I guess I can jump in on this. I run 4 machines in my room, and I also am the admin for my Mom's machine. A lot of you can say what you want for that, but I've had no break ins, and very good uptime. On a SUSE 8.2 Professional machine I had 66 days uptime until I needed to reboot for a Kernel update. I run FTP servers on two Linux boxes, one was SUSE 8.2 and the other is 9.1, and it takes a lot from me. I can generate 3 GBs of traffic over just two boxes in one day backing up MP#s and movies I have on my machines. Just in MP3s, I have like 20 GBS of them, and I sent those across pureFTPd on SUSE 9.1 in one night including 30 GBs of movies. I also put them into my DMZ so I can access them from school, and I've yet to have a break in, or a problem. Other boxes on this LAN: 2 Windows 2000 Professional machines, 3 XP home Edition, because I refuse to pay an extra hundred dollars for 3 networking tools I can download, 2 Free BSD machines, 3 Slackware machine, SUSE 8.1 8.2 and 9.1 Professional, and...Hmm that's about it unless I get bored and put DOS on something. I've had a computer for 4 years now and I can use allof those. I used to have a BeOS machine too but it's gone. On Thursday 09 September 2004 11:07, Bjorn Tore Sund wrote:

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, Eric Kahklen wrote:

...

I had a discussion with my local LUG and a member had some interesting threads to share. Basically it showed that SUSE 9.0 is not really a production level version. For production level use, it is recommended to go with the Enterprise version of SUSE. Has other people got this impression? My concern is that my company can't afford to purchase any more software at this time so would I be better off looking at something like Debian? I know this is kind of off topic, but basically I am curious if 9.0 Pro is secure and stable enough for my organization needs.

If you need reliable and timely support and long lifecycle you need an enterprise edition. If you're prepared to upgrade every 18 months or so and don't need the extra support, you can manage with a normal edition.

On this there is no difference of any significance between the major distros, except of course that Debian has no enterprise edition.

I've got SuSE 9.0 production servers. They don't give me problems. Nor do my 8.2 and 9.1 servers. I felt constricted and limited in my freedom to work by SLES 8 when I ran systems with that, but this is a matter of taste.

Bjørn -- Bjørn Tore Sund Phone: (+47) 555-84894 Stupidity is like a System administrator Fax: (+47) 555-89672 fractal; universal and Math. Department Mobile: (+47) 918 68075 infinitely repetitive. University of Bergen VIP: 81724 Support: system@mi.uib.no Contact: teknisk@mi.uib.no Direct: bjornts@mi.uib.no

That sounds good. The thing is that most of the security holes you see come out are with the extra software. The core or minimal install has less security holes and therefore is generally more stable. So, it's all good if you do it that way. No problem. On Thu, 2004-09-09 at 09:08, Eric Kahklen wrote:

I've been doing the minimal install option and then only adding what I need after that point. No GUI or extra stuff. The minimal install I believe is just over 250 megs if I am mistaken. Does that sounds like a good approach? BTW, thanks for clearing that up. I thought thats what it was, but not being a linux verbage guru I was till a bit unclear. :)

Eric

David Fetter wrote:

...

That depends on your needs when it comes to production quality. The main reason why the SuSE Enterprise or even Redhat Enterprise is considered to be "true production quality" is because, they have fewer upgrades to the installed OS. Instead they back port security patches and only the very critical performance patches. SuSE Personal and Professional version will actually upgrade the software to newer versions. The difference here is that when you back port patches, functionality doesn't change therefore it is much less likely for something to break. However, you can still have a production quality installation of SuSE Pro simply by installing it and setting it up that way. Like minimal OS instllation to minimize the number of patches that are needed, etc. Running SuSE 9.x Pro can be perfectly fine in production environments. It's all up to how you administrate it.

On Thu, 2004-09-09 at 07:53, Eric Kahklen wrote:

...

I had a discussion with my local LUG and a member had some interesting threads to share. Basically it showed that SUSE 9.0 is not really a production level version. For production level use, it is recommended to go with the Enterprise version of SUSE. Has other people got this impression? My concern is that my company can't afford to purchase any more software at this time so would I be better off looking at something like Debian? I know this is kind of off topic, but basically I am curious if 9.0 Pro is secure and stable enough for my organization needs.

Thanks,

Eric

-- ______________________________________________________________________

-- David M. Fetter - http://www.fetterconsulting.com/

"The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it." Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

Hi, Marcus Meissner wrote:

The focus of SUSE Professional are experienced (home and development) users.

like Debian sid is? Or would you compare SuSE Pro to Debian testing? Anyway, did you want to say that for an (to Linux) unexpierienced user there's no product from SuSE?

If you need business strength software for production use, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is more suited for you.

Or, if you don't need software from SuSE, Debian stable. Not really up to date, but solid as a rock. GTi

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:22:21 +0200 Marcus Meissner wrote:

The focus of SUSE Professional are experienced (home and development) users.

If you need business strength software for production use, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is more suited for you.

Ciao, Marcus

Yep.. that's why I use SuSe Linux Professional in production environment since version 7.0. Sometimes I find a release less suitable for production purposes (for example this was the case with 7.3 and 9.0.. I did not try the 9.1 yet). I had to possibility to test SLES 8 for iSeries and pSeries (which was made on the basis of v8.1 I think) and the result was satisfying. I am planning to write an article about SLES 8 PPC in a Unix related hungarian news site. I did it for the SuSE Linux Professional PPC 7.3. The computer in question was an IBM RS/6000 7025-F50 Server. Regards, -- ________________________ /"\ Vakvarju \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign vakvarju_at_spektrum-3d_dot_hu X Against HTML Mail / \

On 9/10/04 4:41 AM, "Marcus Meissner" wrote:

We now have SLES 9 for IBM Power too. ;)

Ciao, Marcus (former PowerPC developer ;)

So does this translate into the PPC will come back to life? (Pro) The IBM runs the same chips... As apple boxes... Yes? -- Thanks, George Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. Mark Twain

Yep.. that's why I use SuSe Linux Professional in production environment since version 7.0. Sometimes I find a release less suitable for production purposes (for example this was the case with 7.3 and 9.0.. I did not try the 9.1 yet).

Depending on the hardware. I always use Intel-CPU & Chipsets for Servers (I got 2x Dual P3 500 as webserver). 7.3 was a nice release and even 9.0, but I did install minimal system plus my desired packages. I installed several webservers with 9.0 and had no problem (except the quality of SuSE-updates). I didn't test 9.1 as well, because of the 2.6.x kernel, which is only at it's beginning and got some problems with raid-drivers. Philippe

Vakvarju wrote:

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:22:21 +0200 Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

The focus of SUSE Professional are experienced (home and development) users.

If you need business strength software for production use, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is more suited for you.

Ciao, Marcus

Yep.. that's why I use SuSe Linux Professional in production environment since version 7.0. Sometimes I find a release less suitable for production purposes (for example this was the case with 7.3 and 9.0.. I did not try the 9.1 yet).

My experiences have been the opposite. The 7.3 release was long enough ago I don't have many memories of it, (to much sleep :-) but I remember it as being quite stable, unlike 7.0 or was it 7.1? Anyway, I admin nearly 20 desktops running 9.0pro, all used for development of a very large java app. I've had nothing but good reports from all of the developers. And the developers pound the machines with lots of apps including the resource hog VMware. Between the loaded boxes I got them and 9.0pro, they think I'm a hero. :-) On the flip side, we've put 9.1pro on a few machines as a trial and had very mixed results. Some machines worked great, some had missing drivers, or drivers that didn't work well. I can chalk that up to the new 2.6 kernel and new driver model they're using. So we'll wait for for 9.2pro before we upgrade people again.

I had to possibility to test SLES 8 for iSeries and pSeries (which was made on the basis of v8.1 I think) and the result was satisfying.

We have a few SLES-8 servers that have worked quite well. The only downside to them is that I've had to hand install a few packages because the developers require newer versions of a few of the tools than SLES-8 delivers. Not hard to deal with, but it's something you have to allow for. We're about to buy a SLES-9 to try it out. But back to the original question for Eric, 9.0pro is ready for "production" (which to me means it *has* to work every day). OTOH, if by production you mean "bet the company on" and where you need support, get a SLES. That will get you support that Debian won't have. HTH, Kevin