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."

Comments

Not really clear.

[FreeLinux]

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?

Re:Not really clear.

[numark]

I'm guessing probably official support from the company. Free versions don't usually have support included.

I thought universities just downloaded it for free

[eln]

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?

Free as in $25

[Fux the Penguin]

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.

Non-Profit and serious discounts!

[bfree]

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?

No thanks Redhat

[asv108]

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.

Re:No thanks Redhat

[ducomputergeek]

I have to agree. I work as a technology consultant and over saw two companies that switched the bulk of their desktops from Windows to RH 9 Linux. Both had been using Linux on servers since 2000 and 2001 and therefore had the technical staff in place to handle the machines with in house support.

However, RH's move has made my business lose a lot of crediablity because RH had started to build a brand for Linux in the business market. The SMB's I work with are always looking for anything that help their bottom line. One bussiness would have saved an estimated $10,000 over the next three years in licing fees for OS's and Office Software. They are still going to use OpenOffice, only for Windows now.

I have to give kudos to M$ about one thing, they support products for 5 years and give 6 months notice its going away. People expect that after 5 years in the tech world, programs wouldn't be supported.

First off, it seemed like to me that 7.2 was around a while then 7.3, 8, and then 9 suddenly came out almost back to back. The about a year after 9 is released we get the, "This product will not be supported". The idea that Linux would have a longer support life for older versions longer than that of Windows was a selling point, and one that has turned into a myth. Ever try to find working RPM's for the latest PHP release for RH 7.3? After 3 hours of searching, I gave up and installed FreeBSD 4.8.

As a consultant, I was seeing Linux having a huge push onto corperate desktops by 2006. Especially in Europe and SE Asia. RH's choice to end the biggest brand in NA Linux was a major blow for the Linux adoptation in the US. Now with SuSE in the hands of a North American Company I wonder how much that will impeed their sucess. Part of SuSE's appeal in Europe, I studied in Germany for a year in a college that had 2 SuSE labs, and 1 Windows lab, I noticed how students were learning how to use Linux. Also, as the EU emerges as an economic giant, there was emerging this, "Use EU products" ideal going on and SuSE provided that ablity. It was a German product made in the EU that could give the Europeans a major leg up in providing leading edge software and technology to the rest of the world as the Anti-AMerican back-lash continues to grow.

Now I am not sure what direction things will go. Most people, including myself, are taking a wait and see additude with Novell. Its not clear if Novell is aiming for the Enterprise level, where they are already experts at delivering great enterprise software like eDirectory, or if they will continue the Desktop line. I am still waiting for Novell to make their Linux strategy clear. If they decide to push Linux into corperate desktops, then I beleive that will help to increase the adoptation of Linux in the business market. If not, it will set back Linux on the desktop at least another three to five years.

I had three potential clients looking at switching their desktops to Linux. These had 20 - 40 employees using computers. With one it was time to replace their AS/400 server and Desktops. Linux looked to be the way to go, but with the Linux limbo, we are looking again. They love IBM products and were going to go IBM eServers with RH Linux. However, this move has made them unwilling to trust RH. They see it has RH is either having business, ie cash flow, problems or "Well they did this, what is to keep them from being like M$ and say that six month later we'll have to use something else?". The other client decided to ditch Linux completely and all their Linux boxes will be replaced with 2k3 servers by Jan and all new Dell desktops.

I know that I can not professionally recommend Red Hat Linux because I no longer trust them and the reputation blow I have taken has caused some personal Angst. In fact, this was the final blow for me and Linux for most applications. Those needing a kiosk solution I will recommend the linux-based FirecaseOS and needing a flexiable embedded OS will get the nod to look at Linux, but I am now recommending FreeBSD for Servers and Apple Macintosh OS X for Unix desktops.

Site Licence Windows not really free

[SpaFF]

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.

Calm down, people.

[Qbertino]

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.

Re:at the local universities around here

[The Analog Kid]

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.

Great timing ...

[Frater 219]

Check this out.

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.

Re:I thought universities just downloaded it for f

[BrokenHalo]

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.

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 :-).