[NTLUG:Discuss] Distros / Trusted OS options

[Frank Lewis Jr.]

While I do have to agree with you that I overlooked the Caldera
certification, and the fact that the technical aspect of your argument
is dead right, you missed my point.

My whole point was that the business world (that even chooses to
acknowledge Linux that is) associates with the RedHat name and therefore
will choose it for the name rather than what it can really offer. I
started out my still budding Linux life on RedHat and because of this, I
tend to judge other distros by RedHat standards rather than judging all
distros by functionality and usability standards. This is a shortcoming
of myself that I am working on, but for the time being still exist. :)

As far as why the Redhat Cert carries more weight than the SAIR LCA
cert. This question has a two word answer. Sadly those two words again
are "name recognition". The same reason why Microsoft Office is the most
popular productivity suite on Windows. People associate with the word
Microsoft and automatically buy other products that have that
association. People recognize the name RedHat and automatically
associate it with Linux, which is wrong to do, but exactly what happens.
Sadly, the answer you will find for Enterprise Unix Solutions when you
ask most corporate admins and semi-knowledgeable business people.....
SUN SOLARIS on SUN HARDWARE. It's all name association.

I still like RedHat, but will feel better when GCC 3.0 is out and this
whole mess is over.

Still looking for a Trusted OS solution. Does anyone have any ideas?

-Frank

> 
> For the record on the subject of distro of choice, I have to say that
I
> really like Mandrake, but if RedHat would include support for ReiserFS
> in the install, I would switch my web servers back in a heartbeat.
>  
> I've tried Debian, Slack, SuSe, Caldera, Corel and Stampede, but I
keep
> coming back to RedHat and Mandrake.
>  
> Anyone concerned with commercial viability is going to lean towards
> RedHat because it is a very well recognized name, and the only distro
> that can say that they have real certified engineers out in the field
in
> commercial environments.    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I must disagree on both of your points.

Your first assertion seems to follow the "Nobody ever got fired for
choosing
[Microsoft, IBM]" way of thinking about things. While this may be easier
for
PHB:s to feel safe/comfortable about their choice of software, there is
very
little in the way of logic or technical consideration to this way of
thinking.

While Caldera also has a branded technical certification program, this
again
would only carry weight with clueless PHB:s (which I grant you there are
a lot
of to deal with in the business world). Certifications have there place,
but 
they are only one way to try to measure competancy. Ask any IT manager
about 
the wisdom of hiring an NT adminstrator based solely on having an MSCE
...

And then there is the question of why the RH cert would necessarily
carry more
weight than the SAIR LCA cert. Personally I'd be a hell of a lot more
impressed
by demonstratable competence and experience w/ other *nix - AIX,
Solaris, etc. 

The GCC 2.96 issue alone would prevent me from ever recommending
deployment of
the current RedHat 7.1 or Mandrake 8 distros on a _production_
environment.

YMMV,
Mark.Bickel at ericsson.com
_______________________________________________
http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss