Re: A newbie - What are differences between Red Hat Linux 9 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Nico wrote:
Matt Giwer wrote:
Fei wrote:
Fantastic! "for free take, for buy waste time" - I will put it in
my collection! Haha! Thank you Matt!
I am so sorry, just a quick follow-up question - I have checked Redhat
website, it is said that FC is for programmers, and Redhat Enterprise
is for business. Since I am a business student, I would like to learn
the right version which can be used in future (Maybe). So what I learn
from FC, e.g. commands and programming, can be applied in Enterprise,
right?
Business means it contains the applications you would want on a computer for a
business. The apps are probably all on FC versions also. They certainly can be
run on and the FC distro. A would guess a business version would be if you want
to become a sysadmin for a non-computer company. That is not what a business
major needs. You will have several spreadsheets including the integrated one in
Open Office.

"Business" also usually means "stable and will be supported for the
life of the system". For programmers means it has a lot of leading
edge, even bleeding edge tools, and hasn't been through all the testing
and integration you expect from a business system.

It's the difference between a convertible and a minivan: one is faster
and more maneuverable, the other is likely to have back-seat airbags
andn a more tested motor.

I do not have a dog in this fight. The man said his interest in the business version is because he is a business major. To me that means he is not interested in learning linux to be a sysadmin for a company. I take it to mean he simply wants to learn linux itself. Therefore I say either is good enough.

As to bleeding edge, being a business major means by the time he graduates and preferably after he completes his MBA, any business app that is bleeding edge now will be, if it survives, rock solid old stuff maintained by new hires.

I do not have a dog in this fight. I am just trying to give him the information he needs to decide when at this point he is not in a position to properly formulate the questions.

I fall back to the best reason of all being there are more people here who know RH and EL but that may make no difference as I have no idea what the difference is between the two.

I have no idea why they would say FC is for programmers. The work station
option may be but below I recommend something else. I program but a couple
hundred lines a year is a big year for me these days. I mainly got it because I
got tired of Windows dying and taking the hard disk with it. Now I have a stable
OS and one where I can fool around with the innards easily instead of the
kludges Windows requires if changes can be made at all. My programming is way
down because the applications that come with linux can be controlled through
shell scripts.

FC tends to publish new updates much sooner, with less integration
testing to make sure all the components play nicely together.

And as a user since RH5.? I have not had an interesting problem with that. With FC4 I found no problems at all. This is likely the yum upgrade system more than anything else.

If you want to dig into the innards how the OS works they will be the same. (If
I am wrong someone will jump in and tell me.) If you want to learn specific
kinds of software that would be used in business such as a web server either
will do but you might want to see what RH thinks of a business aps.

They're quite different: Look at the package differences. FC is
typically a year or more ahead of RHEL, meaning new kernel modules, new
versions of gcc, glibc, Xorg, OpenOffice, video players, and other core
tools. One big reason RedHat split them is to allow full-blown
development and smoke-testing of new ideas without imperiling mission
critical systems, which are typically on RHEL.

Which gets me back to the man saying he simply wants to learn linux. If he were asking which to choose for his company there is no question I would have said EL.

If there were no other consideration I would agree he should use EL. But as a learner and if he needs help there are more who can help with FC and EL. That is the main reason I have always recommended RH. It has the largest user base therefore the most people who can help. For example, given the sudden explosion of Ubuntu questions I would not suggest anyone use it for at least a year. That being the time it will take for the new Ubuntu users to have the experience to answer questions.

I can't think of what might be on one and not on the other. Certainly the same
apps will work on both. So if all you want to do is learn linux either will do.
There are very many more people who visit here who use FC than the enterprise
edition so there are more people to answer questions. You can always change
later if you find there is a difference worth having.

No, they need not. I suggest you take a look at perl module
dependencies, for example, and wireless device or NTFS support in the
kernels. Even subtle differences in gcc can create all sorts of
interesting adventures.

For someone who just wants to learn linux? No. I am confident a new user of linux is not going to jump into perl before becoming confident in linux itself.

A helpless person who wants to learn Linux - Fei

Rule 1. You will create a root account and also create a user account for
yourself. NEVER be root unless you are sure of what you are doing. There are no
exceptions to this rule.

Except that he's a newbie. He's not going to be sure of anything, is
he?

That is correct. That is the warning. Ever notice how many newbies stay in root because it is convenient?

Be cautious with root access: it's easy to screw things up. Feel free
to pop up here and ask questions, we'll try to be nice.

I can only talk about the FC editions. At the start of an installation you will
be asked what kind of installation you want to make. Choose 'Custom'
installation. Scroll all the way to the end of the options and check 'Install
Everything'. It doesn't take up that much more space.

About 8 Gig, as opposed to 1 or 2 Gig. It also doesn't get all the
language packs.

There are not 8G worth of disks. There are about 3.3G of files. They are in the form of rpms not tar.gz.

When learning you are going to be reading about a lot of things to try and this
will increae the likelihood you have it installed already. No need to be
frustrated while learning or breaking your chain of thought to install something
new.

The first thing to run after installing is

yum upgrade

You do mean "yum check-update" and "yum update", of course. Also, make
sure to put in the yum-plugin-fastestmirror tool, to speed up this
operation in the future.

No, I mean upgrade. Everyone does things differently. I have had no problems.

You will do this as root.

That will go online and find everything that has been upgraded since the disk
release was frozen and upgrade it for you. After that run

yum clean packages

If you like the idea of free software run yumex, click the install icon and see
how much else RH has that isn't on the disks.

And get yum configuration files for the DAG and DRIES repositories,
which have many tools RedHat and RC haven't contained themselves. Livna
is also nice, for tools that RedHat feels legally constrained from
providing, like Java packages and DVD playback tools.

The more the better. I suggested it so he would see things that might interest him. Interest is a motivator to learning. Sort of like teaching English using Penthouse rather than Little Women.

--
We learn from Lebanon that the most moral army in the world makes the most
immoral mistakes of any army in the world.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3697
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
commentary http://www.giwersworld.org/opinion/running.phtml a5
.

Loading