Red Hat’s recent decision to restrict the source code for its enterprise Linux build has led open-source projects big and small to come up with creative strategies to continue to serve their users.
Yes, community distros are the way to go, at least for private use. Companies might need certifications not available for e.g. Debian.
I was using Fedora happily for quite a while until I tried NixOS, and now I’m really glad about not having to worry about acquisitions or corporate decisions. Though my mums laptop runs Fedora Silverblue just fine and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. Fedora is community driven, but it is tied to RH to some degree.
I don’t know specifics and it depends on each country, but there’re regulations about software having to be certified to fullfill certain conditions (e.g. security updates, permissions, etc). I guess this is probably mostly the case for defense or medical contractors.
And it’s not really that other OS don’t fullfill those requirements but mostly that they aren’t certified, at least that’s how I understand it.
I can’t really write more since I don’t know myself. The point was mostly about why some companies couldn’t just switch to another OS.
In my eyes my problem with moving to SUSE or Ubuntu is that it’s the same thing. A corporation backed or straight up corporation developed and owned distro still has ONE failure point. Right now SUSE are “the good guys”, but what if they get bought? What if there’s a new CEO? What if they suddenly just decide to abuse their power? Then you’re simply screwed. Red Hat were also seen as “one of the good guys” some months ago, but the way things work, companies always end up pivoting towards what makes them more money. Them being ethical is nothing but a luxury that happens if they can afford it and if we are lucky.
Absolutely agreed. I just don’t think many non-IT businesses would consider using Debian. So, if you want a job, get certified on one of the commercial three.
I use Debian on my servers already, though I’m on Arch with my pc and laptop.
Absolutely agreed. I just don’t think many non-IT businesses would consider using Debian.
Really? I’d assume the opposite case, no? If a business is not related to IT, it doesn’t really need to be compatible with the RHEL environment or tech support, whereas an IT business would prefer those. I also use Debian for my server and have never had any issues with it. Just upgraded it to bookworm recently and it was boringly seamless.
Nah @exu is right: non-IT focused companies do not have the skills or desire to reliably set up and maintain these systems. There is no benefit to them creating their own server stack based on a community distro to save a few bucks.
Smaller companies will hire MSPs to get them setup and maintain what they need. And medium to large size companies would want an enterprise solution (IE: RHEL) they can reliably integrate into their operations.
This is for a few high value reasons. Taking Red Hat as an example:
Standardization (IE: they can hire people with RedHat certificates and they will be a few steps ahead in ramping up to internal systems)
Vendor support (IE: if something critical isn’t working they can get quick support from a Red Hat technician and get it resolved quickly)
Reliability (IE: all software is backed and tested by Red Hat and if anything breaks from a package update its on Red Hat to fix)
When lots of money is on the line companies want as many safety/contingency plans as they can get which is why RedHat makes sense.
The only companies that will roll their own solution are either very small with knowledgeable IT people (smaller startups), or MASSIVE companies that will create very custom solutions and then train their own IT operations divisions (talking like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon levels).
Not to say what Red Hat did is justified or good, because hampering the FOSS ecosystem is destructive overall, but just putting this into context.
I used to think that Fedora being ultimately backed by IBM would give them stability. Then Redhat dismissed Tom Cotton, who was a key OSS liaison, and now it seems to be embarrassing itself with this bitterly hostile attitude towards everyone in the RHEL orbit. It’s been so out-of-character that most people initially assumed this was IBM leaning on RHEL. But it apparently was not. Then my Fedora installation choked on what seemed like a pretty ordinary kernel update and stopped booting.
It felt like a signal. I settled on EndeavourOS, and it’s been an all-around improvement. Nvidia drivers are optionally baked in, the AUR (which EOS also bakes in) is ten times what Copr could ever hope to be, and pacman is ridiculously speedy (though I suppose anything is faster than DNF). I know EOS will sometimes break, as is tradition for rolling releases, but I’m confident that Arch will at least keep being Arch for many years to come.
That’s the thing with 100% community backed distros. There’s never any drama, there’s never any controversial decisions, the most you’ll hear of is some leader figure being replaced or not treating others well. Honestly it’s what Linux should be in the first place.
I think it’s dishonest to paint that incident as “plenty of drama”. It was a decision most of the community agreed to and those who didn’t made a fork. I don’t think anyone did anything wrong in that. Compare it to Canonical forcing it’s official flavors to break flatpaks and appimages. I think the severity is very different.
@mimichuu_ Yea I have a few off the top of my head…
Try to update as regularly as possible.
Use “netselect-apt” to get the best mirrors for APT.
APT supports parallel downloads, so enable them straight after installation.
APT caches downloaded packages by default, which can consume disk space over time. Make sure to clean it every once in a while with “sudo apt-get clean”.
Whenever you use “RedHat”, replace it with “IBM”, as that’s who they really are now. Tech companies to avoid (imho) are IBM and Oracle, both of who have linux distros.
Until Canonical or SUSE become evil (unlikely), or are bought by an industry evil, then you’re better off.
I mean, in my eyes Canonical is already evil. SUSE is pretty nice right now, but like I said, them being nice is nothing but a luxury. There’s no guarantee it wont happen, and you could probably argue it’s fated to happen eventually.
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@dontcarebear @ylai Debian is hard to beat… Screw corporate Linux… Stick with tried and true distros like Debian & everything will be sweet…
Yes, community distros are the way to go, at least for private use. Companies might need certifications not available for e.g. Debian.
I was using Fedora happily for quite a while until I tried NixOS, and now I’m really glad about not having to worry about acquisitions or corporate decisions. Though my mums laptop runs Fedora Silverblue just fine and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. Fedora is community driven, but it is tied to RH to some degree.
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I don’t know specifics and it depends on each country, but there’re regulations about software having to be certified to fullfill certain conditions (e.g. security updates, permissions, etc). I guess this is probably mostly the case for defense or medical contractors.
And it’s not really that other OS don’t fullfill those requirements but mostly that they aren’t certified, at least that’s how I understand it.
I can’t really write more since I don’t know myself. The point was mostly about why some companies couldn’t just switch to another OS.
I think I’ll be checking out OpenSuse. They haven’t been controversial lately afaik and just keep doing their thing.
In my eyes my problem with moving to SUSE or Ubuntu is that it’s the same thing. A corporation backed or straight up corporation developed and owned distro still has ONE failure point. Right now SUSE are “the good guys”, but what if they get bought? What if there’s a new CEO? What if they suddenly just decide to abuse their power? Then you’re simply screwed. Red Hat were also seen as “one of the good guys” some months ago, but the way things work, companies always end up pivoting towards what makes them more money. Them being ethical is nothing but a luxury that happens if they can afford it and if we are lucky.
I’m moving to Debian once I get my new PC.
Absolutely agreed. I just don’t think many non-IT businesses would consider using Debian. So, if you want a job, get certified on one of the commercial three.
I use Debian on my servers already, though I’m on Arch with my pc and laptop.
Really? I’d assume the opposite case, no? If a business is not related to IT, it doesn’t really need to be compatible with the RHEL environment or tech support, whereas an IT business would prefer those. I also use Debian for my server and have never had any issues with it. Just upgraded it to bookworm recently and it was boringly seamless.
Nah @exu is right: non-IT focused companies do not have the skills or desire to reliably set up and maintain these systems. There is no benefit to them creating their own server stack based on a community distro to save a few bucks.
Smaller companies will hire MSPs to get them setup and maintain what they need. And medium to large size companies would want an enterprise solution (IE: RHEL) they can reliably integrate into their operations.
This is for a few high value reasons. Taking Red Hat as an example:
When lots of money is on the line companies want as many safety/contingency plans as they can get which is why RedHat makes sense.
The only companies that will roll their own solution are either very small with knowledgeable IT people (smaller startups), or MASSIVE companies that will create very custom solutions and then train their own IT operations divisions (talking like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon levels).
Not to say what Red Hat did is justified or good, because hampering the FOSS ecosystem is destructive overall, but just putting this into context.
I hadn’t thought of it that way, it makes sense. Thank you for the nice explanation.
I used to think that Fedora being ultimately backed by IBM would give them stability. Then Redhat dismissed Tom Cotton, who was a key OSS liaison, and now it seems to be embarrassing itself with this bitterly hostile attitude towards everyone in the RHEL orbit. It’s been so out-of-character that most people initially assumed this was IBM leaning on RHEL. But it apparently was not. Then my Fedora installation choked on what seemed like a pretty ordinary kernel update and stopped booting.
It felt like a signal. I settled on EndeavourOS, and it’s been an all-around improvement. Nvidia drivers are optionally baked in, the AUR (which EOS also bakes in) is ten times what Copr could ever hope to be, and pacman is ridiculously speedy (though I suppose anything is faster than DNF). I know EOS will sometimes break, as is tradition for rolling releases, but I’m confident that Arch will at least keep being Arch for many years to come.
That’s the thing with 100% community backed distros. There’s never any drama, there’s never any controversial decisions, the most you’ll hear of is some leader figure being replaced or not treating others well. Honestly it’s what Linux should be in the first place.
Oh there is plenty of drama, look at systemd.
I think it’s dishonest to paint that incident as “plenty of drama”. It was a decision most of the community agreed to and those who didn’t made a fork. I don’t think anyone did anything wrong in that. Compare it to Canonical forcing it’s official flavors to break flatpaks and appimages. I think the severity is very different.
@mimichuu_ @exu Debian is a rock solid choice, & one you’ll never regret making…
Any tips for when I do switch, by the way?
@mimichuu_ Yea I have a few off the top of my head…
Try to update as regularly as possible.
Use “netselect-apt” to get the best mirrors for APT.
APT supports parallel downloads, so enable them straight after installation.
APT caches downloaded packages by default, which can consume disk space over time. Make sure to clean it every once in a while with “sudo apt-get clean”.
Thank you!
Whenever you use “RedHat”, replace it with “IBM”, as that’s who they really are now. Tech companies to avoid (imho) are IBM and Oracle, both of who have linux distros.
Until Canonical or SUSE become evil (unlikely), or are bought by an industry evil, then you’re better off.
I mean, in my eyes Canonical is already evil. SUSE is pretty nice right now, but like I said, them being nice is nothing but a luxury. There’s no guarantee it wont happen, and you could probably argue it’s fated to happen eventually.
There’s nothing wrong with Ubuntu in a professional environment. I prefer Debian, but whatever suits your goals.