LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Joseph Tan <j.tan@bigpond.com>
  To  : <glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au>
  Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 00:33:30 +1030

RE: Any Questions to Red Hat, Mandrake You'd Like To Ask?

Glen,

My goodness Civilization 3 has been knocking me back a few days :). I hope
that Loki is considering a port of this.. anyway back to your response.

Interesting questions. The review is mainly a comparison between Mandrake
and Red Hat for desktop and low end personal web serving applications. I
wouldn't want to get too in-depth with the questions, especially
documentation and deployment of a Linux install on a large company LAN -
this is a little out of my league.

Your questions are interesting though, and I'll make a mention of their
plans to improve their non-CD standard installs.

Cheers,

Joseph Tan
Webmaster
http://www.Tech-Junkie.com

-----Original Message-----
From: glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au [mailto:glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au]
Sent: Tuesday, 6 November 2001 9:22 AM
To: Joseph Tan
Cc: Andy Zivkovic; linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
Subject: Re: Any Questions to Red Hat, Mandrake You'd Like To Ask?


Andy Zivkovic wrote:
>
> Network installs are the strange thing too (i only do network installs. i
> can't remember the last time I installed from a CD). RedHat is aimed at
> servers as well as desktops and the network install does not use X (which
is
> fair enough).

Totally agree.  Red Hat's text mode installer is a massive advantage
as it allows the OS to be installed in scenarios that the manufacturer
hasn't considered.

For example, we install RH Linux from the network but driven
from the serial port, which is connected to a terminal server
and modem.

We also add an RPM to the distribution that adds the serial
console to /etc/inittab (mgetty-aarnet).

This is an ideal deployment scenarios for ISPs that have
"minder" PCs built into the racks at each PoP or for
corporates that have network services PCs running DHCP,
LDAP, DNS forwarder etc at each site.

What is disappointing is how undocumented the Red Hat
build procedure is.  Documenting this would be very useful
for corporate deployments as it has immediate TCO effects.
From Red Hat's point of view it also effectively leverages
the GPLed nature of their installer in a way their
Linux and Microsoft competition can't match.

I'd like to ask:

 - documentation.  It sucks and is obviously untested
   in parts. Try and install LDAP authentication following
   the manual.  When is Red Hat going to get serious about
   documentation?  It could start with a style guide and
   check list.

 - contributions.  The contrib software is a good idea,
   but updates aren't being accepted.  Result is that
   common packages like zoo are still being distributed
   with security problems and many packages haven't
   tracked the FSSTND.

 - up2date, RHN, etc don't work for corporates.  They
   require Internet access and they allow the user
   to choose if a package will be installed.  Adding
   features from autoupdate would be useful as it
   would allow large numbers of RHL machines to be
   deployed with very little maintenance overhead.

 - support.  Poor or confused relationships with
   PC vendors.  For example, their are bizaare goings
   on if you buy a machine from Dell and try to use
   the packaged support from Red Hat.  The result is
   that you end up doing self-support and discard
   any notion of purchasing further Red Hat non-support.

 - packaging.  Red Hat really needs to pressure commerical
   software companies to ship in RPM format.  More and
   more we are seeing Windows-like installers.  These
   suck for corporates, and are part of the nightmare that
   makes maintaining Windows machines so expensive.  How
   about a cost-free logo program that says that this
   third-party software follows the Linux standards,
   Unix practice, and is in RPM format.

In short, Linux is going to displace most vendor UNIX,
with the likely exception of Solaris.  Red Hat Linux
is in the box seat to be the distribution of choice
for corporate Unix.  But it's going a long way towards
fluffing that lead, mainly due to poor execution.

Finally, I'd like reviewers to get beyond the installer.
Part of the reason Red Hat Linux seems harder to install
is that it does more.  How about setting a list of tasks
that is required from go-to-whoa to get a machine up and
running and assessing that.  The current install-centric
reviews reward systems that install easily but push stuff
towards a configuration nightmare.  "Installs easily but
then use vi" isn't a happy user experience.

--
 Glen Turner                                 Network Engineer
 (08) 8303 3936      Australian Academic and Research Network
 glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au          http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
--
 The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised

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