Alan is mostly correct. Slackware, and some of the other distributions manage to make money the "old way" of actually selling the software. However, Slackware doesn't sell support, just the software. Help is given on a best-effort basis, but no guarantees. Also, the company is small: one person. Great software, but Pat's just now getting to the point of doing something with 64-bit, because he's not got a lot of time to spare on it. Companies that want to offer more to customers have been forced into becoming service companies more than product companies.
If all you're looking for is a way to get your feet wet with Linux, I would recommend doing it on a PC first. Try Linux/390 later, perhaps, or use one of the no-cost options that are available. I can't see spending tens of thousands of dollars to learn something that can be had for free. Mark Post -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alan Altmark Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 9:53 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Anyone what to sell me SuSE Linux for s/390? -snip- As it turns out, the business model in this Brave New World doesn't support the concept of "just buy a new release". The major players don't sell distros; they sell their services (patches, security incident monitoring, e-mail support, phone support, how-to support, testing, etc.). A new copy of the distro is just a "freebie" that comes with the services. This is the price of "free software". It's "free" as in "free speech", not as in "free beer". And it is the hidden cost of maintaining your own kernel. Alan Altmark Sr. Software Engineer IBM z/VM Development ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
