Hanging Up The Hat
March 31st, 2006 | by Tony Steidler-Dennison |If you’ve followed CodeMode for any time (or any of the other writing previous to this blog), you know I’ve been a longtime Red Hat user. In the past few weeks, I finally hung up the hat and moved on to other horizons. That’s right - for the first time in eight years, I’m living in a Red Hat-free zone.
What did it take to move me from the harcore brand loyalty I’ve had to Red Hat and Fedora? One word: Ubuntu. On something of a lark a month or so ago, I replaced my Fedora Core 3 installation with Ubuntu. My dad had all but raved about Ubuntu on his site. I’d read nothing but good about it elsewhere. And, I’d really been looking for the right Debian-based distribution for some time. I found it in Ubuntu and knew it almost as soon as the installation was complete.
A month later, I don’t miss Fedora in the least. I’ve been very happy with the stability, the ease of updates and the overall approach of Ubuntu. I’m still doing development with Fedora Core 4 at work, but my machines at home are now all Ubuntu. I’ll likely write more about the distribution here and on GeekTime - including a review of the upcoming Dapper release.
10 Responses to “Hanging Up The Hat”
By Frank Merenda on Mar 31, 2006 | Reply
Hey Tony, long time no talk!
I have been using Ubuntu exclusively for about a year now, and love it. I’m running Dapper now on my main machine, it’s really sweet.
Ah, the powers of apt-get.
I hope you’re doing well!
Take care,
-Frank
By Erik Weibust on Mar 31, 2006 | Reply
It’s so good to see Tony talking Linux! Funny I read this post today. I’ve just today started test-driving Ubuntu in a VMWare Player on my work machine. I’ll be looking forward to more commentary from you on Ubuntu, what you changed, what you like, what you don’t like, etc.
Erikk
By Ed Parrott on Mar 31, 2006 | Reply
Lemme see, If memory serves, the Redhat relationship goes back quite a ways - we used 6 for the Torus machines, I think. You were into RH quite awile prior to that, though….
By Tony Steidler-Dennison on Mar 31, 2006 | Reply
I was — Red Hat was the first Linux distro I actually managed to install and use. And, Debian just gave me fits, initially.
Fedora’s just not as stable or reliable as the old Red Hat versions were, and Debian-based Ubuntu is easily as stable as its big brother. So, away with the hat. I can’t say I’ve missed RH at all.
By Josiah Ritchie on Apr 6, 2006 | Reply
By Frank Merenda on Apr 12, 2006 | Reply
Well, since RedHat just bought us (JBoss) it looks like I’ll be going back to Fedora.
Take care,
-Frank
By Tony Steidler-Dennison on Apr 12, 2006 | Reply
I thought of you when I saw that yesterday, Frank. Is the purchase a good thing?
By Frank Merenda on Apr 16, 2006 | Reply
Yes, it’s an INCREDIBLE thing for both companies. We’re the major open source player in the enterprise space now. RedHat for Linux and us for J2EE. We are all so extremely excited about it.
I, personally, am very happy about this buyout/merge/whatever the business people are offically calling it. I think that this is a great match with the two companies. We can’t comment on it more than that publicly right now (you can check out the jboss blogs (http://www.jboss.com/jbossBlog/blog/) for more details, but basically this is great for both parties, and I’m personally very excited as well! The deal is supposed to be finalized in a few months (legal stuff) then I think we can talk about it more…
Take care,
-Frank
By Frank Merenda on Jun 7, 2006 | Reply
And to follow up on your follow up, we finalized the deal Friday, so I’m officially RedHat now.
Take care!
-Frank