Does Red Hack suck?

[Steven Didier]

Stefan Bruda wrote:

>Hi all.
>
>At 08:55 +0000 on 2004-11-7 Thierry de Coulon wrote:
> >
> > After several trials to get YDL 4.0 to work on my PB 12" 1GHz (fine
> > graphics but still no sound), I also gave Mandrake PPC 10 (beta) a
> > try - total disaster, the thing won't even find a usb mouse, not to
> > speak about no X at all.
> > Then , from some message on the web, I found out ubuntu
> > (www.ubuntu.org) and, while I was at it, I tried it as
> > well. Miracle: a fast, clean installation, sound, graphics...
>
>Same goes here, though I am professor of computer science (thus a
>geek) and went for (horror!) Gentoo instead of Ubuntu.;-) This being
>said, the reason to switch was slightly different, as this happened
>about one year ago (time at which 4.0 was only a project).  The reason
>I switched was in fact three-fold:
>
>First, and most important, YDL has been featuring a one-year
>period--actually it could have been more than one year, not sure--of
>no security updates whatsoever.  Mind you, not because the
>distribution was fool-proof, there were at least two kernel-level
>vulnerabilities in the 2.4 series, and many other in the user space.
>Essentially Terrasoft forwent their own distribution *before* having
>anything as a replacement and as far as I know without any notice.
>
>Secondly, I ran--like everybody else sooner or later--into GCC
>dependency hell.  I upgraded my GCC and all of a sudden the mozilla
>plugin for Java refused to work--you see, the Java package was
>compiled with a different GCC version.  This is just one example (to
>which I will come back) and the RPM dependency hell also crept in
>sooner rather than later.
>
>Thirdly, I am not wild about the YDL Enhanced account model.
>Strangely enough Mandrake (if memory serves me well) has been put
>against the wall for limited releases of their beta versions but I
>have heard nothing against what is essentially the same model used by
>Terrasoft.  I don't blame Terrasoft for their model, don't get me
>wrong, but I don't have to like it either so I don't and in my mind
>(which is not necessarily correct) it violates the spirit (if not the
>letter) of the GPL.  Whilst I would have bought the CDs in a snap
>(after downloading their product and checking it out), I will never
>subscribe to an enhanced account.
>
>In the same line of thoughts, the 64-bit version of YDL seems to be
>for sale only in the future.  As it happens, my
>http://turing.ubishops.ca is a dual 2GHz G5 and I am also funded by
>NSERC and the quebecois NSERC so I would not have a problem in getting
>money for the said 64-bit version (when it appears), but I don't like
>the idea so I will not--Turing and my other machine at school both
>run, and will run for the foreseeable future Gentoo.
>
>In any event, because all these issues I first switched to Gentoo on
>my powerbook, it went amazingly well, so then I switched my wife's
>desktop and our sound server so that we are now a purely Gentoo
>family.  The GCC dependency hell went away all of a sudden, and as a
>bonus I got GCC 3.4, NPTL, udev, and many other cutting-edge goodies.
>The dreaded many-days compile time of Gentoo did not quite affect me
>as I upgraded a live system (with appropriately re-niced emerges) so
>my downtime was nil.  Security updates are now available with minimal
>delay and the GLSA (Gentoo Linux security advisory) system is
>amazingly active.
>
>Oh yeah, and the G5s are notoriously slow when running generically
>optimized code (as I found out first hand), so as opposed to YDL I do
>get amazing speed out of my machine at the office simply by compiling
>everything with the -mcpu=G5 set.
>
>Speaking now of the Red Hat RPM system (from which the discussion
>apparently started ;-) ), strangely enough I just installed Fedora
>Core 2 on a friend's laptop which allows me to enter the more general
>discussion.  So is it just me or is the said system converging towards
>the same performance (if not security flaws--though in the YDL case
>with all that update-less year one would have some doubts on the
>matter) as Windows?  I find about all the Red Hat-based applications
>(and especially interfaces) bloated and patronizing.  The latter is
>probably necessary for newbies but in any effect patronizing brings
>bloat in the Red Hat world, and overall the feel of a Red Hat system
>is slow and the user experience if not far off from the experience
>under Windows.  Add to that a lot of things that do not work out of
>the box (they probably don't in any other distribution except the
>amazing Knoppix live CDs, but Anaconda--with its bloated graphical
>interface--is supposed to be an easy to use installer as opposed to
>Gentoo which has no installer whatsoever) and one wonders what is the
>benefit of switching from Windows.  Easy to use interface does not
>necessarily imply bloat, as shown by all the Debian-based distros and
>especially Ubuntu, but this seems to have escaped to the Red Hat
>developpers.
>
>Strangely enough, a Gentoo installation nowadays goes much smoother in
>my experience than a Red Hat (Fedora Core, Mandrake, ...) one
>(excluding the long time one does nothing awaiting for kdelibs to
>compile).  The resulting system is *much* snappier too.
>
>To conclude, in my mind Terrasoft people shot themselves in the foot
>by foregoing their product before having a replacement for it and by
>using a business model which I personally do not approve.  To add to
>that, Red Hat-based systems leave a lot to be desired in terms of
>responsiveness, and this appears to be a continuing trend.  The future
>is thus--at least in my mind--Debian (and Gentoo for the technically
>inclined).
>
>In any case, this is my long-coming half-rant.  As with any rant, feel
>free to do anything you want with the thing, from agreeing with it to
>throwing it angrily into the garbage can.  All my Gentoo talk is in
>need for a disclaimer too: I am a big fan of free software; I grew up
>with Unix and I learned system administration on one of the first
>Solaris out there (without a package manager and without GUI
>configuration tools); I am one of those who adhere (in part) to the
>saying that a GUI for administration tools are like air conditioning
>for motorcycles.  In other words, don't take me more seriously than
>necessarily.
>
>Cheers,
>Stefan
>
>  
>
Excuse me Stefan, I tried the link you supplied to (www.ubuntu.org) that 
takes you to the Society for Civil Society! What distribution were you 
refering to "

 Then , from some message on the web, I found out ubuntu
 > (www.ubuntu.org) and, while I was at it, I tried it as
 > well. Miracle: a fast, clean installation, sound, graphics..." ?
Thanks,
Steve

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