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Red Hat, SUSE Announce Educational Discounts
geoff313 writes "Good news week for Linux users in the education field, as both Red Hat and SUSE have announced that they will
provide academic discounts in an effort to attract "students and
educational institutions." According to this article published
on CNET, while both companies have decided to offer discounts,
they are each going about it a different way. SUSE has begun to offer
"schools, students, universities and nonprofit customers a discount of
more than 40 percent through two sales partners, CCV Software and Ricis." Red Hat, on the other hand,
plans to offer two new versions of its distributions, based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux
(RHEL) line. The first, aimed at students and named Red Hat
Academic Desktop, will sell for $25 and is based on RHEL WS. The
second, to be sold to schools and named Red Hat Academic Server, will sell for $50 and is based off RHEL ES. Both products will include online
updates (presumably through its Red
Hat Network) but will not include telephone support. Bulk pricing
is also available, and administrative licenses will be available
soon."
I understand what Red Hat is offering, as they no longer have a free version of their software. But, SuSE still offers a free FTP install. What does SuSE's academic version offer that the free FTP install does not?
Now, I haven't been part of a university for several years, but don't universities these days have fairly fast Internet connections for the most part?
If you don't get telephone support with these products, which I thought was the main reason to actually spend money on a distribution anyway, why not just download them for free?
"And Red Hat will offer more expensive but still discounted options for schools that want Red Hat technical support."
So you can buy it discounted with no support, or expensive with support. Why would anybody take the first option? There are plenty of free distributions with updates and no support...
Scratched Emulsion
It seems surreal that something that was born and raised in academia is now offered for a "discount". What a shame.
Maybe RMS had a point.
I find this to be an interesting turn of events. At my university, they have site licenses for all of Microsoft's software, so you can get Windows XP for precisely $0 dollars. Now, my classmates will have the opportunity to purchase RedHat or SuSE for a mere $25!
Oh, what a world, when Windows is cheaper for students than Linux.
Local LUG
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Stability, in terms of having a consistant platform for an extended period of time, is worth a lot. This is particularly true when you've got a limited staff trying to support hundreds of terminals around a large campus. Distributions that you can "download for free" don't offer the guaranteed, extended lifetime that you're going to get from RHEL. At least, not with continuing security updates.
You're not paying for the software itself which, as you said, came from Acadamia. You are paying the tech peoples' salaries and for the servers to host the updates on.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Skolelinux is a better option for most schools. Completely free.
some people just can't imagine using software without spending some money. I guess this will appeal to them. It'd still make more sense to buy one of those 'Linux in 20 days' kinda books and use that though. That's how I got started with Redhat 6.2.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Red Hat does an end run around the GPL forcing customers to buy a support contract for every installation, and key components of SuSE have been proprietary since the beginning.
Just use something else, don't reward these companies. If you're thinking of taking Red Hat or SuSE up on these offers, look elsewhere. Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, from scratch, whatever. You're a student--you're time is cheap. And if you actually want to learn something from using Linux, none of the commercial distros are the way to go.
As I read through this story I was thinking that it was quite predictable and boring until I noticed that Suse were including nonprofits! It is certainly a significant manouver if a nonprofit can now get (for example) OpenExchange w/50 CALs for $499 (the ccv academic price) and included in that is telephone support! In fact they can kit out a 50 user office with OpenExchange server ($499), Suse Desktop (5*$399) and Enterprise Server ($399) with one years support for a grand total of $2893 or $58.76/desktop. It's not as good as getting it all free, but support isn't free and that is going to be a hard price for anyone to beat (I think). Would you support a 50 seat setup like that for $3k/annum?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
They're charging $299 for their standard workstation desktop. That's right up there with XP Pro (pricewise).
Now if they had charged maybe 75 bucks instead of 300 bucks and included X hours of phone support, X hours of over-the-internet support, and 2 years of automatic patching that would be fairly cool, especially for people who are paying MS 300 bucks every 2 years for a shit OS and no support. But 300 dollars and 1 year of support? They could do better.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
With Redhat changing their EOL, business model, and offerings every 6 months, I have no interest in purchasing redhat products. I have a long rant about Redhat on my journal. I just setup a new server yesterday using a netinstall CD from debian and because Penn State has their own debian mirror, the install took less than 30 mins. The dual 3ghz xeon and debian's new beta installer helped speed things up too. If I need to get pay support for debian its available. I use to avoid debian because of the elitist culture and the distro's political association with the whole GNU/ controversy but Redhat is no longer a viable option as an inexpensive server os.
I'm a university student. I don't mind supporting the open source community in any way I can. For example, I've purchased the official Slackware CDs occassionally.
I don't see how/why its beneficial to sell Linux educational discounts for their desktop distro when I can get it for free from the 'Net or for that matter get a different distro for free.
OTOH, I'm using Windows XP Pro right now. I purchased it through my university's bookstore for about 50% off (it was $120 Can if I recall). Its was a great deal and I took advantage of it.
Uhm, that's not how it works. Your University shelled out a ton of cash for students to be able to have those free copies of Windows.
And if you read the article you would have seen that Redhat is also offering Universities a site licence deal: $2,500 for unlimited copies of WS. That's a hell of a lot cheaper than what your University paid for an MS site license.
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? s: a-- C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E- W++ N o-- K- w--- O- M+ V PS+ P
Complete and utter hogwash.
Stick Men
I keep seeing people say that 'Redhat Linux' is not free. That is not entirely true.
Basically, what Redhat has done is forked their distribution, providing what they call 'Redhat Enterprise' as a 'stable' fully supported (and thus with a dollar cost associated with it) distribution targeted at businesses, and 'Fedora', a 'development' platform for use by open source contributors and linux enthusiasts (a free downloadable distribution). Items that Redhat sees as valuable for the 'Enterprise' will be rolled from Fedora into the Redhat Enterprise product.
Redhat is pushing their 'Enterprise' product as being gold-plated and stable for businesses, and by definition, conversely that 'Fedora' is a toy. That is probably not very accurate an assumption - and serves to put more money in Red Hat's bank account more than anything else. Of course, the money will be coming from businesses - so who cares?
Currently I am running Redhat 8.1 and Slackware on my machines. I am seriously considering going 100% Slackware if Fedora turns into a seriously uncompatable fork - compared to other stable distributions. On the other hand, Fedora might free developers to build some really neat things into the distribution for desktop home users - such as industrial strength WineX out of the box for Gamers etc... It might just be the shot in the arm that linux on the desktop needs to gain momentum. I guess what I am saying is 'we shall see'.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
It's about the books, the docs and the support. In SuSE that is, at least. That's what distros are about.
SuSE is the best n00b distro I know. They've got dead tree docs included that make up for almost an entire Linux library, their support is fair, square and actually has a clue and their YaST install procedure rocks. You get a stack of CDs and a DVD (with all the stuff on that again, so you can easyly hand out a copy and keep another).
And, for a distro-look customized appearance, their desktop is way cool too.
THAT's what distros are all about. And THATs precisely what you get a discount on if you're a poor student looking into the OSS world. If that's still to much, fair enough. Go download the distro, copy it from a friend (legal that is, of course) or switch to debian, gentoo or whatever. But then you won't have that stack of books and no hotline keycode either. Of course.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Red Hat didn't cut their desktop aspirations, they opened their development model and allowed outsiders to contribute to what the product should be. It's called Fedora. It's Red Hat sponsored. They were not making any real money off of Red Hat free version, so why bother keeping something that looses money. They created Fedora out of it, so the community can keep it going, while they focus on where the real money is, the enterprise industry, where companies actually need support for their product, and are not going to use some LUG group. Maybe you should think about why they did what they did instead of shooting them down, as if they are really pulling away from Linux.
Most people seem to think this is going to be very expensive for schools. However, RedHat is offering a full site license for $2500 p.a. This is nothing for a univ. The univ can also setup a local RHN update mirror, further cutting down on bandwidth costs.
Our univ. is on RH 9.0 now, and they use the free Pink Tie CD's. After the reports of Fedora's instability, the SysAdmins have kind of 'rebelled' and are asking for RH WS for the systems they admin. This agreement for $2,500 makes perfect sense in this scenario. The Uni already has substantial support people, and are going to require RH resources very very infrequently.
So RTFA before you assume the RH solution is going to be more expensive...
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
A couple of days ago, Slashdot announces an interview with the CEO of Red Hat. I ask, more or less, "Why the hell don't you have educational discounts?" The question goes to +5, which presumably means it gets forwarded to CEO Szulik. Other posters from educational institutions follow-up my post, to the effect that they are already planning to abandon Red Hat rather than eat the steep price hike to Red Hat Enterprise.
And now, Red Hat has educational discounts.
If NetBIOS broadcasts are a problem, you could have a Windows server or a unix host running Samba be a WINS server, and have DHCP tell the clients to go to WINS-only mode instead of Hybrid.
Not that I like Windows or it's "networking", but it sounds like your sysadms are morons.
If you're talking about VPN compatibility with RH9, FreeS/WAN IPSec works beautifully. I wouldn't waste the effort on the SSL VPN, it's such a hit to have a protocol stack like this: IP-TCP-SSL-PPP-TCP You'll find the Cisco IPSec VPN in UDP mode is like going from a School Zone to an Interstate.
Which is why Red Hat's sustained new attitude of "servers are for the elite" continues to puzzle me.
Some respectable fraction of these CS Majors need/want to work on servers (i.e. the RHEL ES version). They need what it offers, they want to be able to put it on their resume (e.g. "provided 'this useful campus service' using RHEL ES"), etc. etc.
At my school, companies fell over themselves to try to put their products in front of students, who would soon enough be influencing and then making buying decisions.
Once again, something about Red Hat's new business model does not compute ... and SUSE continues to look good on the surface, especially with non-profit discounts (they have to give the same discount to the Federal government, so why not non-profits, which probably represent much lower sales?).
(We'll ignore for the duration of this discussion the horrific raw odds of any tech merger working (i.e. Novell buying SUSE).)
If you pay for a RedHat or SuSE subscription, you end up helping create an infrastructure in which you will not have a choice but to pay them in the future. And for the measly amount of bandwidth and support you get from them, even $25 is too much.
Rather than financing RedHat and SuSE through purchase of their software, help with a true community effort: Debian. Take over management of a package, host a mirror site, write some documentation, etc. That way, Linux will remain free not just in theory but in practice.
The Linux bigwigs really ought to be paying attention to schools. I'm glad RH and SuSE are finally making an effort.
It's been said before (and I'll say it again) that OSS is a perfect fit for schools. No licensing worries/overhead, ability to learn about and solve one's own problems, and freedom galore.
What's been holding Linux back in schools, however, is mainstream educational software. I'm studying to be a high school teacher and, somehow, learning HyperStudio is a "must". HyperStudio is designed for Wintel machines. It'll "work" on MacOS, and the content you make with it will "work" on Netscape 4, but it's obvious by the list of supported platforms that the company doesn't really care about anything other than IE and Windows.
If academic software companies started building their apps for OSS platforms (Linux, BSD, Darwin, Hurd if you want--I don't care), schools would switch in a heartbeat, especially since OpenOffice, Microsoft is no longer the document gatekeeper. If the elementary school where I tutor had a cheap way out of Win98/NetWare hell, they'd do it immediately.
Maybe we need Szulik to jump around in front of an Educational Software Conference shouting "Developers! Developers! Developers!"
All i see a is a bunch of uninformed kids complaining about RH not being free and it turns my belly inside out. Ofcourse you don get it for free if you want support and managed upgrades!
What did you expect, Redhat paying you to use their dist?
Also it IS still free, you can D/L and use it but you have to do it yourself. The only thing missing is the ready made isos. You be lazy?
I for one think it make perfect sense to pay for packaging and support. Pay someone to do it or do it yourself.
If this is such a hard thing to accept then by all means leech on someone like debian, mandrake, whatever and tuck your common sense away in some dusty closet until they goes tits up out of funds.
If we want linux to be around kicking we need to give something back. Whining and leeching and not doing anything is just heartaking to watch. Pay back either by code or anything and stop this piggybacking. Stop asking what linux/RMS/RedHat does for linux and ask yourself: "what the fuck have i done for linux?".
If RH sucks you can build your own dist out of their rpms even, just stop this whining.
Damn, its like a kindergarten here sometimes.
HTTP/1.1 400
Rubbish. Slackware can be used perfectly well on an extended-lifetime basis, and so can Debian. In fact, I guess Debian has extended lifetime by definition, since new releases occur about once a decade :-).
Give SUSE time... they usually wait a month or so until the newest version is available for FTP install. It's been like that for a while... Exactly how long, I don't know, because I'm not so cheap that I won't go out and pay for a very well put together distro.
The first one's always free, boyo. Guess what will happen when you graduate? Poof! Your license goes up in a puff of bits. You have two choices after that:
Actually there is a third choice: tell Microsoft to stuff themselves, and run a F/OSS operating system instead. This is why more Colleges and Universities should have LUGs, particularly Colleges and Universities with site licenses with Microsoft.
And last I checked, Knoppix is still 100% free, as in beer, speech and freedom. You can't beat that.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
However, a Google cache of the page shows the relationship of Professional Workstation to the rest of the RHEL line.
The Red Hat Professional Workstation isn't available online, or through Red Hat, but through a few selected retail channels. Buy.com has it for $82.57, which includes one year of up2date service. It's the same product as Red Hat Enterprise Workstation. I purchased it from my local Microcenter for $99. Here's the RPM list.
It looks like this product was a last-minute addition.... Apparently, it's not crippled or relabeled.
Given my previous rants on Slashdot about the Red Hat shadiness, this looks like a good option.
Even more interesting is the fact that Red Hat didn't put much effort into product differentiation with this Professional Workstation product. I opened the box and the CDs were labeled "Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS". Well, only the first CD was labeled as such. The other CDs are identical to the Red Hat Enterprise AS/ES offering and include the same RPMS/SRPMS. SRPMS build cleanly in every test case I tried. So, buying this and using Enterprise 3.0 SRPMS for future updates is entirely possible. The same RHEL patched 2.4.21 kernel is there, too. Nifty.
Another issues that bugged me about the Red Hat Enterprise Linux move was the poor upgrade path. Reinstalling the OS on production servers that are running Red Hat 7.x or 8 ain't pretty. So, my final test with the Professional Workstation was prompted by a half-page paragraph in the manual that came with the box set.... It stated that in-place OS upgrades were only available for Red Hat Enterprise 2.1 -> Red Hat Enterprise 3.0 systems (via "linux update" at boot)...... however, you have the option of booting the install CD with "linux updateany" to relax the restriction "in case your /etc/issue file is damaged". Hmm.... No version-checking, eh? So I performed a test in-place upgrade on an existing Red Hat 8.0-equipped Proliant server...... It totally worked without a hitch!
This, along with the education and bulk-pricing deals leads me to believe that the Red Hat marketing department is working hard to appeal to the people it alienated with its announcements over the past few weeks. We'll see what happens come December 31.
Edmund White
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