On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 08:06:55PM +1100, Kevin Waterson wrote: > We admin a network with approx 600 workstations and I feel redhat may not > be the solution for this purpose also. Red Hat Linux 9 is not targetted for you. That's what Enterprise Linux AW is for. > The cost of upgrades is way above > that of Microsoft, who do updates for free. Myth. Did you upgrade from NT4 to Win2K for free? How about from 2K to XP? Lucky you - they gave you that for free too? Even some patches from Microsoft come at a very steep price - I spotted a recent bug report that required you to phone it on their paid support line and if you happen to have the exact problem that their patch fixes, they'll refund your money. If you guessed wrong, you're out $295! For AW - which is targetted for you - not only do you get version updates for free, you also get support for free. Spend $295 *per incident* with Microsoft and see how the numbers add up. Did you get your office suite for free from Microsoft too? And the support and updates for them? Somethings tells me you're a techie and not a bean-counter. > But I would not be going with > a MS solution but I will be seriously looking at other linux distro's such > as Debian and Mandrake to see what they have on offer. Yup - that's the ticket all right. Migrate a 600-workstation network to a distribution that's supported by a company that's already in the French equivalent of Chapter 11. Do you like changing distributions or are you really that confident that Mandrake will survive bankruptcy proceedings and continue to give their services away for free? Do you think Mandrake will backport security patches for free to a 3-year old release? I've got news for you - if they try, they'll go Chapter 11 again and not come out. I've got a lot of Linux distributions from companies that tried to do too much for free. Most are out of business. Red Hat has clearly stated that they will continue to provide free downloads of their distribution and provide free updates. You'll get at least the equivalent to what Debian and Mandrake will give you. If you want commercial support, you're expected to pay for it. I fail to see why people are so upset at this. > I will continue to > run RedHat on my home machine, but for networks, I think it is getting > a little costly. Red Hat is a company and has several product offerings. For your home machine, Red Hat Linux 9 is probably the appropriate solution. For your office, AW is Red Hat's offering. For my office, I'm planning a migration to Red Hat Linux Enterprise Linux ES for my servers. For my home system, I'll be running Red Hat Linux 9 (7.1 on one system currently, and 9 on the system I'm in the process of setting up). Enterprise Linux is not appropriate for my home system. I'd like to run it for sure, but I can't justify and afford it. -- Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA mailto:ewilts@xxxxxxxxxx Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
