[nflug] Red Hat vs. SUSE on Servers

Darin Perusich Darin.Perusich at cognigencorp.com
Wed Jun 13 14:07:11 EDT 2007


I can't really comment on commercial support for either company, I've 
never had the need to purchase or use it. I do however use SuSE mailing 
list when the need arises and I've always had good luck getting 
questions answered, usually by SuSE developers. I've also never run into 
a device driver issues and when I have updating to the latest version or 
the distro solves it because it has a newer version of the kernel.

I have found SuSE to be much more receptive to sales queries then 
RedHat. I recently contacted RedHat twice about their certificate server 
and did not receive anything back from them. I opted to use TinyCA2 
which was distributed with SuSE and it's fulfilled my needs nicely.

I also don't recall the last time RedHat came to Buffalo for anything, 
I've been to two SuSE events in the past 6 months and I received the 
occasional calls or other materials from them.

Jesse Jarzynka wrote:
> Darin, any thoughts on Novell's support compared to Red Hat's?
> 
>> I migrated ALL of Cognigen's RedHat/BSD and a number of Solaris systems
>> to SuSE Linux 4 or 5 years ago and I still feel it was a very good
>> decision.
>>
>> Initially the main catalyst for this move was RedHat dropping the
>> "RedHat Linux" line in favor of their Enterprise line for customers and
>> making Fedora the community disto. RedHat stated that Fedora was their
>> "test bed" for moving things into RHEL which to me meant it's all
>> bleeding edge vaporware which I don't want in my computer center. I also
>> wasn't a fan with the lack of packages that shipped with RedHat at the
>> time, my time can be better spent then build software from source.
>> System upgrades then were a shot in the dark! You were better off nuking
>> the existing installation and recreating the system, which is a  huge
>> waste of time. Management tools for RedHat are have always been
>> inconsistent IMHO, it's either some GUI app or vi'ing files from the
>> command line.
>>
>> SuSE is the #2 distro in the US and #1 in Europe and shortly thereafter
>> Novell purchased them. Say what you will about Novell but the SuSE
>> acquisition was huge and really opened up many doors for both companies
>> that may have taken years to garner. Global support, sales, deep
>> pockets, existing relationships with established companies like Oracle,
>> IBM, etc.
>>
>> SuSE was the first distro that I'd ever used where every package I
>> needed was part of the distribution and they provide patches as well. If
>> something wasn't available, very rare, I could usually find them in
>> another repository or I could easily setup my own. From desktop to
>> servers it's available and very up to date.
>>
>> With the exception of Debian, SuSE was the first *NIX where upgrading
>> from version to version has been flawless. I can jump from SuSE 9.0 to
>> 10.2 and not have to be concerned about things breaking. I preform
>> server upgrades in under 30 minutes now instead of a day or two.
>>
>> While vi will always be a close friend, 'yast' is now my best friend for
>> managing SuSE servers. Whether I'm on a console or a full desktop the
>> 'yast' interface is the same and it touches nearly everything I need it
>> to. I will say that SuSEconfig took a little while to get use to but now
>> it's second nature. When you modify files in /etc/sysconfig you run
>> SuSEconfig and it modifies/creates various configuration files.
>>
>> The Novell/M$/whoever partnership will give businesses the warm fuzzes
>> but I could care less. When this was being crafted I don't believe the
>> "business" people at Novell got any or much feedback from the SuSE side
>> of the house, all one need to do is look at the SuSE people who left. It
>> certainly hasn't pushed me away from SuSE and it's not going to, I
>> prefer to rely on SuSE for it's technical merits.
>>
>> That was a mouthful!
>>
>> Jesse Jarzynka wrote:
>>> Last night I talked to Dave for a while getting his opinions on
>>> administering Red Hat and SUSE in the enterprise realm. I wanted to get
>>> everyone else's opinions as well. This is for a presentation/training
>>> I'm
>>> doing on Linux here at Ingram. If anyone has any thoughts or experience
>>> with the two distros in the enterprise please let me know. Some areas of
>>> concern are:
>>>
>>> Which do you prefer and why?
>>> Any benefits you feel one has over the other.
>>> Do you feel SUSE is growing at all compared to Red Hat?
>>> Do you think Novell's Microsoft deal will inspire more companies to
>>> adopt
>>> for interoperability and safety or are companies less likely to use it
>>> since it is kind of against the spirit of the GPL and Open Source in
>>> general?
>>> Other distros you feel are growing (CentOS/Ubuntu) etc.
>>>
>>> Any input is greatly appreciated. -Jesse
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> nflug mailing list
>>> nflug at nflug.org
>>> http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug
>> --
>> Darin Perusich
>> Unix Systems Administrator
>> Cognigen Corporation
>> 395 Youngs Rd.
>> Williamsville, NY 14221
>> Phone: 716-633-3463
>> Email: darinper at cognigencorp.com
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>>
> 
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-- 
Darin Perusich
Unix Systems Administrator
Cognigen Corporation
395 Youngs Rd.
Williamsville, NY 14221
Phone: 716-633-3463
Email: darinper at cognigencorp.com


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