Just FYI, because I was confused about it myself. First, though, let me explain my confusion. We all know that EW costs $179. But what about updates? RHN accounts are $60/year, right? The situation, as explained by a real, live, Red Hat saleslady is as follows.
EW costs $179 per year to maintain. In other words, it takes $179 per year to keep it on RHN. The $60/yr option is for the "consumer distro," and the $96/yr option allows you to group those workstations for convenient administration. Note that the $179/yr for EW is the "base" price. It includes installation support and nothing else. The "normal" price for EW is $300/yr, and that includes 9-9 M-F support.
I also inquired as to discounted pricing. She explained that discounts weren't given on EW until you start talking about hundreds of seats (but you can start negotiating about AS with as few as 5).
For my situation, I'm looking to replace 12 Unix engineering workstations with x86 boxen. My choices are Windows or Linux. Now, my company is huge. We have the highest license agreement level with Microsoft. That makes current versions of Windows a mere, one-time cost of something like $130. Look, I know all the arguments about TCO, but you're preaching to the choir. I have done both Windows and Unix administration. But there's just no way that a (properly configured) install of 2000 is going to cost me an extra $410 (3 x $179 - $130) to admin over a (properly configured) install of EW over 3 years. I mean, worst-case scenario is a re-image, which takes 30-45 minutes, but that applies to either OS.
It seems to me that my situation is exactly one where Red Hat would hope to sell a lot of seats, but I just don't see how EW is competitive in this space. The economics demand that -- as an admin -- if I want the users to use Linux, I just need to install the consumer version and pay for the low-end RHN subscriptions, but my option to do that is going to run out. When it comes to Linux requirements, we're talking about 7.2. I can't use the 8.0 or 9 distros, because these high-end software packages (NASTRAN, STAR-CD, ABAQUS, etc.) are going to need to be recompiled for the new thread implementation. So if I decide to put some people (not ALL of the packages we use run on Linux), it would have to be the older version, and, as of the end of the year, the updates go away. (Though it might be argued that, behind the firewall, we don't need to keep up with all the latest security patches. That's a debatable subject.)
I'd still love to see Linux make an inroad here. Does anyone have any insight as to why I should go with Linux here instead of Windows?
Thanks, dk
