[GLLUG] What is Enterprise Desktop Linux?

Jonathan Billings billings at negate.org
Sat Aug 3 09:01:42 EDT 2013


On Aug 3, 2013, at 1:36 AM, Richard Houser <rick at divinesymphony.net> wrote:
> With RHEL, I run into lots of snags and occasionally security vulnerabilities due to outdates libraries (after accounting for back ports).  It's really more of a host for badly built commercial software that misuses dynamic libraries, since Linux already has a stable API since 1.0.  Applications that require specific libraries are expected to statically link or ship those libraries.  If you run modern code, stick to a distro built on a current codebase.
> 

I'm unfamiliar with these security vulnerabilities that Richard speaks of, so I can't address them, other than the point of paying for a RHEL subscription is that if you were to point out a security vulnerability like he mentioned, it would be fixed and you'd have a support team helping you with it.  

Sadly, not everything can be solved by statically linked binaries, and there really isn't much of a "stable API" in a rolling release distro.  It's fine if all you care about is packaged in the distro and your projects have very short lifetimes, but if you have a user base that expects all their workstations and computational nodes to have a stable target for compilation, then you'll really want an enterprise distribution.  

--
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>


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