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> It's popular in enterprise environments because it was popular in enterprises back in the day. And so were Solaris and IRIX and HP/UX, until they weren't. An

> It's popular in enterprise environments because it was popular in enterprises back in the day. And so were Solaris and IRIX and HP/UX, until they weren't. And that happened in large part because Red Hat Linux was accessible to tech enthusiasts. Not many could justify a Sun Ultra 1 or SGI Indigo for their homelab, but they could download Red Hat Linux for free and install it on an old PC. Eventually, these people began to question the price/performance of proprietary UNIX and hardware for their projects at work. The combination of lower price, widespread expertise, and commercial support from Linux vendors (especially Red Hat) circa 2000 is what marked the beginning of the end for proprietary UNIX. And even when Red Hat Linux gave way to RHEL, it was still far less expensive than what the legacy UNIX vendors offered, plus clones such as Whitebox Enterprise Linux or CentOS were readily available for people to keep their RHEL skills current at home. That's helped to keep it going, but once IBM makes RHEL inaccessible to enthusiasts, the decline of RHEL in the marketplace will surely follow.

yawaramin 3y ago
And they can still download CentOS Stream for free and install it in their homelabs. In other words, exactly what you described enabled Red Hat to succeed.
- tomwheeler 3y ago
  The fact that so many people have expressed concern about recent changes by Red Hat suggests to me that the company has failed to communicate effectively and/or many people no longer trust Red Hat.
  - yawaramin 3y ago
    If many people mistakenly believe something, does that make it true? Was the Earth flat 500 years ago?
    - tehbeard 3y ago
      What an odd comparison, and ignoring the context of the issue at hand. Both a failure of communication in how RH have worded their stance, and breach of a social contract (The shortening of the CentOS 8 support mid-cycle that kicked this off) have caused the current tension. The failure to communicate, matters not about truth or "lies" with whatever you seem to be implying with your comparison. If falsehoods are interpretable from what was said, they have poorly communicated. Doubly so if they know their relationship with the target audience is already strained by past behaviour.
      - yawaramin 3y ago
        In this age of social media and 'extremely online' people, even the smallest misunderstanding can be magnified into an uproar, especially if it's in the interests of certain people to put pressure on RH to behave in a way that benefits these people. It's really convenient to confidently state, with no knowledge of their internal constraints and decisions, that RH screwed up. It's harder to hold off on passing judgment until all the facts are clear.
- type0 3y ago
  No, they can not. Before they killed CentOS you could get the support from community. Now they're killing what's left of the enthusiast community and people stop using it because nobody believes them any-more.
  - yawaramin 3y ago
    > No, they can not. This is factually incorrect. At least read my comment properly before replying.

yawaramin 3y ago

And they can still download CentOS Stream for free and install it in their homelabs. In other words, exactly what you described enabled Red Hat to succeed.

tomwheeler 3y ago
The fact that so many people have expressed concern about recent changes by Red Hat suggests to me that the company has failed to communicate effectively and/or many people no longer trust Red Hat.
- yawaramin 3y ago
  If many people mistakenly believe something, does that make it true? Was the Earth flat 500 years ago?
  - tehbeard 3y ago
    What an odd comparison, and ignoring the context of the issue at hand. Both a failure of communication in how RH have worded their stance, and breach of a social contract (The shortening of the CentOS 8 support mid-cycle that kicked this off) have caused the current tension. The failure to communicate, matters not about truth or "lies" with whatever you seem to be implying with your comparison. If falsehoods are interpretable from what was said, they have poorly communicated. Doubly so if they know their relationship with the target audience is already strained by past behaviour.
    - yawaramin 3y ago
      In this age of social media and 'extremely online' people, even the smallest misunderstanding can be magnified into an uproar, especially if it's in the interests of certain people to put pressure on RH to behave in a way that benefits these people. It's really convenient to confidently state, with no knowledge of their internal constraints and decisions, that RH screwed up. It's harder to hold off on passing judgment until all the facts are clear.
type0 3y ago
No, they can not. Before they killed CentOS you could get the support from community. Now they're killing what's left of the enthusiast community and people stop using it because nobody believes them any-more.
- yawaramin 3y ago
  > No, they can not. This is factually incorrect. At least read my comment properly before replying.