Horst Herb wrote: > On Sunday 04 March 2007 14:29, Andrew wrote: >> Yes I have to agree, >> I see linux with no price tag and I run like h*ll :) > > Ah, but the price tag is there: $0.00, no hidden costs, no lock ins, no > catches, no need to sign in blood and deliver your firstborn as collateral. > > And if you want commercial support - all the serious provides will have their > fees published up front (not cheap, but you are likely to get value for > money)
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on our public health surveillance servers, and the support costs are certainly not cheap (but are slowly falling year by year as the competition heats up). And we've had very little reason to call support, but when needed, it is very good. Phone is answered day or night in Manila or Mumbai by someone who speaks excellent English, is polite and pleasant, they can call up registered details of your servers and your call and problem history instantly, and are extremely knowledgeable. We had an obscure bug with the Apache web server running out of shared memory semaphores (we were abusing it), and the support person (in Manila) amazed our data centre person who called the support line by a) actively replicating the problem b) finding a work-around c) writing a patch which fixed the problem d) filing an official bug report (with the suggested patch attached) on the Apache web site. All possible because a) they knew their stuff because b) they had access to the source code of the entire system. And local people are available to make house calls if really necessary. I defy anyone to find that quality and responsiveness of support for Microsoft software, at any cost. Tim C (Who doesn't own shares in Red Hat or anything else). _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
