Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4288 mails)

[Wolfgang Rosenauer <wolfgang@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Aniruddha wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 09:53 +0100, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:
> > Aniruddha wrote:
> > > Let me explain my myself. As the owner of an IT company I am always
> > > looking to provide my customers the best (Open Source) solution. I am
> > > absolutely not Windows minded however looking at the figures SLED
> > > becomes very difficult to sell:
> > >
> > > Windows XP  7yr support            100,- EUR
> > > Gentoo Linux        unlimited support        0,- EUR 
> > > SLED                7 yr support           329,- EUR
> > That Gentoo comparison is a joke isn't it?
> > If you would do that you could also easily update to a new openSUSE
> > version every two years what would also give you "unlimited support" for
> > zero costs.
>
> No it isn't and prior to the release of openSUSE 10.3  I was preparing
> for large Gentoo deployments.
>
> You're right that I could a new openSUSE version every two years but
> considering the costs (and down-time) involved in comparison to Gentoo
> doesn't make a viable solution.  

So I wouldn't expect any lower downtimes or costs when you'd use Gentoo.
Sorry but I don't believe that Gentoo is doing a great job in keeping
compatibility and stability (over for example 7 years) so that you would
have to invest a lot of time to fix systems after "broken" updates.

BTW your numbers seem to be wrong. I get 279 EUR für 7 years of SLED.

> > Are you targetting home users or business users with your IT company?
> > That's the important question because it would give us a hint which
> > costs for the customer are important anyway.
>
> Good question. I am targeting home users for now with plans for business
> users in the near future. However I do want to have a stable option
> (SLED) available for certain home users who require this.

OK, in my opinion SLED is pretty interesting for companies because they
don't have to care too much about the workstations themselves. Updates
are available a long time and do work in most cases so it's not much
maintenance needed (what would cause quite some costs for companies).
For installations with Gentoo you'd need more manpower to maintain the
systems I'd bet so it comes with a cost.

Compared with Windows I think it's in most cases no simple price
comparison. We are talking about two completely different systems with
advantages and disadvantages. In a corporate environment you also
mustn't compare with XP Home. So the price difference is not high and it
makes IMHO no sense to compare these prices. Compare everything else but
not the license/maintenance costs here.

I don't have too many arguments in the home user space though. If people
want a Linux system which is supported for a long time they have to
invest money in some form.
Gentoo is also no option here IMHO because those people don't want to
"play" with the Linux system but work with it.

Wolfgang
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