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HP To Sell And Support Red Hat Linux
Dman33 writes "Redhat Linux seems to be gaining an even stronger share in the server and workstation market as HP is announcing worldwide sales and support of the popular distro. Infoworld has a writeup on the announcement and the press release straight from HP is a good read regarding the initiative."
is it big enough to hate yet? ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Big blue supports it, Dell supports it, and now HP is supporting it. More and more, sounds to me like its taking the Microsoft and Unix world by storm.
ph34r teh p0w3r 0f th3 c0w
There are far too many customers using HP-UX to shut it down, but if they are supplying Linux on-the-cheap, why would any new customers buy in to HP-UX?
Sounds like "pi*sing in the company soup"
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
I couldn't understand why dell dropped linux support, they don't have a UNIX product like HP does. HP with HPUX, why would they want to sell and support linux?
I guess I could see them doing it for a number of reasons, mainly because it would be a gateway into the small/medium sized business market.
Speaking from personal experience, my CEO is relucant to approve software with no point of support. The more support open source gets, the easier it makes my job of trying to convince him to move to more open source software.
"HP, in Palo Alto, Calif. , generated about $2 billion in Linux-based revenue in 2002, the company said in Wednesday's statement. "
:) Who said u cannot make money by using linux?
Thats freaking huge
Announcements like this always say "workstations and servers". Don't they think that Linux users want portable devices?
I just want a good quality Linux laptop with firewire, a built-in CDR, lots of RAM, and a power-efficient CPU. I don't want to pay the Windows tax and I don't want an expensive, high speed CPU.
(Why the heck anyone needs a 2 GHz CPU in a laptop is a mystery to me. )
The Lindows "$799" machine would have been perfect but it has no built in CD drive - a fatal deficiency, at least to me.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
The question is when I walk into CompUSA, Circuit City, and all those other consumer heavens of electronics.. will I see a HP workstation running RedHat?
Or will it just be an obscure option burried in their website?
--------
Free your mind.
Wasn't HP making claims to use and support Debian?
I remember reading articles about HP picking Debian because it was non commercial and the most stable disto out there.
The real issue is if this will see HP really pushing linux through its sales channels instead of just being another "we recommend Windows 2000" shill.
Check out the site sponsor in the lower left corner.
http://www.debian.org/
HP To Sell Custom High-Security GNU/Linux Distro
HP to give 24/7 support for Linux
seems not to be the first time...
So what price will we _pay_ for finally seeing a large consumer desktop/server seller (HP) support and sell _free_ software?
KARMA TAG! You're it.
I'm a little concerned that this may lead to no x86-64 (Opteron, Althon64) support from RedHat. :(
:(
... is yours?
HP co-owns the IP for Itanium with Intel, so they have a vested interest in seeing Itanium get lots of support, and AMD x86-64 get none. RedHat has already announced Itanium versions of Advanced Server, but AFAIK, has been silent on the x86-64 front.
SuSE has announced long ago that they'd release x86-64 versions of their distro to coincide with Opteron's release, and they seem to be actively involved with that process.
Am I being paranoid here? Or does it look like RH might not support the most cost-effective 64bit platform going? Not all of us have deep pockets for I2.
Don
my smug mug is on smugmug
my smug mug is on smugmug
Carly and Capellas went above and beyond the call of duty to destroy most of the interesting engineering that was done at DEC and the other firms (Tandem, etc) that have been borged over the years. The result has been the creation of the ultimate outsourcer of commodity junk "me-too" product on the market. Hopefully they will succeed through sheer scale at this point, since that is all they have left.
An HP/Red Hat support partnership is sort of no big deal. It's great to see, but not a surprise.
What left me semi-stunned (until I regained my natural skepticism) was the following sentence:
Today's announcement builds on our $2 billion in Linux-based revenue in 2002 and our decade of commitment to the open source and Linux communities," said Peter Blackmore, executive vice president, HP Enterprise Systems Group. (emphasis mine.)
Where the heck does HP get this figure from? (And if VA Linux couldn't make it in the Linux hardware biz, how come HP is making $2 billion revenues just a couple years later?)
"Sniff test" problems here... but I wouldn't mind being enlightened by someone from HP.
--LP
"The Red Hat operating systems covered by this agreement include Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS, used in high-end servers for demanding tasks such as database and enterprise applications; Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES, used in smaller, departmental servers, such as mail, Web and print servers; and Red Hat Enterprise WS, used in workstations."
CompUSA will still just be selling HP home PCs bundled with WinXP home. This is for commercial accounts who want RedHat Linux with their HP servers or workstations and are prepared to pay for it.Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Remember, HP isn't only hardware; they have a large share of the systems management software market (Openview), and a consulting group as well. If you count all the Openview agent licenses for Linux boxes (which aren't cheap), plus consulting income, plus embedded linux revenue, $2B seems within reach.
HP is selling and doing phone support for Red Hat. They dont own Red Hat, conrol Red Hat, or any of the such.
If HP chooses only to sell Itanium based rigs, that's their perogitive. If you want a hammer-equiped red hat rig, dont get it from HP.
So just relax. This is just HP making sure the latest IT buzzword is prominent in their marketing literature.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Ok, I'm probably dumb and paranoid. :)
... is yours?
Found a press release about it, afterall, so perhaps RedHat will still be supporting Hammer.
Let's hope so.
Don my smug mug is on smugmug
my smug mug is on smugmug
How are they providing barriers to entry? They provide all of the source to AS on there ftp site. In fact they provide it in SRPM fasion so you can recompile the entire distro if you like. Your complaining because they don't make available the Binary ISO? What requires them to do this? And why would they want to when it just costs them money?
I thought the enemy of my enemy was my friend or some such. Works GREAT for U.S. foreign policy! ;-)
Why don't IBM, HP, SUN et al just throw together a good entry-level common distro and give it away just to GUT Microsoft ? Are they afraid the DOJ will sue them for collusion?!!
Any money to be made on Linux is all in the support.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Hmmm... putting my cynical hat on: RH are certainly looking like they are going to be the dominant Linux flavour in years to come and -maybe- stand the best chance of making the breakthrough onto the desktop. Certainly the company looks set up to be able to get software on servers, on desktops and provide the support that many IT managers would expect from a large software provider.
However, if I look at RH from a financial standpoint, it would be in their economic interest to make sure that when someone starts to deploy Linux around the workplace that it is not so easy to (say) switch to another flavour as you will lose revenue.
I am a big fan of RH but suspect in the years to come, could (ab)use their position in the Linux world in a similar way to another large OS company!
Anyone who had to mess with the wacky 9u Compaq server hardware of a couple of years ago and wanted to run Linux on knows that Compaq (before HP) and RedHat we're holding hands a long time before this announcement. Not kissing or petting, but there was a tacit agreement that Compaq supported the RedHat distros (6.x and 7.x series) and RedHat made sure to roll their SCSI array drivers into the mix. They were good friends, and probably even exchanged a couple of "partner" trinkets over the years.
Before this, Dell was the RedHat "Daddy". That was probably before Michael Dell and Steve Ballmer had a couple of meetings and came to the agreement that Linux was bad for Dell in the "consumer space", which somehow included their laptops, and their website. Anyone remember the "powerapp" boxen. They were good, and came with RH 6.2 and 7.0 distros. That was before "Red the Hat", decided to really mess up their distro.
This latest announcement is a "Stock market Ad" designed to make both HP and RedHat look better than usual (warty beasts with scrabbling claws and pale lidless eyes which cannot withstand the brilliant light of full-disclosure) and to signal that server clients and channel partners can "Have RedHat, we mean Linux, with that".
And after RedHat's 8.x they can eat their distro one mylar shard at a time...I'll be nice and let them choose which end they want it in, because it's never going to see my servers again. Ever.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
In our company, HP is also aggressively trying to get us to switch our support for our SUN E class from sun to HP. We are suspicious, and asking lots of questions like when the blame game begins, but so far all their answers are sharp and quick, and their price is better than Sun's. Our management is seriously considering this switch, so a move to support linux would be seen as a good thing for companies trying to get over this "open source" support model.
Where the heck does HP get this figure from?
ISTR HP snagged a huge Linux deal at Dreamworks last year. And they also scored a big Linux deal at Disney.
The entertainment industry (especially the movie industry) are ironically moving to Linux big-time. The visual effects industry essentially told all their tools suppliers to port to Linux or else. The tools vendors have complied. Expect to see tasks that were traditionally done on SGI or Sun machines to be done pretty much exclusively on Linux machines from now on.
James Cameron pretty much set the tone for Linux in Hollywood with the renderfarm he used for Titanic. That farm was built with Digital Alpha processors, but instead of buying DEC Unix (or Tru64 or whatever it was called then), his effects guys put Linux on the machines and saved a couple of hundred grand.
I find it endlessly amusing that Hollywood is so staunchly in support of intellectual property rights, but is more than willing to enjoy the benefits of Linux.
Apparently, complaints about support have skyrocketed 50% in ONE QUARTER!
Register story
Actually, HP has been offering RedHat AS for their Itanium boxes for quite a while now, along with HP-UX and Windows 64-bit Enterprise Server (the price difference between HP-UX and Linux has always been negligable, but Windows adds substancially to the final system price). The only thing new here was the same Linux software and support is now being offered for the 32-bit Intel hardware.
Because one of HP's biggest clients is getting ready to start using Linux in a big way. NDA prevents me from saying who I work for.
The project thats working on it has been trying to get info from Red Hat concerning their High availability product but has been stonewalled rumor is that RH is afraid of the support commitment.
The only down side to us using linux is that I'm 99% sure that any developments that we make in house would not be given back to the Linux project. I only give them 1% credit because there are a lot of Open Source advocates there that would let something slip anon if they could. But I imagine most corporations would be stingy like that.
Anyhow some dedicated Linux users are working on the project to bring it to our company and if this happens it will be a huge blow to MS down the road because other companies in the industry watch what we do.
The first stage is to use them as file and print servers. We currently have about 17000 remote locations with at least 1 server each and all of those are NT. would be quite a coup.
That farm was built with Digital Alpha processors, but instead of buying DEC Unix (or Tru64 or whatever it was called then), his effects guys put Linux on the machines and saved a couple of hundred grand
Even worse for DEC/Compaq, they weren't really DEC Alphas, but Alpha clones. Was weird to see them rave about this "Titanic made using Alpha technology", when they didn't use DEC hardware or software, just use Alpha chips from someone else. They may have got a few bucks on Alpha licensing for those clones, but they had to really search for that silver lining in that storm cloud.
Score:1, Insightful???
This must have been moderated by some gentoo douchebag (on his mom's PC) via a wget cronjob that checks slashdot every 20 min for pro gentoo comments.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Saw HP at a trade show a few months back, IBM was also present. They both were doing blade servers, and let me tell you, HP's look like crap compared to what IBM offers for a similar price. IBM's will share the console fully digitally, whereas HP's comes with a piece of hardware that has to be snapped into place on the front of the blade, and moved around to share the console. And its too big to just buy a ton of them and put one on each blade, so you can't even go buy a phat kvm to save your sanity.
Did I mention that IBM brought a full rack of working blades with redhat, windows 2k, openbsd, freebsd, suse, and a few other linux distros, and showed off the awesome power? HP brought two broken blade servers and pointed at the Xeon's inside and said, "Intel! Intel!"
Not saying its bad to see Red Hat get exposure, but HP doesn't rate high in my book, and I know a lot of other people who feel the same way. This might give Red Hat a bad name.
If my HP sales rep is reading, this is why everytime you send me a new offer, I go right to my customers and say, "IBM! Pro Micro!"
--Nuintari
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