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Red Hat Takes Aim at SuSE, Mandrake
gowen writes "The gloves have come off in the competition between commercial linux distributions. The Register is reporting that Red Hat is offering a $10 rebate to people who upgrade to Red Hat 7.3, including those who previously used Mandrake and SuSE. Previous users of Windows are not eligible for a rebate."
Upgrading to Red Hat is like upgrading to Windows.
When was the last time you compared the price of RH with other distros? Ten bucks is a pretty sorry incentive for what ammounts to little less than pretty red packaging and some stickers :(
I paid $80 for SuSE. I don't have to do that with RedHat--the ISOs are already free. Why would I want to switch? Obviously I have compelling reasons to use SuSE, or I wouldn't have forked over $80. Dumb move by RedHat in my opinion--just gives me one less reason to use their distro.
Why suse and mandrake. The two biggest desktop oriented linux distros cen be "upgraded" to the ... desktop sufficient at best RedHat? Almost osunds as bad as "upgrading" my debian to Windows 3.1
Red Hat,like all companies, needs to make money - so you can't blame them. However this is a very short sighted tactic that will be bad for them and Linux in the long run. Stealing marketshare from other *nix distributions shows poor judgement, eventhough they seem to be your main competitor.
In order to gain marketshare, Linux must acquire NEW users, and avoid infighting. Having 3 or 4 distribs or 2 or more desktops is the best way to promote competition and to ensure fitness.
We must promote ourselves...Why? - because more people using Linux = more people writing/improving software.
The main reason I see that people don't switch to Linux is that they're scared to try it and screw up their system. Just show someone your desktop!!!!! Use it in front of them Let them play around on it..Install it on one of their old computers that they don't use.
Linux isn't hard it's just different...
..........FULL STOP.
if you forget your root password you can always
exploit the box somehow....
Let's see. I can't even remember the last time I saw a BSOD on a Windows box. You have to configure it properly, which even a monkey can do. Windows 2000 has much less reboots, and XP even less. Otherwise it's not a big deal. If you want real support for linux you have to pay for it.