Because old software is battle-tested and reliable. Moreover, upgrading software is ever a pain so it's best to minimize how often you have to do it. With a support policy of 10 years, you just can't beat RHEL (and derivatives) for stability.
For me it always felt like the system administrators externalizing the cost on the users and developers (which are the same in many cases).
Despite my dislike of enterprise Linux, Red Hat is doing a lot of awesome work all around the stack. IMO Fedora and the immutable distros are the real showcase of all the things they do.
> Despite my dislike of enterprise Linux, Red Hat is doing a lot of awesome work all around the stack. IMO Fedora and the immutable distros are the real showcase of all the things they do.
Fedora today is what RHEL will be tomorrow. They quite literally freeze a Fedora release to use as a base for RHEL's next release. If you like Fedora today you're gonna like Fedora tomorrow.
It's really really great, even if you don't use or plan to use NixOS (Nix was born long before NixOS).
https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_...
I know they give back to Linux, and I’m thankful for the enterprises that pay for it because of that.
It’s not a bad company, though it’s strange that you could be a great developer and lose your position there if your project gets cut, unless another team picks you up, from what I hear.
But when Linus created Linux, he didn’t do it for money, and RH just seems corporate to me like the Microsoft of Linux, way back before Microsoft had their own Linux. I want my Linux free-range not cooped.
They don’t do anything wrong. They just don’t give the vibe. Anyone asking for money for it doesn’t “get it” to me.
You seem to forget that Red Hat has funded a lot of the development of the Linux ecosystem. There would be essentially no modern linux environment without Red Hat.
I wouldn't use their products for much though, too enterprisey. Their projects are great and I'm happy someone else buys their packages.
If you ask random dev on the street about .NET, there is an high probability they will answer it is Windows only and requires Visual Studio.
Red Hat was founded in 1993. When do you think they got the idea? When do you think companies like Red Hat decided to bet on Linux instead of BSD? Debian was founded in 1993 as well. When was that lawsuit settled again?
An awful lot of the Linux momentum that carries us to this very day appeared after the BSD lawsuit was filed and before it was settled.
What about the other “big and professional” competitor to Linux?
GNU HURD was started in 1990. The original plan was to base it off the BSD kernel. The Linux kernel appeared in 1991. BSD fell under legal threat in 1992. Debian appeared in 1993. RMS lost interest in HURD. None of these dates had much impact you don’t think?
They did not want to pay for big iron for sure, preferring commodity hardware. Even then though, many Linux boxes can get pretty expensive.
I think it is more about openness and control than it is about cost. Linux brings flexibility and freedom.
So does BSD of course. The timing of that lawsuit changed the world.
Does anyone remember glint (graphical UI for RPM) that was part of Red Hat? Must have been Red Hat 4.x or thereabout.
But the world around you does not wait for you, and keeps moving
Want it or not, you move with it
And thus, you are not stable
10y operating system is a joke