--- Alan DuBoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Chung Hang Christopher Chan
> wrote:
> 
> > CentOS not being anything like the official
> Solaris
> > release, I beg to differ. It is essentially what
> you
> > can get with RHEL sans Redhat trademarks and
> direct
> > Redhat support. Then there is Ubuntu.
> >
> > Linux may not be carrier grade but what it comes
> with
> > more than makes up for its lack where carrier
> grade is
> > not needed. Without that paid Sun support,
> official
> > Solaris 10 is pretty much crippled against Centos,
> > Ubuntu or even Fedora. Software management,
> drivers,
> > development...the cards are stacked against free
> > Solaris 10 and Open Solaris if you had to compete
> > against others who use Linux and spend less energy
> on
> > these three areas.
> 
> Are you saying that you can get 24x7 full support
> for free from Centos? 
> Because if so, I would find that amazing. Doesn't
> Centos charge for their 
> products/support?

No I am not. Where I used to work, in my previous job,
we ARE the support. If we run into kernel issues,
these are taken to lkml or other appropriate lists. If
we run into issues with whatever open source software
that we are using, we take them to their appropriate
lists. There is no contract with any other entity.
This is the same with respect to a fair few other
Linux distributions.

> 
> Remember that Solaris/OpenSolaris don't have any
> cost associated with the 
> product. Sun doesn't give support away, other than
> opensolaris.org, that 
> is free. But if you want 24x7 where you can call up
> and escalate a fix, 
> you have to pay for that. This is not bad, this is
> how it should work.

I am not asking for free support and nor would I even
think of it.

> 
> Now, are you saying that Centos offers that for
> free?

NO. See above.

By 'paid Sun support' I mean Sun Connection.

For the sole reason that Redhat allows access to all
its source packages regardless of whether you have a
RHEL subscription, Centos is able to provide a RHEL
distribution sans Redhat's trademarks. Redhat also
allows access to updated source packages too and so
Centos is also able to provide binary packages of
these updates. Centos also provides extra non-Redhat
released packages and enjoys the support of others who
provide repositories of binary packages of yet more
software that are built on Centos distributions and
you have the option of creating your own repository of
extra packages and/or self maintained/customized
packages that superseeds what comes with the
distribution. When Redhat releases an Update to a RHEL
release, Centos gets the source rpms and generates the
binary rpms and 
freeloaders like me can update to the latest Update
without having to drop a DVD or CDs into the
DVD/CD-ROM drive.

So we don't get rapid escalation but we really don't
care because we don't put mission critical stuff on
unsupported Linux.

Solaris 10 + Sun Connection allows a certain level of
software management. We have to pay to get some
convenience which is available free on Linux. This is
what I am getting at. I believe there is no contest
that there are more drivers available for Linux. Yes,
you need to recompile everytime the kernel is updated
but who cares when that has been done for you and all
you have to do is run a command to get the binary
package installed?

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