Re: a Debian user's introduction to Redhat EL4?
On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 01:29:51AM +0200, Peter Teunissen wrote:
>
> I'm a happy Debian user and will not move to RH. But. As I wrote in
> my question, I'm _forced_ to use RHEL4 at my job.
>
> Since more debianites will have been in this situation, I think it's
> not inappropriate to ask on this list for pointers to a RH intro for
> Debian users...
>
Red Hat EL 4 is business-like: if you want to run big Oracle data bases
or similar, it's what your bosses want. It appeals well to the sort
of business regards Linux as very new, that needs someone to blame and
is willing to pay support costs "in case". The sort of people that deal
with HP in preference because "well, DEC were such a good company" :)
That's its focus.
It's not very workmanlike in the sense of the ideal tools to
develop on: whenever I install or use RHEL, my first response is
"where _is_ everything?" - apps. that I'd normally apt-get
just aren't available.
RHEL 4 is still tied to Red Hat Network - yum is still "unofficial" at
that
stage IIRC. This has all changed in RHEL5, of course :)
There are no backports repositories, though you may get effective
backports shoved onto your system by updates. Most people I know say
"Oh, I had to download that from Freshmeat/freshRPMs"
Don't expect stability or consistency across the course of the release
lifetime.
Don't necessarily expect to use a stable GCC 4 - the one shipped with
RHEL originally was a daily snapshot from the December before the GCC
release in March. Kernel versions may also change subtly with updates
:(
The concept of Debian stable as "stable and nothing will change in the
lifetime of this release" led me to expect at least that level of
stablility in patches from a well established Enterprise release :(
You can get stuff done: but it's not necessarily straightforward.
If you need to set things up from scratch - you need "old" hardware
and working X Windows because lots of config tools are GUI-fied.
My inexperience with RH shows here, but I've almost always found that
its necessary to install "everything" when you first install because
adding apps. afterwards can sometimes be a pain.
Others will add less biased points: suffice it to say, experience with
Red Hat is why a lot of my colleagues prefer to use Debian on a daily
basis.
Andy
> Peter
>
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