself), and IBM still has no JVM that does NPTL (so the Java2 rpms
that ship with RHEL3 seg faults without hand-crafted wrappers).
But IDS-9.40.UC3 and CSDK-2.81.UC3 and the 7.31 4GL tools seem to work
ok. I couldn't get Java in IIF-9.40.UC3 to work because of the
non-NPTL JVM issue described above.
> Fancy Redhat wanting to make money out of their distribution.
Especially since RHEL3 should work at least as well as RHL9 did since
they are charging more money for a more "stable" "Enterprise" version.
I guess "stable" means "static" (as in "it takes us a really long time
to fix bugs now") and "generally a superset" means "you're on your own
to find the pieces we deliberately left out".
> How vulgar!
By not selling what they advertised in their whitepaper? I agree. I
might even go so far as to say "unscrupulous"! I'm currently
evaluating Progeny support for RHL7.3, since that was pretty close to
what IBM used to do their Linux port and I can't seriously recommend
RHEL3 to any of my clients, yet.
--
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ron...@forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B
Ronald Cole
> I do have to say, many years ago when I first discovered Linux, I used
> Slackware and it was simple and brilliant, reliable and perfect.
>
> Just like me, really.
Until you run into devastating dependency problems that affect
stability and reliability when trying to apply security updates. That
finally pushed me from Slackware 3.6 to Red Hat 6.0. But Red Hat's
(lack of) quality of late is making me give Debian-stable serious
consideration. Can't ask for more than ultra-conservatively stable
and reliable and easy to update!
Scott Burns
>I'm not so sure that Red Hat is on the up and up with their Enterprise
>product support. RHEL3, for example, doesn't
>
<SNIP>
You missed out that you cannot compile all of the packages included in
RHEL3.0 on a stock RHEL3.0 install - you need to download a heap of
extra packages in order to do that. Their aims are dubious at best.
Andrew Hamm
> Obnoxio The Clown <obn...@hotmail.com> writes:
>> I do have to say, many years ago when I first discovered Linux, I
>> used Slackware and it was simple and brilliant, reliable and perfect.
>>
>> Just like me, really.
>
> Until you run into devastating dependency problems that affect
> stability and reliability when trying to apply security updates.
OTC has run into devestating dependency problems decades ago, leading to a
serious loss of stability.
Neil Truby
news:m3n07iz...@yakisoba.forte-intl.com...
Thanks for the comments about RHEL: it's invaluable to know of real users'
experiences.
You took my sarcastic comments about RedHat moving to a chargeable model at
face value, which is always the best way. In fact I was trying to make a
wider point: that it was unrealistic to expect the "free" model to last for
ever. Speaking personally and extrapolating my views widely, one of the
reasons that I have got so "in" to Linux is the free distribution model,
which has allowed me to use it for a time-only investment. And I'd very
much like it to stay that way.
But as it moves into the mainstream, and companies like IBM move their tanks
into the battlefield (I think we had a previous debate on the pros and cons
of IBM's involvement in "The Linux Project"), it is perhaps inevitable that
companies will try to cash in more directly. It's similar to the evolution
argument: the greatest good for all would doubtless be obtained by all Linux
vendors maintaining the free model, but that won't ultimatately sustain
because the gains for any one of them to break ranks are so high.
Ben Thompson
> my favourite linux from ad admin point of view is suse though ....
We use SuSE and it works a treat. However there is the odd
incompatibility we have come across. For instance I can't get 9.30.UC3
to work with SuSE Linux 8.2. It's fine with 8.1 though. 9.30.UC5 works
on both. Also some older versions of SuSE require glibc updates to work.
9.40.UC2 certainly works well with SuSE 9.0 although make sure you
install the updates from SuSE, particularly the kernel patch.
Ben.
Ronald Cole
> Ronald Cole wrote:
>>I'm not so sure that Red Hat is on the up and up with their Enterprise
>> product support. RHEL3, for example, doesn't
> <SNIP>
>
> You missed out that you cannot compile all of the packages included in
> RHEL3.0 on a stock RHEL3.0 install - you need to download a heap of
> extra packages in order to do that. Their aims are dubious at best.
Their "value add" in their Enterprise products was supposed to be
features, stability, and support. It looks like they are spending too
much effort in trying to keep others from competing with them with
their own product at the expense of actually providing features,
stability, and support. I wonder how long that business model will
work for them? Do I want to be a Red Hat Enterprise customer and find
out? I guess I'll have to wait and see what distro IBM decides to use
for their next IDS port to see if there is any love lost between Red
Hat and IBM.
Neil Truby
> Scott Burns <sc...@mirrabooka.com> writes:
> > Ronald Cole wrote:
> >>I'm not so sure that Red Hat is on the up and up with their Enterprise
> >> product support. RHEL3, for example, doesn't
> > <SNIP>
> >
> > You missed out that you cannot compile all of the packages included in
> > RHEL3.0 on a stock RHEL3.0 install - you need to download a heap of
> > extra packages in order to do that. Their aims are dubious at best.
>
> Their "value add" in their Enterprise products was supposed to be
> features, stability, and support. It looks like they are spending too
> much effort in trying to keep others from competing with them with
> their own product at the expense of actually providing features,
> stability, and support. I wonder how long that business model will
> work for them? Do I want to be a Red Hat Enterprise customer and find
> out? I guess I'll have to wait and see what distro IBM decides to use
> for their next IDS port to see if there is any love lost between Red
> Hat and IBM.
"IBM and RedHat/Sitting in a tree/K-I-S-S-I-N-G ..."
Our expereince of selling a FAStT storage solution, and trying to sell
x-series clusters, is that IBM loves RedHat and that is always one of the
first ports to be done. I guess this is hardly a surprise given its
(RedHat's) pre-eminence.
The RedHat "Enterprise" model is a worry, and I guess most of we individuals
hope that they'll get a bloody nose from it. But big business, like IBM,
will probably be hoping they get away with it so they can start making more
money out of Linux too. No matter that these people risk killing the Golden
Goose (well, Penguin) ....