Interesting debate. My 2-centavos: My first experience with RH was RH7.2
that came with a Dell server I bought. I installed it and signed up with
RHN. What I got was a constant stream of update notices along with
suggestions that I "upgrade" my service agreement, as if I had nothing
better to do than install patches and read security alerts all day long. To
me this was not helpful. If they periodically offered "service packs"
similar to what those evil guys at Microsoft do, that automatically update
*everything* that needs updating, that would be worth a few bucks. Contrary
to popular myth, I had some fairly vexing stability problems as well. I paid
full price for the RH8.0 boxed set when it came out, only to find from this
very community that RH tends to do a sloppy job on major releases, and they
need a lot of patches, just what I was hoping to avoid. I never installed
it. Now I'm using Mandrake 9.2 and *much* happier with it so far. But distro
is not religion to me, so I don't care to debate that.

To me, the big reason for using Linux at all, in fact for using a PC, is the
ability to *do-it-myself* if I choose. If a software package is so
complicated that it is not practical to do it myself, that is no less
confining than a conventional license and closed source, and as far as I am
concerned, no different. So if RH wants to make their customers dependent on
them I have no problem with that. After all, it is the American way. But
let's call a spade a spade (no racial slur intended), and not masquerade as
some kind of New-Age benefactor of Open Source Enlightenment. Maybe at one
time RH was that, but you have to sign a deal with the Devil to go public,
and they did.
--
Phil Mattison
Ohmikron Corp.
480-722-9595 ext.1
602-820-9452 Mobile