Drop all this Desktop crap and build a distro centred around servers

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Dear Red Hat,

 

Please can you focus RHEL7 on servers. Drop all this desktop bloat and concentrate on a distro which is fast, reliable and secure -  y'know like for the 'Enterprise'

 

Stop trying to please everyone.

 

Focus. Less is more.

 

jus sayin'

 

 

LT
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Responses

rh Red Hat Guru 1429 points
29 November 2011 9:24 AM

Hi Ryan

 

  What we do offer is kickstart, where user can install a opt in for minimal install and customize the OS.

 

 

https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-59081

 

 

Cheers

LT Active Contributor 111 points
29 November 2011 10:00 PM

Hi,

 

OK - so I need to articulate where I'm coming from.

 

I work at a sucessful online company that has hundreds of Red Hat servers. These are all built with a minimalish install as the link you posted suggests. We recently looked at RHEL 6 and when I saw the number of packages available my heart just sank. Why?

 

I might be in the minority - perhaps Red Hat makes millions selling desktop subscriptions - in which case - fine - carry on. Ignore me.

 

My point is look at the competition:

 

www.oracle.com/us/solaris/index.html

 

Do they mention anywhere the desktop option? 

 

When I look at 1000s of packages for RHEL I don't think "awesome lots of choice" -  I think of the wasted engineering effort that went into make the desktop an option. Not to mention all the support calls they have to deal with! 

 

Maybe if they didn't have to worry about all the desktop packages perhaps they could concentrate on -  shipping more recent versions of software? - newer version of Puppet per chance??? Perhaps a working version of SSSD ? Decent tools that don't suck and are not beta?

 

There are tons of better supported Linux desktops than RHEL. Let the other distros eat that biscuit.

 

Focusing means zooming right in on what matters.

 

Look at Apple they actively dropped the Server offering to be the best at what they do - desktops and mobile devices. Oracle centre on the enterprise server market because Larry knows its where the money is and will happily eat Red Hats dinner.

 

My opinion.

 

Rant over. 

 

 

-

r

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robin Price's picture Red Hat Expert 845 points
5 December 2011 8:53 PM

Did you look at the RHEL6 installer?  We brung back the minimal install functionality.  And it is even more minimal than the earlier versions (RHEL4).

 

http://www.redhat.com/partners/isv/rhel6/

Enterprise manageability

  • Workload Profiles installation options, including minimal install, to tailor OS to specific applications

 

Selecting minimal install and not custimizing it through the GUI gave me 229 packages installed with ~600MB of OS finger print used post installation.  I am sure you could get it down even further.  Maybe this is what you were looking for?

 

 

~rp

MF Active Contributor 297 points
5 January 2012 7:36 PM

I am torn in my response to this.  For starters I agree in principal that RedHat could better serve the community by dropping the desktop software and all the engineering resources allocated to it.  On the other hand though, since so much comes from non-RedHat engineers and is adopted by RedHat for RHEL are we really losing anything?

 

I have had the pleasure of working with RedHat support before, and I have also had the pleasure of working with our Technical Account Manager and a RHEV Expert and I have never felt like my level of support was lacking.

 

Where I agree the most with is the massive amount of packages that it becomes extremely cumbersome to locate the correct one.  Now I know this is the same with any OS, but I find that there is so much built in the repos and most of it is useless to me.  I still spend a significant amount of time compiling from source.

 

-MF

LT Active Contributor 111 points
29 November 2011 10:01 PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

PÃ Active Contributor 238 points
5 December 2011 2:19 PM

The Enterprise is what it says, Enterprise.

 

I'm working  @ big consult company and my main focus is RHEL as WS and Servers. And I'm sorry, I can't see your point why Red Hat should skip and only focus on servers?

 

Sure, some corporates could use Ubuntu and bought the support on that part. But heck, that is NOT what I want to install on hundred or thousands of computers and support it...

Duncan Innes's picture Guru 2135 points
4 January 2012 3:03 PM

Guys,

 

I've worked at places with hundreds of RHEL Workstations in addition to the hundreds of RHEL Servers.  From this point of view I can state that it is invaluable to be using the same platform across servers and workstations.

 

If I thought that Server was being held back by Workstation, my view might be different, but I cannot see where you're coming from.

 

Do a minimal install.  Create your own kickstart files to custom your installs for different uses.

 

On a side note, I can also vouch for the nightmare that happens when running loads of Ubuntu desktops alongside RHEL servers.  This happened to me once and it wasn't long before management mandated a move to RHEL across all the machines.  With RHEL in place, our estate became much simpler to handle.  This isn't a vote for RHEL over Ubuntu, but a vote for OS uniformity across platforms.