Telco switches to Ubuntu from RHEL for one reason...

[Matthew Gillen]

Kristian Hermansen wrote:
> The problem I see is that RHEL's package repository is too stale, and
> Fedora is not geared toward businesses.  

Can you elaborate on how Fedora is not geared toward businesses?

> I have found Ubuntu to be a happy medium, and found it quite useful in both
> desktop/server usage. You may think otherwise, and that is your choice.
> That's what Linux is all about. If you are a hacker, it's all a bunch of
> bits anyways. I presume the goal is to make the arranging of those bits
> easier for adminstrators in a business environment. I can hack on any
> distro, but I choose Ubuntu. Again, it's all just a bunch of bits, right?

Not really.  If it were just a bunch of bits, then Fedora would have an
official commercial repo too (if not now, then soon).  There's nothing special
(from a purely technical standpoint) about Ubuntu that allows them to have
such a thing and not Fedora (or Debian for that matter).

It's also about your rights with the software.  Can I, as a sys-admin, make an
image of a given system and replicate it as much as I want?  Or do I have to
keep track of software licenses, and generate new license keys for each new
machine, etc.  Can I derive my own custom/specialized distribution from the
packages that distro X provides?  Or do I have to examine each package to
check it's licensing to see if I'm allowed to re-distribute it?

This is where the "official" package restrictions in Fedora and Debian provide
a lot of value: I know that every package is freely redistributable without
having to spend any time at all looking at individual packages.  Debian's
strict adherence to this policy was no doubt a boon to Ubuntu when it was
first getting off the ground...

Matt

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