Debian Enterprise (not a Starfleet metaphor)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Karsten Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com):

> I'm working on a pitch, part of which addresses the "you get what you
> pay for" objection to GNU/Linux (or Debian). 

Honestly, when you encounter the (very common) cultural assumption of
valuing things solely at acquisition cost, the best counter-measure by
far is, quite simply, to charge a lot of money.  Don't sell Debian as an
invoice line item -- sell (e.g.) a corporate e-mail solution.

> > *) we often have some piece of proprietary software that says it
> > will only run on RH X.Y.
> 
> Response:  Then get RH specifically for $PROPRIETARY_SW ....

I realise Oracle is the extreme-outlier case, and that it might be more
practical for other examples, but might someone create and maintain 
Debian contrib package "oracle9i-rdbms-support" with no contents other
than the necessary Depends lines?  If the Depends packages were all
available, then installing that package (and, if necessary, putting it
on "hold" status) would answer the functional part of pointy-hair
objections, right?

There remains Oracle Corp. platform certification, but that would seem
feasible if the meta-package mechanism described works well enough,
given Oracle RDBMS's insanely finicky and fragile requirements.
(The "Depends" might, for example, have to include some cruddy kernel
and glibc combo borrowed from a Red Hat release.)

> Note too that for any two bits of sufficiently complex proprietary SW,
> constraints may well mean you have to dedicate a system to it.

That's always my answer in the case of Oracle RDBMS:  It's not much
imposition to put up with Red Hat on that one machine, because it'll
basically have to be a dedicated Oracle appliance, anyway, and thus will
be left severely alone.

> The one remaining problem is getting Debian up on newer HW.  Simply:
> the installer doesn't support a lot of stuff.  My fix here is to use one
> of the installation options above, bootstrapped from Knoppix, LNX-BBC,
> or similar bootable media.  You get the best of both worlds:  a system
> that's autoconfigured for HW at boot using current tweaks, and a known
> good Debian install.

The "Debian won't install on my hardware" line doesn't wash anymore.
People said this without fear of contradiction before all the ways of
dealing with hardware obstacles were widely understood and documented --
a form of information friction.  I've tried to help the process with a
page of condensed information about Debian installation routines.  See
"Installers" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Debian .

-- 
Cheers,                Linux:  It is now safe to turn on your computer.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com