Roll up your sleeves and gird your loins for another distribution war!
Not really...
I was quite surprised to read about Mandrake's Linux Users' Club,
where Mandrake encouraged users to pay up a fee of $5 to join their
club and get some enhanced privileges. The reason for forming the
club was because Mandrake was in serious financial difficulties and
needed ready cash in order to survive.
Whether Mandrake survives or not is not the question at hand here.
However their position is of concern to me, and may be to many of you
who are in a position to recommend Linux distributions to clients.
For many years one of the points I've been using while selling Linux
against Windows to clients and potential clients is the availability
of Linux. By that I mean that if Microsoft files Chapter 11 or just
collapses tomorrow (I hope that doesn't happen, economies are in bad
enough shape already!), MS users will be left high and dry with no
recourse for updates, support and bug- and security-fixes. Linux, on
the other hand, not being the product of any single company or
individual would survive the absence of any given key Linux developer,
be it Torvalds himself.
However, if we are installing single-company distributions for
ourselves or our clients we fall into a similar (if less dangerous)
trap. I currently use Red Hat and Debian, and recommend Debian to my
customers but encourage them to go with Red Hat if that's what they
want. 90% of them go with Red Hat because of the brand and
application availability. Now I'm questioning this whole approach:
what if Red Hat finds itself in money trouble and closes down
tomorrow? Who's going to make security fixes (a critical item in my
book) available for my clients? Who's going to package
mod_php-24.10-3.i386.rpm or whatever other latest and greatest
software is available for them?
I agree that the situation isn't as bad as a completely proprietary
product like Windows, where nothing will be available unless MS is
there to provide it. My clients will still be able to get, compile
and install packages from source if their distribution becomes
defunct. In any case, I'm going to recommend my clients go with
distributions with the following features from now on:
1. Not dependent on any single company, individual or organisation.
2. Variety of developers and packagers
3. Globally distributed set of developers and packagers
4. Actively being developed (this could change, but need to try for
this at least)
At the moment the only significant distribution which seems to meet
these criteria is Debian. Are there any others?
To summarise, from now on I shall be strongly recommending Debian to
all my clients due to its perceived robustness in the face of
financial troubles.
Comments welcome,
Regards,
-- Raju
--
Raju Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/
It is the mind that moves
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