4 ms·

Enterprises. We don't consider large-scale boring ol' enterprises much in HN; but I wouldn't be surprised (I have no data one way or another) if boring RHEL in

Enterprises. We don't consider large-scale boring ol' enterprises much in HN; but I wouldn't be surprised (I have no data one way or another) if boring RHEL instances in boring Enterprise/Government datacentres and clouds doing boring things outnumber shiny linux instances in more glossy usage. What does it offer - support. And support is important when you have something important, when you need to hold somebody accountable, when your core expertise or market value is not patching and fixing your backoffice software yourself, or when you simply need to pass an audit, security policy, regulation, etc. Also, stability. Not in the software/OS stability sense (although it's pretty good there); but in the "I'm going to put RHEL on my roadmap and invest in education and processes and procedures and documentation and ecosystem based around it, because I believe it'll still exist in 10+ years, which is the timespan some of my projects and certainly my company are based on". (Edit - I mean, hell; Enterprises run AIX, which many of you kids will have to Google;). And for what it needs to do AIX is freakin' awesome. And for most other things it's wildly inappropriate and ineffective:)

acomjean 7y ago
This. I worked at a defense contractor who was wondering what the next platform was going to be since parisc/hpux was our platform. We were working with red hat and a bunch of us low level code group had a week long class at redhat on Linux kernal internals) it was excellent, and they higher ups got a happy feeling for the support they offered. The project was delayed and I ended up leaving that company. They told us in the class the open secret that centos is basically red hat
jm4 7y ago
This is the answer. I run a shop where most systems are on a 1, 3 or 5 year upgrade cycle and all operating systems and applications get security patches within 30 days of release. It’s considered cutting edge in my industry. That includes servers and every last workstation in the place. Hell, even firmware on zero clients gets updated for security fixes. We are doing multiple major upgrades every year and patching the shit out of dozens of applications on over 1000 endpoints on a monthly basis. The applications are more important than the OS. I can’t be in a situation where I’m forced to upgrade or migrate a major system because the operating system no longer receives patches. It screws up everything - and not just my stuff. Users and corporate trainers don’t like unexpected and unnecessary upgrades either. There are distributions I prefer for personal projects that I won’t touch at work. An environment like mine is where Red Hat and Microsoft shine, although Microsoft has been a pain in the ass lately with their cumulative updates and 6 month rolling releases on the desktop.
all_blue_chucks 7y ago
Listen, you are entirely right, but in a backward-looking way. The entire industry is moving in the direction of lambdas/functions and containers. The value of OS support is racing toward irrelevancy.
- mroche 7y ago
  Which industry, there’s no blanket all-encompassing “industry”? There are still those who don’t live purely the web. Every place I’ve worked at has used RHEL (public university and Film/VFX/animation), and it’s for the exact reasons as written above and sibling/child comments. Do we integrate with/use cloud and container solutions for services that align with that? Yep. But you can’t just dismiss the foundation, no matter how recursively down the chain you need to go, that it all runs on just because you don’t have to deal with it (“you” in the general sense).
  - all_blue_chucks 7y ago
    The IT industry. Companies that aren't primarily focused on technology tend to lag years behind the tech sector with tech adoption, but they follow eventually.
    - jm4 7y ago
      Not really. At least not always. No offense, but you sound like someone relatively new to IT (as in a few to several years). Stay in this field long enough and you see history repeating itself. After you witness a few cycles you will have a completely different perspective. Some of these companies - I’m excluding the ones that are just hopelessly out of date and out of touch - simply have different needs. This is especially true when a significant portion of the tech - maybe the majority - faces inward. There’s not much value in elastic cloud computing when your workload is relatively stable over a period of years and it’s running a bunch of back office stuff that’s not part of your company’s product.
      - all_blue_chucks 7y ago

acomjean 7y ago

This. I worked at a defense contractor who was wondering what the next platform was going to be since parisc/hpux was our platform. We were working with red hat and a bunch of us low level code group had a week long class at redhat on Linux kernal internals) it was excellent, and they higher ups got a happy feeling for the support they offered. The project was delayed and I ended up leaving that company. They told us in the class the open secret that centos is basically red hat

jm4 7y ago

This is the answer. I run a shop where most systems are on a 1, 3 or 5 year upgrade cycle and all operating systems and applications get security patches within 30 days of release. It’s considered cutting edge in my industry. That includes servers and every last workstation in the place. Hell, even firmware on zero clients gets updated for security fixes. We are doing multiple major upgrades every year and patching the shit out of dozens of applications on over 1000 endpoints on a monthly basis. The applications are more important than the OS. I can’t be in a situation where I’m forced to upgrade or migrate a major system because the operating system no longer receives patches. It screws up everything - and not just my stuff. Users and corporate trainers don’t like unexpected and unnecessary upgrades either. There are distributions I prefer for personal projects that I won’t touch at work. An environment like mine is where Red Hat and Microsoft shine, although Microsoft has been a pain in the ass lately with their cumulative updates and 6 month rolling releases on the desktop.

all_blue_chucks 7y ago

Listen, you are entirely right, but in a backward-looking way. The entire industry is moving in the direction of lambdas/functions and containers. The value of OS support is racing toward irrelevancy.

mroche 7y ago
Which industry, there’s no blanket all-encompassing “industry”? There are still those who don’t live purely the web. Every place I’ve worked at has used RHEL (public university and Film/VFX/animation), and it’s for the exact reasons as written above and sibling/child comments. Do we integrate with/use cloud and container solutions for services that align with that? Yep. But you can’t just dismiss the foundation, no matter how recursively down the chain you need to go, that it all runs on just because you don’t have to deal with it (“you” in the general sense).
- all_blue_chucks 7y ago
  The IT industry. Companies that aren't primarily focused on technology tend to lag years behind the tech sector with tech adoption, but they follow eventually.
  - jm4 7y ago
    Not really. At least not always. No offense, but you sound like someone relatively new to IT (as in a few to several years). Stay in this field long enough and you see history repeating itself. After you witness a few cycles you will have a completely different perspective. Some of these companies - I’m excluding the ones that are just hopelessly out of date and out of touch - simply have different needs. This is especially true when a significant portion of the tech - maybe the majority - faces inward. There’s not much value in elastic cloud computing when your workload is relatively stable over a period of years and it’s running a bunch of back office stuff that’s not part of your company’s product.
    - all_blue_chucks 7y ago