[Lilux-help] Inventory as of 01/07/2004

[Brent Frère]

The experience we have with most of our Plan-Net customers is that they 
are not ready to pay the 1250 € for SuSE SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise 
Server) nor the more expensive RehHat distribution. We try to convinde 
them to pay a copy of SuSE Linux Professional (~95 €), with success, but 
since there is no such RedHat distribution, we don't install ANY RedHat 
Linux on ANY of our customer's servers.

I would be surprised that RedHat is still the most used distribution in 
Luxembourg on servers. Maybe true historically, but this is no more the 
trend, then consequently not the advice to give to our members. SuSE is 
used by IBM and Sun, supported by Oracle, ... I am a previous user of RH 
and have all goodies, and even a red hat, but with the lost of RedHat 
for end-users, I can't use it professionally anymore. The server edition 
is just too expensive. By the way, I red that the last desktop edition 
of RH is not even able to be installed on ANY previous RH distribution. 
You have to start from a newly formatted partition. I can't sell this to 
anybody. Sorry for RH.

I think we should split Linux distros classification in three parts:

1) Fully supported commercial editions (SuSE SLES, Sun JDS with 
maintenance contract or RedHat Linux)

2) Commercial editions with limited services such as limited help-desk 
or online updates (SuSE, Mandrake, Sun JDS...)

3) Community supported editions (such as Fedora, Debian, Gentoo...)

By the way, I don't even know exactly where to put Slackware, IBM Linux 
nor Knoppix in there. This top-level classification is the one that is 
the most relevant to professional customers: is it really backed by a 
great name ? What are the evolution path ? What guarantee do we have on 
availability of services and updates ? ... No customer will go for class 
3 distros. No are ready yet to face the price of class 1 up to now, so 
my experience is that professional users are all using class 2 distros 
at the time. Thinks can change for sure, especially with Sun JDS that is 
billed ~80 €/seat with limited service, backed by a very famous computer 
company, and that is fully supported with an optional maintenance contract.

Just my 0.5 eurocent.

Patrick Useldinger a écrit :

> Thanks for the recent answers. I am still trying to find the best way 
> to interpret this data, but the current result is:
>
> Most used on Desktop : SuSE
> Most used on Server : RedHat
> Most used alround solution: Slackware
> Only life CD : Knoppix
>
> Does this make any sense to you?
>
> -pu
> _______________________________________________
> Lilux-help mailing list
> Lilux-help at lilux.lu
> http://lilux.lu/mailman/listinfo/lilux-help

-- 
Brent Frère

Private e-mail:  Brent at BFrere.net

Postal address: 5, rue de Mamer
                L-8280 Kehlen
                Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg
                European Union

Mobile: +352-021/29.05.98
Fax:    +352-26.30.05.96
Home:   +352-307.341
URL:    http://BFrere.net

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: brent.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 216 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lilux.lu/pipermail/lilux-help/attachments/20040724/e408d24e/attachment.vcf>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 3383 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://lilux.lu/pipermail/lilux-help/attachments/20040724/e408d24e/attachment.bin>