Well I know this topic has been around the block, but I wanted to voice some of my own opinions on this matter and at the same time get a feel for what the general communitty feels about this.

From my side, I see some of the frustrations about the whole Red Hat support issue and the fees that will be required if you want the same support, etc. A lot of people in my office use RH for their work and their are none too happy about it at all. Which brings up the following questions that I ask myself.

- If funding doesnt come through for the licensing, then what OS will they go to if they decide to make the change? I msyelf have been looking at my options and some of them have me going back to FreeBSD , which is what I used for my previous web server and file share. I have also started looking into Debian as well.

Could any of you maybe provide some insight into what pros or cons come from changing to a system like debian / mandrake from RedHat ? I'm interested in hearing your opinions on this matter.

What it boils down to is now with this coming up, I am going to have to decide on an OS for my web server and file share. Part of me wants to consider reverting back to FreeBSd for my web server but part of me wants to possibly take this time to look at new Linux flavors and see what develops with this RedHat situation.

Thanks much for all your possible insight into this matter.

I don't see any problem with running RedHat's desktop flavour, Fedora, or any other Linux distribution. Or use FreeBSD, whatever suits you. I think in general people get a bit too upset about RedHat's announcement - after all, most of us that use Linux at home didn't buy it to get the installation support they support on the boxed RedHat releases. If you want support, get a support contract. That situation hasn't changed. RedHat will still be as active developing software and Linux, so why make such a big fuzz out of it? Especially if you're only running a home server or use it for a desktop. Fedora is still there, so are your other choices for Linux distributions.

Now, on the corporate end I assume some could be a bit distracted by this, but AS, ES and the other RedHat suit flavours are still supported...perhaps even more than before.

Håkan

There's a good article on the new Enterprise Suite and other distributions:
http://www.webhostgear.com/28.html

Cheers