A bad experience with RedHat and Novell

Posted May 10, 2007 0:32 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: A bad experience with RedHat and Novell by hazelsct
Parent article: A think tank's view of free software

unfortunantly you experiance isn't unique, I've tried several times over the years to have my company buy support (we actually had a contract with linuxcare for a year, but at the end of the year I was talking with their sales guy and outlined the problems that we had been having and he reccomended that we not renew whith them, points for honesty at least)

if you just want to pay someone money you can buy enterprise licenses from redhat or novell, but if you actually want to be able to get support on anything other then a standard desktop config you are basicly out of luck.

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A bad experience with RedHat and Novell

Posted May 10, 2007 23:54 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

This is great information; I've always wondered just what the deal was on Linux support. It's hard to believe someone like Red Hat can economically support an entire monstrous open source distribution, culled from developers from all corners of the universe, as a proprietary vendor could support something it produces itself. And these experiences seem to bear that out.

It seems to me there's a middle ground between a Linux distribution and Windows. A commercial Unix would come with all the support, guarantees, and dependability into the future, while still leaving the door open for small unsupported open source deviations where necessary. It's pretty easy to plug open source components into AIX; IBM even gives you a boost sometimes. It's not so easy with Windows.