Re: Hey, Gentoo folks...

From: Kurt (actinouranium_at_netscape.net)
Date: 11/05/03 

Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 03:37:17 GMT

pacifican <none@given.org> wrote:
>
> To hell it is not. You have a choice of two distros one is very well
> supported by the vendors the other is not supported at all. Now, give me
> very good *DOCUMENTED* reasons why I would want to turn my back on all that
> support. What real advantage do I gain. Please show documentation of your

I choose stability and ease of system admin over vendor support.
It is probably a luxury I get because I have not had a chance to use
Linux boxes for real work with systems that we depend on (those
get Sun boxes for now).

> claims. If you claim I will get a better working Oracle using Gentoo,

Oh, I never said that. I said choose the better distro for the job.
Oracle is the company that said they will only support Red Hat, right?
I never had to use Oracle, but this is what I seem to remember. In
this case, Red Hat may be the better distro. I know very little about
Oracle. Most of my database experience is with Sybase on Sun boxes.

> Then show me proof that Oracle will run on Gentoo. Show me the resources I

I could care less about Gentoo. I imagine Oracle will run on other distros,
you just won't get direct support from Oracle. I can't remember the last
time we ever contacted Sybase with any issues. That is why we pay
our databse experts.

> can use if I run across a problem I can not solve when running Oracle on

There are alternatives to Oracle. But if that is what you need, and you
need the support, then use Red Hat. I would rather stick with a more
conservative distro and lose the vendor support.

> My favorite reason for getting support from those companies are the times
> when I am faced with a situation that Management is hammering to get fixed
> and I know there are no quick fixes. I turn them over to IBM, Oracle or HP
> and the heat is off of me on on those companies. I can then say, "hey, If
> IBM can't fix the problem, what do you expect me to do?" If I used Gentoo,

Wow, I wish I could do that. We can't turn our problems over to our
vendors.

> all the heat. No thank you. Considering that you and your other Gentoo fans
> have yet to show any thing other than personal claims that Gentoo will
> actually give me better results anyhow.

Do not call me a Gentoo fan. I've never used it. I just don't want
to be forced to use Red Hat because it is not my distro of choice, and
I prefer the ease of use and philosophy of another distro.

> Oh? Where have any of you actually shown that Gentoo is the better distro?

When did I indicate I was rooting for Gentoo. Even Gentoo admits they strive
to be a bleeding edge distro and stability is not their top priority (OK,
this was true a year ago, I don't now about now - they may have stabilized
a bit).

> that Oracle will run so well on Gentoo that I would NEVER need to contact
> Oracle for technical support, because Oracle won't support Oracle on
> Gentoo. Why in the hell should I invest all the time trying to get the

I say *** Oracle then. There are alternatives. I realize you may not
be able to do this. I have never been impressed with vendor support
in the past - maybe it's nice to use them as a scapegoat, but that is
not an option for our database guys - they need to solve the problem -
and they do it. If they need to get vendor support, they ask good
questions.

> what I could get for Oracle and Redhat... I certainly am not going to get

Oracle, Oracle, Oracle, I get the point....

>
> You and your other Gentoo fans have yet to show, with anything other than

Don't call me a Gentoo fan.

> personal claims, that you actually do get a better system from Gentoo than
> Redhat or any other Linux distribution. In short, you have not shown that
> Gentoo offers ANYTHING of any actual benefit that would make me switch from
> any distribution even without the support issue.

About the only reason anyone would have to switch to any distro, when
it comes to ease of use and performance/stability is word of mouth
combined with personal experimentation. You read the newsgroups enough
 and two distros consistenly come up as being both stable and fast: Debian
and Slackware. Yes, I am a Slacker. But Slackers are not zealots. They
are more like members of a cult.

- Kurt