Red Hat determined this path in 2001, when it started pivoting to enterprise customers only. Everything after that was just the usual progression for a minor enterprise player.
You might be right. Ubuntu and Shuttleworth certainly captured the void left for a polished Linux distro after the pivot. I think there was value to something being used personally and at work.
> I think there was value to something being used personally and at work.
Right. My own experience was that I paid for a copy of Red Hat Linux, shipped in a pretty box and everything, and then within a year or so discovered that that was the end of the line.
Although technically it was supposed to have been possible to switch to Fedora at that point, the rollout and info around that wasn't at all clear.
My reaction was oh well, guess I'll use Debian - and later, at every company I've worked at in the intervening decades, encouraged use of either Ubuntu or Debian, or provider variants like Container-Optimized OS. No-one ever objected to that, because Red Hat was doing the "enterprise sales" thing, and ain't nobody got time for that.
nailer · · focus · HN ↗
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win
Then local datacenters move to the cloud
Then you don’t keep up with Amazon
Then you exit to IBM
Then you get used to shovel IBM garbage onto customers
Then you become an irrelevant footnote like vmware and Sun.
Early 2000s red hat was wild and I was glad to be there. I’m still the ‘mikem’ in /etc/sudoers in RHEL and Amazon Linu.
antonvs · · focus · HN ↗
nailer · · focus · HN ↗
antonvs · · focus · HN ↗
Right. My own experience was that I paid for a copy of Red Hat Linux, shipped in a pretty box and everything, and then within a year or so discovered that that was the end of the line.
Although technically it was supposed to have been possible to switch to Fedora at that point, the rollout and info around that wasn't at all clear.
My reaction was oh well, guess I'll use Debian - and later, at every company I've worked at in the intervening decades, encouraged use of either Ubuntu or Debian, or provider variants like Container-Optimized OS. No-one ever objected to that, because Red Hat was doing the "enterprise sales" thing, and ain't nobody got time for that.