this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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To tag onto this, what makes RHEL so special? Is it just the support you get from Red Hat or is there something about the distro that makes it so widely used?
Support contracts for risk mitigation is a big part of it, and the other is RH release engineering is amazing.
Aside from that, RHEL, and clones, is a very straight forward, clean distro. It’s very focused with everything doted and tidy, and overall, it has a very uncomplicated feel to it. In contrast Debian derivatives are kind of messy, and SUSE tries to stuff every function into a single application.
RHEL does push a lot of technology. Out of the stable distros, it will be the first to put tech into production. RH does a lot with integration with other systems. This has kept me off of SUSE in the past. RHEL was more tech forward, comparatively.
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it's very very very critical for most case :')
you can just snapshot before any transaction in apt / pacman / whatever else.
It's hard, and better have package manager built in. It's not enough in the enterprise sadly... Just saying, and I think most Corporate with agree with it.
the package manager will have it built in with a simple hook. works great with unattended upgrades.
The support is a huge part of it. Being able to submit a ticket or call in to get help with a strange quirk is extremely valuable to a lot of companies. Additionally, having a licensed distribution like this means there’s built in trust. Red Hat has been a big player in this space forever and are well trusted already, too. So there’s a huge community of people who have used the product to talk to or hire. They also have certifications for rhel, supported by Red Hat, and those carry weight in the industry to some degree.
Beyond support agreements that others are mentioning, the huge requirement for the shop I work at (mid-scale high performance computing center) it’s 3rd party vendor package support. Mellanox/nvidia, whamcloud, slurm, vast, and on and on. Driver packages targeting rhel kernels are an industry standard offering if a vendor supports linux. That’s not always the case with Debian variants, for instance.
Same with huge applications and proprietary compiler suites (think matlab and the intel compiler suite or OneAPI). These are hugely important packages for a number of shops.
Don’t get me wrong, I can build against plenty of other distros but my vendors target rhel as a first class citizen for both build scripts and straight binary packaging.
It is 100% the support. Corporations pay big money to have experts on call to fix things fast when they break, and there's basically no other player for that kind of model in the Linux space.
Debian could stand against it, if https://www.debian.org/consultants/ and https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Extended consolidated, sadly for now, it isn't, and I don't see any project go towards it.