Upgrading Mail Server

Karanbir Singh mail-lists at KARAN.ORG
Thu Jul 22 13:55:33 IST 2004


Hi,

Shortt, Kevin wrote:

> Michele Neylon :: Blacknight Solutions wrote:
>
>>None of the above.
>>Try whitebox linux, which is RHEL without the copyright etc

Actually its RHEL, minus the redhat logo's and the addition of the 'yum'
package manager.


> Can you quantify that bit for me?

Redhat releases the source for all its products for anyone who might
want to download and compile. TaoLinux, Whitebox and a bunch of others
have done just that with the Redhat Enterprise Linux product. For them
to be 'ligit' they are required to remove 2 packages ( or create
alternatives ) - mainly the Redhat logo's and their notice for support
needs to go away ( which is more than being fair ).

Redhat has been a true contributer to the Open Source movement, if you
can afford it - buy RHEL. Plus, the Redhat Network is a brilliant tool
for system management. None of these derivatives have anything that
matches that. There is the Ximian Redcarpet that does work fine on these
( WBEL, Tao and Centos I can confirm work ). And with OpenCarpet you
could setup your own repository - but... RHN is miles ahead of these
tools ( someone pointed me to an open source RHN server being written,
not sure whats the latest stat on that ).

> I am truly not being argumentative, merely curious. I am on FC2 and wish to
> move off it soon.(already)

You need to keep in mind that FC will give u a lot more of the 'newer'
stuff than RHEL and its derivatives will. However the RHEL bandwagon
will give you a 5 year support cycle, FC will max out at 6 months ( most
bugs are not even fixed with FC, they just move to the next release
version )

> I most likely will look into RHEL and its costs. The support structure is
> sound.
>
> I've not heard of white box too many times, yet it seems to be the first
> choice.

Whitebox was one of the first to market(!) with the Redhat Recompile.
Thats why a lot of people know of it / moved to it / run it - however
Whitebox has some serious flaws. Eg. There are frequent 'oops' on
package release, security updates can be delayed for days, sometimes
weeks. And it quite central to 1 person being available in to do package
management.

My first choice is TaoLinux or Lineox. In most cases, it dosent matter
what you install ( they come from the same set of SRPMS ), most packages
work and install fine across the installs. So dont be surprised if
people install whitebox, but pull updates from Tao.

> So I am looking for some feed back.

Hope this helps

--
Karanbir Singh   : http://www.karan.org/
GnuPG Public Key : http://www.karan.org/publickey.asc

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