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Red Hat Warns of ‘Frankenstein Linux’ Third Party Support

Imagine a monstrous, seven-foot reanimated Tux-the-penguin with bolts though its neck, pursued through the countryside by angry pitchfork-wielding villagers. It’s not an image you’re likely to forget in a hurry. And that, one suspects, was the intention of Dan Pacek, Red Hat’s strategic marketing guy, when he described the predicament you’ll find yourself in, should […]

Written By

Paul Rubens

Feb 26, 2010

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Imagine a monstrous, seven-foot reanimated Tux-the-penguin with bolts though its neck, pursued through the countryside by angry pitchfork-wielding villagers. It’s not an image you’re likely to forget in a hurry.

And that, one suspects, was the intention of Dan Pacek, Red Hat’s strategic marketing guy, when he described the predicament you’ll find yourself in, should you be foolish enough to ditch your Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) support contract and get a cheaper third-party support offering instead.

“You’re left running some sort of hybrid, in-between Frankenstein Linux,” is how he put it, during a 40-minute webinar extravaganza aired earlier this month, devoted to trashing the RHEL support efforts offered by the likes of Novell and Oracle.

Why the monster imagery? “As soon as you patch your system, it is no longer RHEL, which means none of the ISV certifications are valid any longer,” he said. “High risk” was one way he branded third-party support. “Pay and pray” was another. It’s a long way from Frankenstein, but you can see what Pacek is getting at.

But the truth (or otherwise) of this hasn’t put RHEL users off looking to get better support elsewhere, according to Wim Coekaerts, Oracle’s “Mr Linux.” “Due to dissatisfaction with Red Hat’s quality of support as well as a desire to get more value, many users have switched from Red Hat Support to Oracle Unbreakable Linux Support,” he claimed on an Oracle blog.

Read the rest at ServerWatch.