Why pay for linux?

[kristersaurus]

I could understand paying 50 bucks or something for support and a manual, but 800 and up for red hat enterprise?

Seriously, i have no idea. Why? Why not get a free distribution and configure it to your needs?

 

[kristersaurus]

Do you actually get a penguin? I would totally buy it then.

 

[kristersaurus]

In fact, I would buy two, male and female. Then i would sell my own $800, penguin-included distribution. This business model is incredible.

 

[kristersaurus]

The problem is...I don't know if best-buy will sell live animals...

 

[Nothinman]

Yes, essentially you're paying for support, AFAIK everything RH sells is GPL'd so you can do whatever you want with it. It's what makes things like WhiteBox and others I can't think of legal. And RedHat has to price their enterprise offerings comparatively to that sold by MS, Sun, HP, etc to be taken seriously by a lot of companies.

 

[kristersaurus]

Ah. Thanks.

In windows, youre looking at a lot of services (edit: dhcp, active directory, etc.) that really make the server...what is the analogue in linux and can you get this with a free version?

 

[Nothinman]

Almost all distros come with those and more (AD's hard to duplicate because it includes a lot of complicated things like kerboros and ldap, but Samba can do domain stuff) for free, the payment comes in time required to learn Linux if all you know is Windows. Since I already know Linux it's a no-brainer, just about everything is simpler and easier to understand on Linux than it is in Windows. If you're trying to get a feeler for Linux and see if you want to spend time learing it, grab a live-cd distro like Knoppix and try that, it lets you play with everything without any commitment.

 

[Klixxer]

If you need s quaity live disc, slax is it.

Knoppix takes forever and if you have integrated graphics then just getting it to start up is difficult, while knoppix tries (and in 8 cases out ot 10 miserably fails) to recognize you hardwara slax goes with the tried ana tur.

 

[stratman]

The ubuntu live disc and the pclinuxos live disc are good too.

 

[The Linuxator]

The basilix live cd is actually a Fedora Core 3 Live CD give that a shot , it's almost identical to Redhat but for free,
Red Hat created the Fedora Project to let the community make their own developed Linux so people don't mix up between the free Linux Idea and the enterprise Linux that is for prices such as $ 899 and up.

 

[sourceninja]

You pay hundreds of dallors for an OS when you want high levels of support. When a server goes down here, I can't wait even a hour to have it back up. It just has to work 24 hours a day 8 days a week. That is why we pay tens of thousands of dallors a year for on site and remote (over ssh) support. I dont want it to be my ass while its down.

 

[doornail]

As Sourceninja was saying, Redhat is not targeting home users with an $800 system. They are selling this to massive data centers where $20K in licensing is a drop in the bucket.

Redhat not only supports but certifies their enterprise Linux for application compatibility. I'm not sure if it's changed but the only Linux Oracle offered support for was Redhat. IMHO, Redhat has played very nice within the Linux community by contributing a ton of code. A couple times they have sic'd the lawyers on some re-packaging of their enterprise stuff but that was only to have their trademarks removed (for which I don't blame them). Think about that -- can you imagine Microsoft ever saying, "Sure, you can make free copies of Windows 2003 Server as long as you remove our logos"?

That's the wonderful thing about Linux -- it covers the spectrum from tiny, single PCB systems to huge clusters to supercomputers. For folks like us, there are plenty of free distributions.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: kristersaurus
I could understand paying 50 bucks or something for support and a manual, but 800 and up for red hat enterprise?

Seriously, i have no idea. Why? Why not get a free distribution and configure it to your needs?

Hmm. May be so that the people who are working so hard on it can make a living.

As far as I know most of them are too old to live of thier parents.

:sun:

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: JackMDS

Originally posted by: kristersaurus
I could understand paying 50 bucks or something for support and a manual, but 800 and up for red hat enterprise?

Seriously, i have no idea. Why? Why not get a free distribution and configure it to your needs?

Hmm. May be so that the people who are working so hard on it can make a living.

As far as I know most of them are too old to live of thier parents.

:sun:

That's pretty much it. Which Linux distribution you get is a function of whether you have more time or more money. If you have more time, get the free version. If you have more money than you have time, get the pay-for version.

They charge because, just like JackMDS said, they need to make a living. They can't do it for free, otherwise they won't have food to eat or a place to live. It amazes me, now that I'm living on my own, that hobbyist linux developers even do what they do - it's not free to run a server, to have a computer there for you to download stuff and an Internet connection available for that computer to be hooked up, or for someone to be running it and making sure you can access it.

 

[wpshooter]

Originally posted by: stratman
The ubuntu live disc and the pclinuxos live disc are good too.

I ordered (on-line) some of the free live disc for ubuntu about 2 weeks ago.

Does anyone have any idea as to how long it might take to get these. I am getting anxious to try it.

Thanks.

 

[Nothinman]

It amazes me, now that I'm living on my own, that hobbyist linux developers even do what they do - it's not free to run a server, to have a computer there for you to download stuff and an Internet connection available for that computer to be hooked up, or for someone to be running it and making sure you can access it.

Before the Linux boom most of them had other IT jobs as sysadmins, developers, etc and did Linux coding in their free time. A lot also go to school where bandwidth is virtually free, so it's no big deal to host some code on the box your parents bought you for school. And now there's free hosts like sf.net to handle the expensive stuff.

 

[Klixxer]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

It amazes me, now that I'm living on my own, that hobbyist linux developers even do what they do - it's not free to run a server, to have a computer there for you to download stuff and an Internet connection available for that computer to be hooked up, or for someone to be running it and making sure you can access it.

Before the Linux boom most of them had other IT jobs as sysadmins, developers, etc and did Linux coding in their free time. A lot also go to school where bandwidth is virtually free, so it's no big deal to host some code on the box your parents bought you for school. And now there's free hosts like sf.net to handle the expensive stuff.

Many still do have their jobs on the side, many of them are charging for company support too.

Of course i don't have to tell you that, i'd just thought i'd clarify.