Fate of RedHat

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 04:51 2/23/2004, you wrote:
>People who went to qualify as a RHCE had a similar problem [...]
>The qualification only covers the release
>current at the point of the exam, plus the next release. This means that the
>people who have spent a lot of money have been short-changed.

Not true. Given earlier policies, an RHCE certification was likely to be 
good for about three years, and the person certified was (in the real 
world) going to have to be comfortable with roughly three major releases or 
risk looking foolish at work for not knowing a bunch of release-specific 
stuff. And he/she would make RH and the cert look bad if that happened.

Under the new policies, with RHEL releases every 12-18 months, one can see 
that RHCE's need only know *two* major releases, and their cert is still 
likely to last for two or three years. And the level of expertise which is 
actually delivered to the customer is, on average, likely to increase 
slightly. Most RHCE's take care to stay fully current... this will force 
the laggard few to pick up their heels.

I see no harm.

>On a personal note I have not yet looked into prices of the current offerings
>so I can't comment, but if Fedora is basically a replacement for RawHide I
>won't be using it on any of my production boxes.

Again, you have been misinformed. Fedora is intended to be what you would 
have expected out of Red Hat Linux 10. The /development model/ has changed, 
but Rawhide is still there, and FC1 bears no resemblance to it. For 
example, I'm sure you have noticed that the 2.6 kernel is looking pretty 
good already, and pretty stable in many cases, and yet it is still slated 
for release in FC2 around April/May, and *not* as an update to FC1.

How is that "bleeding edge" to you? Seems like decent, fairly-lengthy, and 
quite excellent QA and testing to me.

>Unfortunately, - and I know these comments are being scathed and ridiculed
>elsewhere - I will now have to start looking at other dists.

Go right ahead. Use what's best for you. Never follow a system blindly. No 
harm in it. No single alternative is best for everyone, and everyone's 
needs are different.

I just hope you do it for the right reasons (those detailed in the previous 
paragraph are just a few examples), and with the right information in hand. 
The two comments to which I have responded above show that not *all* the 
information you have is accurate.


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com