Your Opinions!

[Nakira]

Hey, I've recently been to a university open day and while i was looking at the Computer Science degree i heard that they are doing an Open Source degree. Which immediately got my attention. Then with further listening i also heard that they use Redhat and have close links with the 2nd in command with the person who 'Invented' or 'Created' Linux.
I have had some experience with Ubuntu, but now im interested in gaining some valuable experience with Redhat.
So im basically posting to hear your opinions. What has your experience been like. How easy/difficult/complicated it is or can be, everything is obviously useful so i know what type of Distro im going into. I know i can read about it, but though that peoples personal opinion would also be valuable.
Thanks in advance.

[techieMoe]

I got started with Linux because of my Computer Science degree. It started out pragmatic: I was poor and didn't want to use Microsoft's expensive Visual Studio product (and my professors didn't use it either), so I heard about this cool "hacker" operating system with a free, built-in compiler. Six years, a degree, and three or four dozen Linux distributions later, that's all history.

I enjoyed it every step of the way, but I'm also a tinkerer. In the days of Redhat 6 and 7, that was mandatory for using Linux. It's not so much anymore. Linux has matured quite a bit since I started college. Now I don't worry so much about it installing and configuring correctly, I worry about this feature or that default application. It's a different mindset.

[Nakira]

Thanks for that. Just wondering, how much better is the enterprise versions of redhat to the latest fre version, redhat 9.
Im not sure if i want to pay for and was slightly gutted to find the latest redhat products have a fee.
Is it worth me getting redhat 9?
What should i do. Also please send your opinions. Im sure new users would like to hear them to.

[cSquared]

I guess my opinion would be considered much less educated than the previous reply because I am have no degree. As a lay person using linux everyday I can tell you what I think. I first used linux nearly eight years ago while working as a network support tech. At that time I had no experience with anything other than windows. Our ISP section was using linux on our e-mail server and that little box (P90 100MB RAM) ran for nearly three years without crashing once. Our web server (running a Microsoft product) crashed frequently. That encouraged me to check this "linux thing" out. I tried a couple of different distros -suse and red hat- and liked them, but as my life soon took a new direction away from computing, I left my experiment at that. Now I am self-employed as a contractor and finding myself overjoyed to see how far this community has taken linux. I have linux on all my systems now and even my wife loves hers. (Her desktop IS quite snazzy) I am re-learning a lot of things, but to hear that you can now get a degree in open source is awwesome! Go for it girl! And good luck to you!

[Vergil83]

Thanks for that. Just wondering, how much better is the enterprise versions of redhat to the latest fre version, redhat 9.
Im not sure if i want to pay for and was slightly gutted to find the latest redhat products have a fee.
Is it worth me getting redhat 9?
What should i do. Also please send your opinions. Im sure new users would like to hear them to.

You pay redhat money, you get support. I would try Centros. It is exactly the same as Redhat, but free (gratis).

[smolloy]

I installed my first enterprise version of Linux on Friday (RedHat Enterprise Linux 4), and uninstalled it four hours later! I had to work too hard to register it, and get things working the way I wanted, and just decided that Fedora 7 was easier. Sure, I could have used the subscription my lab paid for to get some help, but I decided it would be quicker to install a distro I new would work.

My Linux use began ~3 years ago with RedHat 9. I'm an accelerator physicist working with a US lab, and it's very common for physicists to use Linux. When I arrived I had absolutely no experience with Linux (which shocked quite a few people I worked with!), so I decided to get a friend to partition my laptop hdd, and install linux (at that stage I wasn't really that aware of different distros, so he just installed the one he liked). I remember sitting in his office watching him installing it -- typing an amazing array of arcane commands into the command line, and thinking that I could never learn that much about computers.

Three (or so) years later, I've learnt so much. I'm entirely comfortable with the command line, I run an sshd, httpd, and tor server from home, the first thing I do with a new computer is to install Linux, I love spending time writing shell scripts to save me time (and take pride in making those scripts do as much as possible with as little scripting as possible), ....

One thing to remember is that Linux is not difficult, it's just different. For most people, their early experiences with computers involved a Microsoft OS. This means that they expect all computers to behave like Windows machines, and are surprised by Linux (or Mac) because it doesn't behave in the way they expect. The point is that Linux (or Mac) isn't supposed to be a copy of Windows -- they're supposed to be operating systems based on their own ideas. Once people realise that, and realise that "different" isn't "bad", they are quite happy to use and learn Linux.

One question: What exactly is an Open Source degree?

[Nakira]

One question: What exactly is an Open Source degree?

I couldn't Actually tell you. All i know is that its something they are looking into doin for the 2008 applicants, which is me! I'm keen to hear more about this, i tell you what, i'll contact the Universty when i get a little time, asking them basically, whats is the course. Then i'll post back here when i get a response.

[techieMoe]

Thanks for that. Just wondering, how much better is the enterprise versions of redhat to the latest fre version, redhat 9.
Im not sure if i want to pay for and was slightly gutted to find the latest redhat products have a fee.
Is it worth me getting redhat 9?
What should i do. Also please send your opinions. Im sure new users would like to hear them to.

I would recommend CentOS. It's based on Redhat's current enterprise operating system, RHEL. They're essentially identical since they're both built from the same source code. The difference is you can get CentOS without a license contract from Redhat. The downside is that it's a little behind on the latest features and programs since enterprise deployments don't like big, rapid changes.

If you feel like flying by the seat of your pants and playing with the latest and greatest technology (and running the risk of it breaking on you), you can give Fedora a try.

That's a long-winded way of saying "no, I don't think it's worth playing with Redhat 9. It's much too old to be relevant at this point."

[celticgeek]

I'm an old Red Hat guy, but when Red Hat went to their new business model, I started checking out the various distros based on Red Hat. I am currently using CentOS 4.5, but I started out with Red Hat 6.1 many years ago. I tried White Box, Scientific, Santa Fe, and CentOS before I settled on CentOS.

I highly recommend using CentOS, rather than paying Red Hat.