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> Tomcat ... OK you can have one from 1863. There is a really good security back port effort but why on earth start off with a kernel that is using a walking st

by bigstrat2003 1y ago

> Tomcat ... OK you can have one from 1863. There is a really good security back port effort but why on earth start off with a kernel that is using a walking stick. Because old software is battle-tested and reliable. Moreover, upgrading software is ever a pain so it's best to minimize how often you have to do it. With a support policy of 10 years, you just can't beat RHEL (and derivatives) for stability.

tanelpoder 1y ago
Yep, when you have thousands of different production apps, installed and running directly on Linux - not talking about containers or microservices here - you’ll have very little appetite to upgrade all of them to the latest and shiniest technologies every couple of years. Stability & compatibility with existing skillsets is more important.
rubitxxx10 1y ago
I’m old. I used one of the original boxed RH distros. It was cool then. That was almost 30 years ago. I know they give back to Linux, and I’m thankful for the enterprises that pay for it because of that. It’s not a bad company, though it’s strange that you could be a great developer and lose your position there if your project gets cut, unless another team picks you up, from what I hear. But when Linus created Linux, he didn’t do it for money, and RH just seems corporate to me like the Microsoft of Linux, way back before Microsoft had their own Linux. I want my Linux free-range not cooped. They don’t do anything wrong. They just don’t give the vibe. Anyone asking for money for it doesn’t “get it” to me.
- microtonal 1y ago
  I’m old. I used one of the original boxed RH distros. It was cool then. That was almost 30 years ago. Does anyone remember glint (graphical UI for RPM) that was part of Red Hat? Must have been Red Hat 4.x or thereabout.
  - LeFantome 1y ago
    Yes indeed. How about AwesomeWM? Not the one that exists now. The one from Red Hat 4.x or so.
- znpy 1y ago
  > But when Linus created Linux, he didn’t do it for money, and RH just seems corporate to me like the Microsoft of Linux, way back before Microsoft had their own Linux. I want my Linux free-range not cooped. You seem to forget that Red Hat has funded a lot of the development of the Linux ecosystem. There would be essentially no modern linux environment without Red Hat.
  - lillecarl 1y ago
    I'm thankful to RedHat, every other "cornerstone project" seems to be funded by them. The one that crossed my mind now is the PipeWire audio server, it just solved Linux audio for realsies this time. I wouldn't use their products for much though, too enterprisey. Their projects are great and I'm happy someone else buys their packages.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Except Linux only took off thanks to those that didn't want to pay for UNIX, and the UNIX vendors that wanted to cut down R&D costs from their own in-house UNIX clones, and were uncertain if BSD was still safe to use with the ongoing AT&T lawsuit.
  - inejge 1y ago
    Re the last part: USL vs BSDi was filed in 1992 and settled in 1994, long before any sizeable vendor paid attention to Linux. (Version 1.0 of the Linux kernel was released at about the same time that lawsuit was settled.) So you shouldn't use that argument as part of your rationale.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      I should because perceptions take a very long time to change. If you ask random dev on the street about .NET, there is an high probability they will answer it is Windows only and requires Visual Studio.
    - LeFantome 1y ago
      You do not believe that what happened from 1991 to 1995 explains anything about how we got here? Red Hat was founded in 1993. When do you think they got the idea? When do you think companies like Red Hat decided to bet on Linux instead of BSD? Debian was founded in 1993 as well. When was that lawsuit settled again? An awful lot of the Linux momentum that carries us to this very day appeared after the BSD lawsuit was filed and before it was settled. What about the other “big and professional” competitor to Linux? GNU HURD was started in 1990. The original plan was to base it off the BSD kernel. The Linux kernel appeared in 1991. BSD fell under legal threat in 1992. Debian appeared in 1993. RMS lost interest in HURD. None of these dates had much impact you don’t think?
  - LeFantome 1y ago
    It is not that they did not want to pay for UNIX. After all, they pay for RHEL. They did not want to pay for big iron for sure, preferring commodity hardware. Even then though, many Linux boxes can get pretty expensive. I think it is more about openness and control than it is about cost. Linux brings flexibility and freedom. So does BSD of course. The timing of that lawsuit changed the world.
- lttlrck 1y ago
  Redhat made Linux palatable for enterprise though. Without enterprise adoption where would Linux be?
homebrewer 1y ago
RHEL's kernel — the actual base of the operating system with the largest effect on stability — is not old. It might have a version number from the middle of the last century, but there are so many massive backports in there that in a few years time after release it gets closer to the latest mainline than to its original version. Don't expect too much from it.
- tanelpoder 1y ago
  Yup, one example that I noticed recently, RedHat backported the eBPF subsystem from Linux 6.8 to their 5.14 kernel (in RHEL 9.5): https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html-single/9.5_release_notes/index#new-features-kernel https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_...
microtonal 1y ago
Having had to use those kinds of machines often as a user, it is a total pain. For some reason, these enterprise distributions end up being used a lot on scientific and machine learning clusters. You have to deal with 5-10 year old bugs that are solved in every other distribution already and you have to jump through hoops to make modern software run. For me it always felt like the system administrators externalizing the cost on the users and developers (which are the same in many cases). Despite my dislike of enterprise Linux, Red Hat is doing a lot of awesome work all around the stack. IMO Fedora and the immutable distros are the real showcase of all the things they do.
- znpy 1y ago
  You can run whatever you want in containers. You don't even need root permissions. Red Hat's podman can launch containers without the need for root privileges. > Despite my dislike of enterprise Linux, Red Hat is doing a lot of awesome work all around the stack. IMO Fedora and the immutable distros are the real showcase of all the things they do. Fedora today is what RHEL will be tomorrow. They quite literally freeze a Fedora release to use as a base for RHEL's next release. If you like Fedora today you're gonna like Fedora tomorrow.
  - tryauuum 1y ago
    it's still painful when you can't even use the os-provided version of git and have to install newer one with conda
    - lillecarl 1y ago
      If you can get Nix running on these ancient machines it'll bring you all up2date packages you want, you can create Nix profiles that you install in a pre-configured path so you can use the packages in systemd too if you fancy. It's really really great, even if you don't use or plan to use NixOS (Nix was born long before NixOS).
icedchai 1y ago
Many companies never upgrade anything anyway. I once got a job at a startup only to discover they were running Ubuntu 16.04 and python 2.7, in 2022. The dependency situation was also bad. Basically, their stack was so old it had gone past tech debt and into bankruptcy.
JackSlateur 1y ago
You are stable But the world around you does not wait for you, and keeps moving Want it or not, you move with it And thus, you are not stable 10y operating system is a joke

tanelpoder 1y ago

Yep, when you have thousands of different production apps, installed and running directly on Linux - not talking about containers or microservices here - you’ll have very little appetite to upgrade all of them to the latest and shiniest technologies every couple of years. Stability & compatibility with existing skillsets is more important.

rubitxxx10 1y ago

I’m old. I used one of the original boxed RH distros. It was cool then. That was almost 30 years ago. I know they give back to Linux, and I’m thankful for the enterprises that pay for it because of that. It’s not a bad company, though it’s strange that you could be a great developer and lose your position there if your project gets cut, unless another team picks you up, from what I hear. But when Linus created Linux, he didn’t do it for money, and RH just seems corporate to me like the Microsoft of Linux, way back before Microsoft had their own Linux. I want my Linux free-range not cooped. They don’t do anything wrong. They just don’t give the vibe. Anyone asking for money for it doesn’t “get it” to me.

microtonal 1y ago
I’m old. I used one of the original boxed RH distros. It was cool then. That was almost 30 years ago. Does anyone remember glint (graphical UI for RPM) that was part of Red Hat? Must have been Red Hat 4.x or thereabout.
- LeFantome 1y ago
  Yes indeed. How about AwesomeWM? Not the one that exists now. The one from Red Hat 4.x or so.
znpy 1y ago
> But when Linus created Linux, he didn’t do it for money, and RH just seems corporate to me like the Microsoft of Linux, way back before Microsoft had their own Linux. I want my Linux free-range not cooped. You seem to forget that Red Hat has funded a lot of the development of the Linux ecosystem. There would be essentially no modern linux environment without Red Hat.
- lillecarl 1y ago
  I'm thankful to RedHat, every other "cornerstone project" seems to be funded by them. The one that crossed my mind now is the PipeWire audio server, it just solved Linux audio for realsies this time. I wouldn't use their products for much though, too enterprisey. Their projects are great and I'm happy someone else buys their packages.
pjmlp 1y ago
Except Linux only took off thanks to those that didn't want to pay for UNIX, and the UNIX vendors that wanted to cut down R&D costs from their own in-house UNIX clones, and were uncertain if BSD was still safe to use with the ongoing AT&T lawsuit.
- inejge 1y ago
  Re the last part: USL vs BSDi was filed in 1992 and settled in 1994, long before any sizeable vendor paid attention to Linux. (Version 1.0 of the Linux kernel was released at about the same time that lawsuit was settled.) So you shouldn't use that argument as part of your rationale.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    I should because perceptions take a very long time to change. If you ask random dev on the street about .NET, there is an high probability they will answer it is Windows only and requires Visual Studio.
  - LeFantome 1y ago
    You do not believe that what happened from 1991 to 1995 explains anything about how we got here? Red Hat was founded in 1993. When do you think they got the idea? When do you think companies like Red Hat decided to bet on Linux instead of BSD? Debian was founded in 1993 as well. When was that lawsuit settled again? An awful lot of the Linux momentum that carries us to this very day appeared after the BSD lawsuit was filed and before it was settled. What about the other “big and professional” competitor to Linux? GNU HURD was started in 1990. The original plan was to base it off the BSD kernel. The Linux kernel appeared in 1991. BSD fell under legal threat in 1992. Debian appeared in 1993. RMS lost interest in HURD. None of these dates had much impact you don’t think?
- LeFantome 1y ago
  It is not that they did not want to pay for UNIX. After all, they pay for RHEL. They did not want to pay for big iron for sure, preferring commodity hardware. Even then though, many Linux boxes can get pretty expensive. I think it is more about openness and control than it is about cost. Linux brings flexibility and freedom. So does BSD of course. The timing of that lawsuit changed the world.
lttlrck 1y ago
Redhat made Linux palatable for enterprise though. Without enterprise adoption where would Linux be?

homebrewer 1y ago

RHEL's kernel — the actual base of the operating system with the largest effect on stability — is not old. It might have a version number from the middle of the last century, but there are so many massive backports in there that in a few years time after release it gets closer to the latest mainline than to its original version. Don't expect too much from it.

tanelpoder 1y ago
Yup, one example that I noticed recently, RedHat backported the eBPF subsystem from Linux 6.8 to their 5.14 kernel (in RHEL 9.5): https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html-single/9.5_release_notes/index#new-features-kernel https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_...

microtonal 1y ago

Having had to use those kinds of machines often as a user, it is a total pain. For some reason, these enterprise distributions end up being used a lot on scientific and machine learning clusters. You have to deal with 5-10 year old bugs that are solved in every other distribution already and you have to jump through hoops to make modern software run. For me it always felt like the system administrators externalizing the cost on the users and developers (which are the same in many cases). Despite my dislike of enterprise Linux, Red Hat is doing a lot of awesome work all around the stack. IMO Fedora and the immutable distros are the real showcase of all the things they do.

znpy 1y ago
You can run whatever you want in containers. You don't even need root permissions. Red Hat's podman can launch containers without the need for root privileges. > Despite my dislike of enterprise Linux, Red Hat is doing a lot of awesome work all around the stack. IMO Fedora and the immutable distros are the real showcase of all the things they do. Fedora today is what RHEL will be tomorrow. They quite literally freeze a Fedora release to use as a base for RHEL's next release. If you like Fedora today you're gonna like Fedora tomorrow.
- tryauuum 1y ago
  it's still painful when you can't even use the os-provided version of git and have to install newer one with conda
  - lillecarl 1y ago
    If you can get Nix running on these ancient machines it'll bring you all up2date packages you want, you can create Nix profiles that you install in a pre-configured path so you can use the packages in systemd too if you fancy. It's really really great, even if you don't use or plan to use NixOS (Nix was born long before NixOS).

icedchai 1y ago

Many companies never upgrade anything anyway. I once got a job at a startup only to discover they were running Ubuntu 16.04 and python 2.7, in 2022. The dependency situation was also bad. Basically, their stack was so old it had gone past tech debt and into bankruptcy.

JackSlateur 1y ago

You are stable But the world around you does not wait for you, and keeps moving Want it or not, you move with it And thus, you are not stable 10y operating system is a joke