to linux or not to linux...

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

David Hummel wrote:
| On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 10:48:01PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
| > Sure, Linux existed before Red Hat; but in a very real sense, it
| > wouldn't be what it is today without them.
|
| You've made some good arguments about enterprise Linux, and I don't
| dispute any of it.  You would have to be blind to not recognize Red
| Hat's past and current contributions and its continuing influence.
| Unfortunately, this doesn't provide any justification for installing
| RHEL on a laptop (sorry Stephen).

I have a couple of desktop  boxes,  and  I've  usually  had  some  RH
release installed on one of them. This is because I've had jobs where
that RH release was being used, and it was just convenient to have  a
system at home with the same release of (nearly) everything.

Other than this, I don't think there's a strong reason to go with RH.
The  philosophical  reasons  are convincing to some people, but other
linux vendors would work as well. If you want to "market" yourself as
a  linux  expert,  you'll probably want to be able to put a number of
different vendors' versions on your resume. And do lots of installing
from source.

Actually, I usually find that my machines have a jumbled  mixture  of
patches  and  packages  from  different  sources,  with  all sorts of
release dates.  And I finally  get  around  to  reinstalling  from  a
"modern"  release when it gets too difficult to match up the versions
of programs with the libraries.