Red Hat

Top Linux seller Red Hat acknowledged on Friday a misstep in its relations with technology enthusiasts but said the profit motive is helping it to mend its ways. The problem came in recent years when Red Hat threw its energies into a stable product called Red Hat Enterprise Linux. RHEL let the company grow from a small market of technically savvy customers to the large market of mainstream customers. But in the process, Red Hat left those "early adopters" behind, said Michael Tiemann, vice president of open-source affairs. That was a problem because Red Hat--a pioneer in the business of open-source software--believes customers should be directly involved in designing and creating products from the earliest stages. C-Net

I remember saying this three years ago when I learned that Red Hat wanted to abandon the community that gave them their position in the market. I stopped using Red Hat when they went to Fedora. They said "Oh, sure ... we will support Fedora. You bet'cha." I didn't believe them. It was a good thing I didn't believe them. Fedora isn't the best distro. I use Mandrake. It was rated the easiest to use not to long ago. As freaky as companies are getting about their property rights, it is worth having a good "free" operating system that you can throw on an old box. Windows just plane doesn't work after a couple of years. Neither does Linux really. If you have no reason to upgrade anything you might leave a machine running for a decade without a reboot. That is not what I mean. Windows falls apart under its own weight. All operating systems need to be patched for security and virus reasons. Odds are, the machine you get came with Windows on it. If the people just reinstalled the operating system, they would probably fix any problem they had with the machine. People would rather put the old computer in the closet and let it rot rather than let some one have it who can get some use out of it. The trouble is, you have to buy a new copy of Windows in order to upgrade to the latest security stuff. With Linux, you can get a new copy of the operating system and get some use out of the old box. I refuse to pay for Windows twice on the same machine. That is why Linux and alternate OSs exist.
If you hit my web page with all the pictures, that is coming off the Mandrake Linux machine in my apartment. So are most of the pictures on this blog. I use it for a file server as well. Before I stopped running it, that machine also ran SETI.

METRO
Well, It looks like Metro Lift is getting its act together. I have an appointment for tomorrow. They pick me up at 11:54. which means 11:30. I could almost go in to work for  a half day. Forget that. I intend to sleep in and tack care of this business with as little fuss as possible. Wish me luck.