Re: Novell, Suse and the future of Linux

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Arthur Corliss wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Damien Hull wrote:
>
>
>>I just read a rant about Novell and Suse on /dot. It seems Linux
>>products are still considered "risky". Most of what I read had something
>>bad to say about Novell and their products. That would include Netware
>>etc...
>>
>>There seem to be three problems.
>>1. Not enough advertising. ( I agree )
>>2. No support for the enterprise in Suse.
>>3. Free Linux distributions offer the same thing.
>
>
> <snip>
>
>>Where does this leave the commercial Linux distributions? Will Novell
>>and Red Hat make it or will they loose out to FREE software?
>>
>>As long as CentOS is stable, updated and free I'll be using it.
>
>
> I strongly dislike Red Hat, but people have been forecasting their death for
> years. Hasn't happened, and the company is doing well financially. I dislike
> SuSE only slightly less, but there is commercial support for SuSE Enterprise
> depending on how you get it. IBM, for instance, provides support for SuSE for
> general troubleshooting and software integration (and for any of their
> products running on SuSE). Part of your software maintenance agreement
> includes software updates and OS support from SuSE/Novell.
>
> In short, regardless of whether or not Novell can turn the ship around I think
> commercial distributions will be around a *long* time, particularly when so
> many vendors will only provide support for their software on those
> distributions.
>
> Personally, I use my own distribution for both x86 & POWER5, I've yet to see
> any compelling reason to subject myself to those distributions, so I agree
> there's no practical obstacles or implications for not going the free route.
> Even so, I don't see commercial distributions going away.
>
> --Arthur Corliss
> Bolverk's Lair -- http://arthur.corlissfamily.org/
> Digital Mages -- http://www.digitalmages.com/
> "Live Free or Die, the Only Way to Live" -- NH State Motto
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>
>
You may be right. I should mention I don't know anything about
enterprise Suse.

While commercial support is nice it only works if it offers you
something. Most businesses need email and file sharing services. As far
as I know Red Hat doesn't offer that kind of support ( could be wrong ).
Don't know if Novell offers support for that.

Either way most Linux admins can set this up them selves. That means
free software/distribution. For me any way.

I am basing most of this on a small office of say 50 employees. Some of
you may be looking at deployments of 100's of employees/users. That may
be a different situation.

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Received on Wed Mar 8 18:59:24 2006