Keith Edmunds wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:56:44 +0100, sean@??? said:
>
>
>> Now I'm certainly not putting that forward as a good thing or advocating
>> any position as correct or incorrect really - I'm just thinking aloud
>>
>
> You're right, but so's Paul - he said, "I don't really consider Red Hat as
> a Linux vendor anymore - or at least not for any customer that isn't
> looking for an enterprise level support agreement". The situation you
> describe is someone who IS looking for that level of support.
>
Red Hat made a business decision to concentrate on large organisations
or go bust. Purely as a business, they didn't have a choice. So they now
provide what large corps want which isn't what small companies need.
> My experience - as someone who makes a living providing Linux consultancy
> - is that the vast majority of Red Hat customers bought RH because it was
> a name they'd heard of, not for any other reason. They come unstuck when
> they want to, for example, implement a VPN connection to the server from a
> home Windows system. As of RHEL3 (haven't checked since), RH didn't
> include any VPN software. Of course you can download RPMs for OpenVPN,
> etc, or you can build from source, but now you're off base as far as RH are
> concerned. A few of those RH customers have been converted to Debian
> (cheaper, bigger range of packages, but no enterprise support); others
> stay with RH plus extras.
>
RHEL4 and RHEL5 are excellent servers and have VPN now. Look at the
number of free distros using CentOS like SME7 which are superb. Debian
has failed to provide business solutions and it looks like Ubuntu will
be the first with their new server product. If Linux providers want to
win more businesses, they will have to look at the experts in selling
software, M$. At least Linux has the advantage of being a professional
operating system.
> As for RH support, I've had generally poor experiences. Their website is
> simply awful, and the support ranges from outright wrong answers to
> competent. I haven't experienced anything with a wow factor, but to be
> fair I've only used RH support three or four times.
>
It isn't that bad and similar to other providers.
> To sum it up, I'd say, "Make an informed decision". RedHat may be right,
> Debian may be right, XYZ distro may be right, but it's worth understanding
> the differences before a company invests time and money in one particular
> distro.
>
As we all know, GNU/Linux is a brilliant product and is only let down by
its marketing and support. These are improving and companies like Red
Hat spend a lot of time and money on this. SuSE is similar. Ubuntu is
starting up so will take time to provide the required support. Debian,
Gentoo etc need specialist support so you need to know there is more
than one company who can provide it. Other companies are selling Linux
appliances and they provide "all-in-1" support for these and this will
suit some companies who don't have Linux skills.
John.
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