WhiteBox Enterprise Linux 4

I installed White Box Enterprise Linux 4 the other day. It sure is pretty.

Today I installed over it.

The reasons?

• impossible to upgrade, ergo to maintain
  
  • yum isn't configured, and I logged two bugs into the nonexistent bugzilla
  • up2date isn't functional
  • apt isn't provided
    
• no bug database
  • the hallmark of unprofessionalism is a bug database run by email, and I'm disappointed that a professional product like WBEL is trying so hard to make more work for itself and resemble unprofessionalism
  • no way to coordinate and avoid reporting the same bug multiple times
  • no method to check on the status of reported bugs -- better for morale
• no updates
  • nothing's come out in the 4 weeks wince WBEL4 was released
  • yes, it started with a lot of updates rolled in (so it's really RHEL4.0.5) but there's the fear that nothing's going to be coming out for a while.
    
• no support structure
• single point of failure
  • if Mr Morris should happen to get hit by a bus, WBEL4 is dead.
    

It's obvious Mr Morris has a lot of work to do, and the fact that he's taken it on himself without accepting any of the help that's all but thrown at him, that's really unfortunate for his project; I thought it was only lame IT departments who became too busy to accept free fucking labour. I want WhiteBox to be the dominant RHEL4 clone, although I don't know why, and this is a real disappointment today.

The fact that I was unable to use any method of installing new apps without grabbing the RPMs by hand from the website or the CDs and dropping them in individually so as to satisfy dependencies and install the desired stuff, that's the biggest let-down of it all. I've not had to do that since 1999, really, and I certainly wasn't rpepared for labour-intensive maintenance by an OS released 6 years later. It's a temporary problem, to be sure, but another brick in the wall.

Now, although it's been Bernsteined all to hell and I'm really not sure who's running the show or what I get out of it, I've picked up and installed CentOS Enterprise Linux 4. We'll see how it goes. I hope XOS4 is released soon.