[WBEL-users] what does everyone think of whitebox so far?

[John Hinton]

Van L. Loggins wrote:

>just curious, we are thinking about trying it out on one of our servers
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I run hosting servers and page tracking mysql servers. All system 
critical. I prefer to run "tried and proven" vs. "cutting edge" systems. 
I'm just now happy with the modules for Apache 2, and therefore am just 
now satisfied with migrating from my fully patched RedHat 7.2 systems. 
This mindset has provided us with fantastic uptime. In fact, our Compaq 
servers are really never down unless there is a kernal update. We did 
have one hardware failure a couple of years ago on one machine (did you 
know if one of the three power supply fans on a dl360 dies, the machine 
shuts itself down? I was not impressed... how about a warning?).

My plans at present are this. I plan to purchase one official RHEL 
subscription for my main domain name server. The purpose is two fold. It 
will keep me informed as to the timing of errata releases for RHEL and 
allow comparison to WBEL. If something drastic comes down the pike that 
needs immediate attention, I can grab the srpm and compile and install 
it myself on the other machines. Paying for one subscription also allows 
me to send RedHat at least some of my money to help insure the future of 
RHEL, therefore the future of WBEL.

I like everything I have heard from John regarding how WBEL is and will 
be done. I think it should absolutely mirror the state of RHEL, right 
down to the current errata. In other words, no, I don't want a fix for 
WBEL before RH has created their fix. There are simply too many test 
that need to be run which is an impossible task for even RedHat, much 
less White Box. I want pure and parallel... and yup, even the bad 
packages. If you want state of the art on the edge systems, I would go 
with Fedora. Me, I want standards.. I simply have too many machines to 
keep up with and have had troubles in the past even with official RedHat 
releases. I know this is a bit of a dividing line here in this 
community, but I have to stand with John.. we will be as much exactly 
the same as possible.

All of that being said, the systems I have running right now have all 
performed as they should. Other software packagers are starting to 
recognize White Box and add the OS name as supported (another good 
reason for staying the same as RHEL.. if it works for that it will work 
on WBEL). I'm ready to put WBEL systems in as mission critical servers 
and feel really good about the direction of this project.

Best,
John Hinton