Sean Cook wrote:
Correct, but the same is true for any distribution. It is only as good
as the admin.
Yes and no. All OS's (and distributions) have their strengths and
weaknesses. Gentoo is not inherently any "better" or "worse" than any
other system in so far as getting a business task done.
Sorry but this is a silly argument. The whole point of open source is
that I can have a choice. I don't have to deal with commercial support
I can do what ever I want. Does anyone remember Bob Young's concept of
buying a car with the hood welded shut? You are basically advocating
just that! I have been running linux since about 95 and have NEVER
found anything I could not fix with 16 year old german kids on a mailing
list.
Well, you do have a choice. I'm not advocating that people buy systems
with hoods welded shut. What I do advocate is a stable, supported
platform for mission critical services. At my company, the phones are
mission critical. If they go down for even 5 minutes, my boss is in my
office screaming. In my case I like to have:
1. A scapegoat. I don't like the buck ending with me. And if there is a
flaw in the OS, I want a vendor to go back to to scream at. With
Gentoo/Debian/etc. unsupported OS the onus is on me to track down the
problem and fix it.
Of course, I do have to admit that we're using CentOS for our Asterisk
server, but that's 100% against what I recommended. My company does not
feel they should have to pay for software. :/ So my boss decided that
CentOS was the way to go. At least we pay for support through
Coalescent, which has helped us out a lot.
2. Commercial support. I also like to know that there is a team of
people who's job is to find bugs and fix them. And that those fixes are
then put through a certification process before they're released out to
the public. I also like to know that if I have a problem or question I
can get help through the phone pretty quickly, rather than having to
join some mailing list or web forum, and risk the possibility of getting
mis-information or no help at all. Plenty of times I have evaluated open
source products that have had very sketchy documentation, emailed the
mailing list or whatnot with a question, and received no help at all.
I'm not doing this for home use, my IT projects are for a business. And
that level of support is simply unacceptable.
The same can be said for microsoft. So with that logic we should all
abandon linux and run Windows 2003 Server, because after all there are
far more people to configure it and Bill is just a phone call away.
What is the difference between a vendor supported Linux and Microsoft
supported Windows?
I am going to revise my position. The only thing that should be run in
a data center is SCO, Microsoft and Solaris. Because linux is not owned
by anyone and there is no one to hold accountable when it blows up and
after all Sun has been around for 25+ years so we should all just go
ahead and sell our souls and jump on the bandwagon.
You're completely missing my point. All I am saying is that for the
datacenter, it's really a good idea to have a SUPPORTED Linux
distribution. Or hey, at 3AM when your mission critical server has
developed some odd bug that only 3 other people in Malaysia have ever
seen and nobody can help you out, what do you do?
I see vendor support as an insurance policy. It's a sound business
decision. If you don't need it then fine - but it's always there if you
need.
I only post this as my opinion. I am not a Linux zealot, nor am I a
Microsoft zealot. I put systems in place that do the best job for the
company, and don't create the potential for huge headaches for me.
Linux/Microsoft/whatever is just a tool to get a job done. That's what
matters to me.
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