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I am a Web Architect for my company and have decided to test Linux out (we use solaris at present) under a couple of applications.
Downloaded Red Hat 9 and installed (seemed to go fine), but when I tried to do the update, it seems to be implying that I need to pay Red Hat a few hundred dollars to proceed.
Did I miss a step or is this part of the 'going with Linux' deal? Is there a legal way to get the updates from Red Hat without paying for them (this is for a Dev box).
thx,
j
RH has officially dropped support for the RH1-9 versions, forsaking anyone who went that way. They then released RH1-9 to the development communittee and called it Fedora (currently at Fedora Core 3).
The official RH release is called Workstation, Enterprise or Advanced? Enterprise....all of which are free when you pay huge amounts of money for their support, including their online up2date program.
RH9 can use apt and has good repositories for updating the OS without the RH up2date subscription utility fees.
I guess choosing Red Hat was a mistake.
Can you suggest a brand? I am literate enough to get the thing up and running but am not currently interested in purchasing anything. I want to test this in a Dev environment, potentially on a half dozen boxes if things proceed smoothly.
thanks for answering my previous question
Well, you do have a lot of choices :D
But seriously, though, you can try the offshoot of red hat's distro, fedora, which is free and primarily targeted towards consumers/desktop.
A listing of almost all linux distributions is at www.distrowatch.com
Each distro with a description of what it is and a brief history behind it.
Thanks for the tips. I will have a look.
With regard to Red Hat, I am only interested in Servers at this point. I mention this because you specifically mention 'workstation'. Does RH differentiate between their Server and Workstation products?
thx
Debian is great for servers, absolutely free (as in: there is no commercial version), and you can update it easily from CLI or GUI.
(click the 'Get Debian' link in my tagline)
- T.
fedora is sorta like "redhat 12", and is free with updates.
debian is nice, but a bit more difficult to use.
Then again, Fedora Core is basically beta software that people test for Red Hat free of charge, and results have been very mixed with Core 3.
Debian shouldn't be too hard to learn for a Web Architect with a background in Solaris.
- T.
Hey!
Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I did not mean to start a 'what is best' dialogue, as I am certain that each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
I will go with Fedora for my initial test, as it was suggested by the person kind enough to answer first. If this looks good, I'll be back looking for reviews of different systems for a use case for our organization.
Again, thanks to everyone for taking a moment to help this Linux nube.
j
I recently installed SuSE Enterprise Edition for a project at the office, haven't needed to update yet, and I believe I need to send my firstborn to Novell in exchange for the privilege.
If you want free, stable, and upgradeable, give Slackware a try. The live update module is call swaret, by the way, and after 45 seconds configuring it, it works like a charm.
You can still get RedHat 9 updates, you just create a free personal account and then you can download the updates.