Michael Gale wrote:
Hello,
Supporting Slackware is easy enough ... I am not worried about getting support from vendors. I have been using slackware through out my career for all of the servers I have built.
For you maybe but what happens if the customer needs or decides they need another person servicing their systems. You really limit the user's choices if they go with a Distro that is less supported commerically. Of course that could be to your advantage.
Slashware is really easy to admin on a few servers but when you are looking at a big installs or a lots of clients, it doesn't scale well. Gentoo has similar problems. They also require more work to setup and more work to maintain. Thus in the end will have a higher TCO than RedHat or SuSE.
RedHat (EL, FC), Mandrake and SuSE are also better for clients who have bought a system from you but don't have a software support contract. IE they want to do some the updates and admin themselves. Some customers are savvy enough to be able to handle gentoo, debian or slackware but to be frank a majority aren't (or at least don't want to bother becoming) that savvy.
Often the question of which distro is used comes down to requirements of Commerical software run by the client. For the most part, I can get any commerical software to run on any distro but often the software vendor will only support certain distros with specific kernels, etc. When the client has a $500,000 dollar commerical package to run and needs support for it, they aren't going to choose slackware unless the vendor supports it.
Another reason a customer may run RedHat is because, for their uses, there are more options for RedHat than other distros. For instance, we build and install Beowulf clusters. Now I can put pretty much any distro on my Beowulf cluster but if I want to use packaged solutions for easier adminitration most of them are RedHat based or distributed in RedHat rpms.
I definitely have nothing against Slackware as it was for a long time my distro of choice (the redhat 5.2 installer crashed on my 486) but it more for use by hobbiest and small installations.
regards,
-- Mark Lane, CET mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sales Manager, Hard Data Ltd, http://www.harddata.com 01-780-456-9771 Fax: 01-780-456-9772 ########### Check Out Our New Laptops ##############
_______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
