Linux Format forums

markdean

Just a quick question...

why did Shashank Sharma not include RHEL and SLES in the roundup (LXF153)? I realize it's listed under the "Also consider..." section, but why not part of the testing? From a business standpoint, I'd want to know not just that support is offered, but how good is it? With RHEL and SLES, both do that for a living and support both small and large corporations every day, and the times I've had to call, there's been a competent engineer on the other end of the phone.

After all, when you are in a business setting, you really want both the support and the distro to be something you can rely on. Otherwise, you'd just download Slackware and be done with it Smile

These both are really aimed at the business market, both SMB and enterprise. As far as support costs, both of these distros are more than reasonable-and are not far off from the prices for support listed for the distros that were listed. And I'm not saying the others aren't. It's just interesting that the two main 'business oriented' distros were not considered.
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- Mark Dean

linuxlala · Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2011 12:12 pm Posts: 5

Hi Mark,

As you rightly point out both RHEL and SLES are the most popular
enterprise distros out there. But I don't think we'd have done them
justice in this roundup for SMB distros. Both RHEL and SLES can scale
way beyond the capabilities of a SMB -- IBM's Watson runs on SLES.

What we were looking for were distros available that can be had for no
cost and their comprehensibility, and how easy it is to roll common
SMB tools (LDAP Directory Server, DNS Server, Print Server) on top of
them. RHEL and SLES would have been an overkill.

Shashank

wyliecoyoteuk · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 7:42 pm Post subject:

Just to add my twopennorth, RHEL and SLES are prerequisites for many third party business offerings. For example our IBM UniVerse based CRM package will only support installation on RHEL, SLES or Windows.
We are a small (around 30 employees) company, so maybe the OP has a point.
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Rhakios · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:23 pm Post subject:

Then perhaps we can look forward to a future comparative review of enterprise class paid-for distros?
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wyliecoyoteuk · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:38 pm Post subject:

Not really, we use RHEL because that is their favoured distro., not tried SLES, nor likely to, I'm afraid.
Although anyone can sign up for a 30 day trial.
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Rhakios · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:54 pm Post subject:

I wasn't necessarily suggesting that you write it, more, given the above complaints, that such an article might be welcome to some readers. Even though i don't need any such thing myself, I think it would be interesting to see something like this.
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