Like "dbryson" mentioned, i have a small webhosting company with 4 RH 9.0 servers. I just spent months upgrading from 6.2 and 7.0 to 9.0. Now i hear this whole EOL and "now it's time to pay" thing. I use to brag to all my co-workers/sys admins how great and FREE RH is, while they were stuck with Microsoft products.

So what do i do now?? I can not afford the $345 US(I am a Canadian) per server. WHy would anyone then want to stay ? Microsoft has better support so may as well go with them... just more work on security updates!

I was so proud to say "i pay nothing and have 10 times the flexibilty and security and of course stability". Now, i already have gotten a few emails from them laughing at me, asking if i want a copy of Win2003!

Maybe someone should start a group or club of all RH users in the same situation? I am sure there are many RH users that have under 5 servers that are production and important and can not be replaced or migrated easily.

www.iwantredhatforfreestill.com



Thanks for the vent..
Rob...

"So what do i do now?? I can not afford the $345 US(I am a Canadian) per server."

I used SuSE for 3 years. The first year or so I bought SuSE then I simply switched to using downloadable SuSE (I sometime purchased it from a discount CD seller). I recently switched from SuSE to Fedora Core 1. My opinion on your question is this:

If you are paying for Linux then SuSE is cheaper and better than Red Hat. If you are not paying for Linux then Fedora is better than SuSE.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

I would not mind paying 60 bucks a year if hat option was still available... but not $345.

I guess i will have to check out Fedora.... my main needs are Apache MYSQL, sendmail(with mailscanner),some popper, vsftp, php, SSL.

I will assume these shouls at least work ok on Fedora?



Rob...

"my main needs are Apache MYSQL, sendmail(with mailscanner),some popper, vsftp, php, SSL.

I will assume these shouls at least work ok on Fedora?"

These programs will work on any Linux distribution. The question is how easy are they to install and maintain, which will vary from distribution to distribution.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

I came across a site which mentioned that Progeny would offer support for RHL users for about $5 per machine per month.

Visit : http://www.progeny.com/products/transition/index.html

Perhaps this will help some of our forum users ?

Thats no bad....



It's a start, thanks for the link! I hope they intend to go past their Dec 31 2004 date though....

I will probabaly sign up for that, but i will also check around too, when ya think of it , there is probably other companies out there intending to do the same, relizing that there is a good oppotunity for the millions of RH 7.2 and up users who will need updates..

Thanks once again...

Rob...

Facts:
1) Oracle does not work on Fedora and works on Rh 9.0 (not supported but great for development!)
2) Rh Es does not include automatically MySql same as Rh 9.0
3) Rh Ws does not support more than two "logical" CPU Rh 9.0 does !
4) You cannot download Es for free. (if you are looking for a stable version without support too bad..)

It's look like
1) Rh want to protect a market of commercial application. As a developer in one side you can download Oracle but in the other side you lost the OS. ???
2) Rh has tried to promote his own database version based on postgres. So if you want to install MySql (I think the most popular free database), you have to force the option. That is the same approach with Es but the "preferred" database seams to be Oracle now.
3) Buying a mother board with two xeon (multi thread) CPU is now "affordable". This give you more power and having some resource left when you compile or backup. The power of a big computer is now available with as small budget but we lost the OS.
4) GPL correct me if I'am wrong but does it means "to make sure the software is free for all its users" I am not sure that is applicable for Rh !

Conclusion
Rh business shows the same business orientation as Windows : get part of big and medium enterprise market.
The free software is not compatible with the actual business approach of software editor (investment, profit on investment) with copyright, but free software is more compatible with direct services revenue but less profitable for software editor.
The free software community force windows to break his prices, free software should act to force Rh to revise his business policy.