Hello, I got a hold of some sales figures of a store selling Linux products. The data comes from actual sales figures and pricing (note it is pegged to a unit price to make comparisons easier). Your mileage may vary as prices and price differences (as well as product offerings in Red Hat's case) depend on the country you live in. I pegged the base line on RH 7.2 Official package of 1.00 unit cost. Unit Units Unit Total Price Sold Turnover Turnover RH 7.2 Official (5 CDs and Install Guide) 1.00 457 $ 457.00 RH 7.2 Pro Box 7.67 79 $ 605.67 $ 1,062.67 --- 536 Mandrake 8.1 GPL 3 CD Set 0.33 558 $ 186.00 Mandrake 8.1 Standard Box 1.67 34 $ 56.67 Mandrake 8.1 Powerpack Box 4.33 51 $ 221.00 Mandrake 8.1 Pro Box 8.33 7 $ 58.33 $ 522.00 --- 650 SuSE 7.3 Personal Box 3.00 20 $ 60.00 SuSE 7.3 Update Box 3.87 16 $ 61.87 SuSE 7.3 Pro Box 4.83 120 $ 580.00 $ 701.00 --- 156 RH 7.2 Pro costs 7.67 times as much as RH 7.2 Official. RH doesn't have in this country anything in between. It's either cheap or expensive to go RH. Mandrake sells the most copies but achieves the smallest sales figures in terms of currency (50% of RH). SuSE sells 70% of what RH sells in currency but in terms of copies only 30% of RH's figures. Mandrake's pricing is evenly spread from 0.33 to 8.33 unit cost. I excluded Mandrake Gaming Edition as I think that its overkill of them and they hopefully reduce the variety in their lineup soon. SuSE's pricing of 3-5 does not allow very much differentiation between the products hence their largest box sells the best contradicting sales of RH where the small 5 CD set and booklet makes up 45% of the RH sales in currency terms. These numbers don't talk about profits. They are sales numbers dependent on the sales prices. Therefore you cannot make any arguments who is making the best cut. One thing it shows though is that SuSE still lacks representation in the market place and the fact that they don't have a cheap offering (unit price <= 2) forces them to rely on their Pro edition to sell well AND often (aka "buy one each release"). In my mind SuSE should get rid of the Update Boxed Set and release a Update CD Set for a unit price <= 2. The Update CD Set can contain 7 CDs and NO DVD (in paper(jewel) case and a little booklet all shrinkwrapped together. This would spread their unit pricing from 3-5 to 1.5-5 and allow people with less deep pockets to give SuSE a go or an upgrade more often. Since barely anybody buys the upgrade box anyhow SuSE could probably make up the lost profit on the box by increased units sold from a cheap shrinkwrap version. mk _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com