Two comments.
I am not pursuing the IBM FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) marketing
and business strategy that made IBM the dominant business,
accounting, and the like, computer systems service, software, and
hardware supplier in the USA for many years.
The research and scientific market was dominated by DEC (since
absorbed by other for profit corporations), Control Data, Cray,
and Sun (also absorbed, currently Oracle as I recall). Of these,
only Sun was strongly unix (BSD that was SunOS then Solaris and
then left BSD for the descendant of ATT System V Release 4 -- the
old "original" ATT of unix, C, C++, etc., not the current ATT that
bought the name, etc., but not Murray Hill Bell Labs, etc.).
Linux is a relatively new "unix", but the history is irrelevant to
this reality -- most of the major servers run Linux or on a open
systems "bare iron" hypervisor for "cloud services" that shares
much history with other open systems.
Indeed, this list did suffice for support -- the personnel from SL
at Fermilab would reply with some detail, but not for those who
need detailed key-stroke "hold the hand and fingers" support.
I understand the current for-profit business arguments that IBM
will continue to make CentOS viable and stable. I also do not
trust these for the long term unless there are some strong fiscal
reasons to do so for the long term (e.g., a change in taxation
policy and enforcement).
Second, the issue of support. "My" university has changed
dramatically under the current campus President. Even under the
previous campus administrations, the only supported entities were
those for administrative computing controlled by the
administration and that has, and had, no academic freedom.
Worthless for any research that interested me. Most of these
functions have been outsourced at this time. The administrators
in these areas have no background in science or engineering, but
rather "management". I am not deprecating anyone, merely putting
things into perspective. There is no internal support at my
campus for academic freedom curiosity-directed disciplinary
research, with some support for some persons to secure external
funding. My funding to do any of this was external, not internal.
Yasha Karant
On 2/21/20 5:49 PM, Mark Rousell wrote:
[log in to unmask]">
Andrew Z wrote on 2/21/20 1:57 PM:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite">
> It is odd that you have no budget to support critical
systems for your
> department, Yasha.
>
> What if you power servers down and see how "critical "
they indeed are? And if
> they are not - then get fedora and be done with it.
I don't think Yasha said that he has no budget, did he, only that
he in effect has a limited budget. Why is it limited? Could it be
because it was possible to do what was needed within that limited
budget?