Free RH ES 4.0 or equvelent

[Ed Wilts]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 01:09:10PM -0000, Lunt, Nick wrote:
> > From: Ed Wilts [mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org]
> > There are a few things you need to be aware of - the main one is that
> > you do NOT end up with RHEL when you're done.  You end up 
> > with something
> > very close to RHEL but there are 3rd party applications that won't
> > install or run, and there may be bugs in the binaries that the
> > rebuilders have built that aren't in the Red Hat binaries (this has
> > happened in the past because the compilers Red Hat used to build the
> > binaries weren't the same ones as they were shipping).
> 
> thats a new one on me. Do you have any examples of incompatibilities
> and/or bugs ?  We use some CentOS boxes in a dev environment and have
> had no issues .. yet ;)

Both cases are rare so it's quite possible that you've not run into
them.  At least one was related to one of the dhcp packages.  Red Hat
discovered a compiler bug when building the package.  They fixed the
compiler but didn't release the new compiler right away since it hadn't
gone through a full QA cycle (it's since been released).  Red Hat's
released binary functioned perfectly but anybody who created their own
binary from the released source rpm had issues.

I've seen some 3rd party packages from HP that check for the contents of
/etc/redhat-release.  That kind of check will break.  For example, on my
home system, this file reads:
# cat /etc/redhat-release
Tao Linux release 4 (Sponge Update 2)
whereas on one of my work systems, it's:
# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 2)

In earlier incarnations of the rebuilds (and this may be true in some of
the current ones too), the kernel version was renamed - ie, instead of
something like 2.4.9-1.EL you'd see 2.4.9-1.TL (I made those versions
up) and some 3rd party software installations would fail.

It's actually fairly easy for a 3rd party developer to make it really
hard for their package to install on a rebuild.  Some developers are
simply perverted.

I'm not going to say that the various rebuilds shouldn't be used, since
you can see in my note that I'm running one at home.  For users who
don't need any Red Hat support, can afford to wait an extra day (or 2 or
more) for a package to be updated after Red Hat has released the source
rpm, and don't run too many weird and wonderful 3rd packages, a rebuild
may be good enough.

Personally, I run a rebuild at home but all of my work systems are fully
subscribed RHEL distributions.  Red Hat Professional Workstation was
affordable for my home use but none of the RHEL choices today are and
Fedora is too bleeding edge for my liking.

        .../Ed

-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program