[CLUE-Tech] Fedora vs Debain

[David Anselmi]

Chris Hirsch wrote:

[...]
> I'm really trying to figure out if Debian is really that much better 
> than the Red Hat/Fedora distros

For me it comes down to one word: Freedom.

I Oct I sat in on a meeting of admins at Department of Energy.  They 
were very upset that Red Hat (their distro of choice) had pulled the rug 
out from under them and was requiring license fees they could not afford.

As I sat and listened I was reminded of the GNU Manifesto.  The 
complaints sounded exactly like those that led RMS to start the FSF.

For that matter, when I picked a distro to learn a few years ago I 
picked Debian because it seemed that free downloads/updates from Red Hat 
were provided out of the goodness of their hearts.  I didn't want to get 
locked in to something that would eventually be available retail only.

As it turns out, the DoE guys didn't have a clue about what Fedora would 
be and their pain is not nearly what they made it out to be, I think. 
Threads here have made that clear.  But their complaint in the end was 
"our vendor changed our price structure," to which I said "get a vendor 
that won't do that to you."

The sad thing was that one lab had 2 full time guys who did nothing but 
compile the RH Enterprise SRPMs so they could run RHE without "paying" 
for it.  If those two guys had done Debian development to make Debian as 
good[1] as RH, we all would benefit.  Ah well, my tax dollars at work.

To me there are significant parallels between Linux vs. Windows and Red 
Hat vs. Debian.

[1] "Good" in the eyes of DoE, not to suggest that RH is better than Debian.

Dave