"Bill Vermillion" <bv@wjv.comREMOVE> wrote in message
news:HoBGxE.1Jq7@wjv.com...
> In article <bp0un2$k44$1@news.tdl.com>,
> Justin Robbs <justin_robbsNO@SPAMhotmail.com> wrote:
> >Hello all,
>
> >We are embarking on a project to port from OpenServer 5.0.5/6,
> >to Linux. I just wanted to get some opinions on which flavor
of
> >linux would be the best to port to. First, the background info
> >and requirements.
>
> >We don't need the latest and greatest technology, we just need
> >a stable environment for our Point of Sale system. The
benefits
> >of going to linux would be to continue finding any needed
> >drivers and integrating any additional hardware into our
system.
> >For example, most of our devices are serial devices, ie. upc
> >scanner, cash drawer, handheld scanner etc. If for some reason
> >they switched to usb, we would be out of luck.
>
> A great many things are switching to USB and/or FireWire. Plan
> ahead for the changes.
>

That is the one of our big motivations for going down this path.
We are doing some major code rewrites presently and figured since
we are already overhauling things, this would be a good time to
tackle this.

> ....
> >I would like to know which distro would be the easiest port
....
> >
> >the most stable ...
> >
> >the best driver support ...
> >
> >the best long term survival chances ...
> >
> >the fastest with the smallest footprint ...
>
> Every one of those is subject to change on a weekly basis.
>

Yeah, I figure that the answers to those questions are fairly
dynamic, I mostly am curious about what people have experienced
to be the best in these categories and the market niche the
companies are currently pursuing. I am doing my own research as
well, but it is nice to get the opinion of people who have been
down this path.

>
> In an article today on the new RH licensing, Lawrence Livermore
> Labs estimates their 4000-node cluster will cost them $800,000
> PER YEAR using the currnet RH figures. And as a taxpayer a
little
> of that comes out of my pocket.
>
> The idea that retail packages go away, you pay a yearly
license,
> and grant RedHat the right to audit your systems AFTER the
license
> period expires to check to see if you are running it is causing
> consternation for some.
>
> Then there is the penalty if you are using more copies than you
> licensed. For a few over I recall it's the cost plus 5%. As
> the quantity increases the penalites rise dramatically.
>
> This seem to go back to the old IBM mainframe model in that
> you don't own the software, you just rent it for periods of
time.
> That certainly is one way around the GPL.
>
> Bill

I am not a big fan of RedHat's current scheme. It doesn't fit
what we want to do very well. At times, I think that we would be
better off going with our own custom kernel, since our needs are
fairly simple.

Thanks,
Justin