Thinkpads Forum

IBM may be buying Red Hat Linux (subject to shareholders' agreements)

www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-28/despe ... cquisition
www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-acquires-red-hat

Wow, big news.
If IBM really does acquire Red Hat, we might well (finally) give Red Hat a spin as an experimental project on some of our laptops.

We still have not decided what to do after Windows 7 finally reaches End Of Life in 2020.
Not crazy about Windows 10 Pro:

~Forced updates ruining our meticulously made computer settings (and why Xbox on our Win10 computer cannot be deleted??),
~Perhaps a (small) chance of Win10 Updates deleting your data,
~Future possibility that Win10 may start to remove Windows features which Microsoft feel you don't need (like the Windows 10 Disk Cleanup Utility (after this had been around for about 20 years), possibly in order to "encourage" users to use OneDrive as their go to file location instead.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=127185

w0qj wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 28, 2018 6:11 pm

If IBM really does acquire Red Hat, we might well (finally) give Red Hat a spin as an experimental project on some of our laptops.

Cent OS which is the free version of RH has been around for a long time, and many of us have been running it on our ThinkPads. Personally, I like it a lot and would encourage you to give it a spin on a spare system.

OK, great, many thanks

We are simply looking any Linux flavor with UI that mimic closely to Windows 7, runs Windows specific programs that we use (need to test this), and user friendly installation/maintenance (no command lines).

Will give Cent OS a spin then

ajkula66 wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 28, 2018 10:23 pm

Cent OS which is the free version of RH has been around for a long time, and many of us have been running it on our ThinkPads. Personally, I like it a lot and would encourage you to give it a spin on a spare system.

In my CD-box I still have an original SUSE, Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, a.k.a. SLED 10.
It was made in 2008 by Novell for the Lenovo 14.1" widescreen T61.
Haven't seen or heard about SLED since...

w0qj wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:33 am

We are simply looking any Linux flavor with UI that mimic closely to Windows 7, runs Windows specific programs that we use (need to test this), and user friendly installation/maintenance (no command lines).

I'm not all that certain that Cent OS - or Red Hat for that fact - will fit the bill then. As for the Windows programs, you'll likely have to run them under Wine.

Good luck.

ajkula66 wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 28, 2018 10:23 pm

Cent OS which is the free version of RH

Well, 'a' free version of Red Hat; there's also Fedora.

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 30, 2018 6:13 am

In my CD-box I still have an original SUSE, Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, a.k.a. SLED 10.
It was made in 2008 by Novell for the Lenovo 14.1" widescreen T61.
Haven't seen or heard about SLED since...

It's still around. v15 released this year (after skipping a couple of versions). SUSE seems to have faded in popularity lately though. Unix group at my company has shifted to CentOS as the standard build.

w0qj wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 28, 2018 6:11 pm

If IBM really does acquire Red Hat, we might well (finally) give Red Hat a spin as an experimental project on some of our laptops.

whatever Linux distro which suits you will better perform than whatever windows operating system you adored in the past. I am Debian only user, because I want my machines not to break, a bit more tweaking during initial install, but once done, it performs like a tank

fyi, Red Hat doesn't sell a distro, it just sells corporate support services

ajkula66 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 30, 2018 8:46 am

w0qj wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:33 am

We are simply looking any Linux flavor with UI that mimic closely to Windows 7, runs Windows specific programs that we use (need to test this), and user friendly installation/maintenance (no command lines).

I'm not all that certain that Cent OS - or Red Hat for that fact - will fit the bill then. As for the Windows programs, you'll likely have to run them under Wine.

Good luck.

windows flavorish distro is not the question, it's more which desktop environment and then I would say XFCE