Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop

[Rainmaker]

Hi guys,

Although I liked the general look and feel of OpenSUSE (and used it for a few weeks last year), I soon got sick of the relatively buggy nature of it and binned it off in favour of CentOS and Fedora.

However I recently tried SLED and have to admit I really liked it. It's much more polished, smooth and integrated than OpenSUSE. Obviously that IS going to be the case no matter what, as SLED is the paid-for enterprise distro based around OpenSUSE's successes and failures.

But that's not a complete excuse, as Fedora is the perfectly fine disto upon which RHEL/CentOS are based (just like OpenSUSE <> SLED), and Fedora isn't anywhere near as bad as OpenSUSE (IMHO!!).

I installed SLED in VM and having got all codecs installed, binary Nvidia drivers working and all other stuff running flawlessly, I was so impressed I decided to buy a licence. Cue heart attack. I realise it's an enterprise distro but the pricing scheme came as a shock.

$50 PER YEAR per PC Considering they go out of their way to say how cheap SUSE is compared to MS (Vista + Office etc), I think that's rather misleading... "$50 operating system with a $500 attitude" they say...

But as you have to pay EVERY YEAR to keep SLED updated, it actually works out much more expensive than the expected life of any given MS OS. XP for example, at OEM, was (and is) relatively cheap and all updates are free. Compare the cost of OEM XP for 10 years, to 10 years of paying $50 pa to Novell?

Anyone have any more info on this? Have I read this all wrong? Novell's website seems pretty clear when you go to buy a licence that it needs updating yearly

Cheers, and TIA.

 

[NicNac]

Anything with "enterprise" makes me wonder who it's aimed at, I tend to stay away from anything from novell anyway.

 

[bigredshark]

It's the usual thing for enterprise distributions, the cost you're not taking into account is support, which is part of the $50 and (if it's anything like RHEL support) is absolutely fantastic.

I'm constantly stunned when I phone up redhat and the guy who answers the phone is able to resolve complex problems for me, no logging a case and the engineer will get back to you, fixed - then!

Microsoft charge per incident for phone support so that potentially a major cost. Also you have to adjust in the cost of additional software licencing (office is the most obvious) on windows.

10 years is rubbish, enterprises operate on a 3 year replacement cycle usually, so it's $150 per PC, which compares pretty favourably with a Vista OEM license, particularly when it includes support.

Also, RHEL isn't based on fedora, it's exactly the opposite. Fedora comes out of the development of RHEL and is possible because RHEL is paid for and can finance the development.

 

[Rainmaker]

Hi bigredshark,

Many thanks for the (obviously) well thought out reply Just a couple of questions; genuine questions at that - honestly not a dig or sarcasm.

1) I gave the 10 year figure as a round approximation of how long one might expect an edition of Windows to last (XP is nearly that and has some extended support left). You say enterprises operate on a 3 year replacement cycle - but replace the current OS with WHAT? Either carrying on the SLED subscription for more years (=my analogy stands up better) or to XP or a free distro? What?

2) The support thing I HADN'T factored in, and it's a great point. No arguments there

3) Last time I checked my favourite distro Fedora is a community distro just like Ubuntu. Although it's not a "beta" for RHEL it's certainly the case that the brightest and best (and most stable) from Fedora works its way into the next RHEL, not the other way around ("Fedora comes out of the development of RHEL and is possible because RHEL is paid for and can finance development.").

MYTH - Fedora is unstable and unreliable, just a testbed for bleeding-edge software

FACT - This misconception comes from two things:

1. RHEL is derived from Fedora every few releases.
2. Fedora has rapid releases, a short life-cycle, and a lot of new code.

As for the first item, this means that Red Hat uses Fedora as a platform to promote the development of new technology, some of which might end up in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, derivative distributions of Fedora and other Linux distributions. This does not mean that Fedora is a untested, it simply means that Fedora is a rapidly progressing platform...

You can read this from Fedora's own "Myths" page HERE
Cheers.

 

[bigredshark]

Hi bigredshark,

Many thanks for the (obviously) well thought out reply Just a couple of questions; genuine questions at that - honestly not a dig or sarcasm.

1) I gave the 10 year figure as a round approximation of how long one might expect an edition of Windows to last (XP is nearly that and has some extended support left). You say enterprises operate on a 3 year replacement cycle - but replace the current OS with WHAT? Either carrying on the SLED subscription for more years (=my analogy stands up better) or to XP or a free distro? What?

2) The support thing I HADN'T factored in, and it's a great point. No arguments there

3) Last time I checked my favourite distro Fedora is a community distro just like Ubuntu. Although it's not a "beta" for RHEL it's certainly the case that the brightest and best (and most stable) from Fedora works its way into the next RHEL, not the other way around ("Fedora comes out of the development of RHEL and is possible because RHEL is paid for and can finance development.").

You can read this from Fedora's own "Myths" page HERE
Cheers.

You're going to replace the hardware after 3 years anyway, in comparison with which the cost of the software is pretty small. It's difficult to be exact because of volume licensing and such of course.

Even if you take your analogy, XP has had a life of 6 or 7 years (most enterprises would have waited for the first service pack at least before moving from 2000 and most will only now be looking at Vista), which is $350 in SLED licensing - which compares well with about $400 for a copy of windows and office (with no support)

Whatever fedora might like to say, redhat came first and it was only when they changed their model that fedora started to exist. Sure, it's not just a beta but fedora depends on redhat's support. That said I'm not a fan of fedora, it's difficult to understand what it's trying to be and as result it isn't particularly good at anything.

 

[PhilGQ]

Another point to consider is that $50 is about £25 per year which is nothing. For that you always get the latest version, while if you pay £150 for vista now you will get updates yes but when the new version of windows comes out possibly next year, you will have to stick with Vista to make Windows the more finacialy viable.

On the other hand it is wrong to compare the cost of SLED with windows+office because you don't get office with SLED you get OO.o so you should compare SLED with Windows+00.o or Windows+Staroffice for tech support.

 

[bigredshark]

Another point to consider is that $50 is about £25 per year which is nothing. For that you always get the latest version, while if you pay £150 for vista now you will get updates yes but when the new version of windows comes out possibly next year, you will have to stick with Vista to make Windows the more finacialy viable.

On the other hand it is wrong to compare the cost of SLED with windows+office because you don't get office with SLED you get OO.o so you should compare SLED with Windows+00.o or Windows+Staroffice for tech support.

Thats very true, windows is meant to be moving to a shorter release cycle now (every 2 years or so with the next version due in jan 2010). Less important for business though as they don't care about the latest version of windows.

I disagree about office though, SLED gives you a fully functional office suite which is supported (at least I believe it is, it is with redhat desktop). I wouldn't say thats any different from MS office (where you no support unless you pay extra basically)

 

[GraemeUK]

I was trying to find out how to buy this but I cannot find anywhere that just gives you a price and an option to buy.

The only thing I can find is request a sales call....is that what you did or am I missing something?

Cheers

 

[bigredshark]

I couldn't tell you, we use RHEL in it's various flavours. I just tell finance I want more licenses and they turn up in our account. I suspect SLED will be much the same, it's an enterprise product in the end and the sales is based on that...