[Bioclusters] Re: [Biodevelopers] Re: how are the Redhat product changes affecting existing and future plans?

[Dan Bolser]

Does anyone know of a publically maintained RPM directory
which the community could synchronize against?

The redHat channel is not the only way I heard.

What hope FreeBSD?



J.W. Bizzaro said:
> (Added Biodevelopers to the thread.)
>
> There's a discussion about this on Slashdot, including mention of the  Fedora
> project:
>
>    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/03/1749259
>
> Cheers.
> Jeff
>
> Chris Dagdigian wrote:
>>
>> Another item that has been on my mind recently...
>>
>> What are people doing about RedHat deciding to kill off their consumer  product
>> line? Are people going to pay the freight for Redhat Enterprise  Linux or are
>> people just going to use Suse/Debian/Gentoo etc.
>>
>> My needs are pretty simple but I'm having a hard time placing myself  into
>> Redhat's current product plans.
>>
>> I need:
>>
>> 1. A stable OS with a product lifetime of at least 1 year (ideally 2+) 2.
>> Product errata, updates and security patches for full lifespan 3. No OS or
>> product phone/email support or SLA
>>
>> The RHL transition to Fedora Linux is fine but it sounds as if the OS is  going
>> to change very fast (major updates 2-3 times per year). On the  plus side it is
>> still free and the leaders seem committed to fast errata  and security updates.
>> Still I can't see using this on a production  cluster due to the pace of change
>> and the chance that I'd be left  without updates if I froze on a particular
>> Fedora release.
>>
>> I can justify (maybe) the cost for the $125 product (Redhat WS) that  they are
>> pitching towards compute clusters. The update services and  5-year product
>> lifespan is worth paying for. The big question for me is  what do I have to pay
>> _after_ the initial $125 purchase. I can't seem to  find any info on the Redhat
>> website telling me how much I'll have to pay
>>  for updates after my intial 1-year RedHat Network service runs out.
>>
>> This also leaves the question of what RHEL flavor to run on cluster head  nodes,
>> fileservers and database machines. $349 for RH ES could be  justified for a
>> critical node but damn what if I want to run that stuff  on Opteron or Itanium
>> or a node with 4CPUs? The cost for RH AS (starting  at $1400) is not justifiable
>> to me. Putting a 'cheap' RHEL flavor on a  head node and manually
>> compiling/updating/supporting additional network  services built by hand from
>> source or .srpms may be more of an
>> operational headache than the cost savings justify.
>>
>> I'm torn right now between diving back into Gentoo/Debian or possibly  jumping
>> on the Suse bandwagon given their existing support for Opteron  etc. Novell just
>> bought Suse today so who knows what that is going to do.
>>
>> I'd be interested in knowing how current RHL users are planning the  transition
>> and how future cluster buyers are changing their plans.  Personally I think I'm
>> going to need to stay on top of RHEL for project  that demand it while also
>> maintaining some sort of deep familiarity with  one or more alternatives.
>>
>> -Chris
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
>> https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
>
>
> --
> J.W. Bizzaro                                jeff@bioinformatics.org President,
> Bioinformatics.Org       http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff "As we enjoy great
> advantages from the inventions of others, we
> should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention
> of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
>                     -- Benjamin Franklin
> --
>
> _______________________________________________
> Biodevelopers mailing list
> Biodevelopers@bioinformatics.org
> https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/biodevelopers