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Redhat Reports 90% Return Subscription Rate

Posted by timothy on from the self-reported-numbers dept.

jasonbowen writes "In this article from ZDnet, Redhat claims a 90% return subscription rate for its Enterprise line. Sounds like Redhat is doing just fine providing a quality product for people that want to pay the money for it." (And for people who don't want to pay money for it, too.)

7 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. I Miss RedHat Network by DeckerEgo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After months of therapy, I finally came to terms with the fact that I'm upset because RHN is gone. They locked my entitlements and prefs, and so now I can't manage the scores of machines I have deployed. I'm reasonably okay with the whole Enterprise-Fedora concept where there is one supported enterprise product and one free personal edition, but I just feel kinda worried about when my RHN subscription goes away for good and another buffer overflow exploit comes around.

    1. Re:I Miss RedHat Network by digitalhermit · · Score: 5, Informative

      You have scores of machines that you're managing through the free service? RHN allowed you to manage these for free (maybe the cost of a demo subscription or a single $60/year fee that you bounced from machine to machine). It put a load on their servers for both the rhn-applet, the up2date, and the package information that's stored there. There's a $20 update service now until EOL that you can buy.

      You have many other options -- you can use yum, apt, synaptic to upgrade your machines. If you have all these scores of machines in a single facility you can create your own yum/apt repository and have the machines check each day via cron. If you want a centralized view of the state of your machines then maintain a database of each machines packages. Periodically check the repository against the package database and send an alert if any are out of date.

      For example:
      rpm -qa --query-format "%{name}\t%{version}\n"

      For each machine store this information in a mySQL table. Then as new packages enter the repository, store that information inside another table. You can then select packages based on name between tables then inform the user that a package needs to be updated. Or count the packages that need to be updated. This will give you 90% of the RHN functionality. Won't be as pretty but it works.

      Or you can pay RedHat for this service.

  2. Subscription by hcuar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't a yearly subscription the same thing Micro$oft considered for their software model, and people brought their pitchforks and torches?

  3. Re:If they're doing so well.. by Erwos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What do you think Fedora is?

    It's not like RedHat just handed them a site and told them to get on with it. RedHat employees are very actively involved with the whole thing, and are contributing tons of code.

    -Erwos

    --
    Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
  4. What's the difference ? by alenm · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Well, they are commited to supporting the enterprise version of Redhat, but can anyone explain me if there will be a difference between the Fedora and Enterprise line other than the support and speed of implementation?

    For instance will all the Oracle optimization still be in Fedora?

  5. Doublethink. by Performer+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is a pretty blatant example of doublethink propaganda. Red Had drops support and release for RHx, and we see an article singing their praises on how great a job they're dowing throwing Fedora over the fence because they can claim some customer retention on the Enterprise front.

    No it's not a great job, the reasonably priced support option is gone, and there's nothing they offer between outlandishly expensive enterprise support and free no support. For an Operating system they mostly package, not author, they are doing a really bad job at providing affordable support options or stable releases that the ordinary user might want (like the vast majority of Linux users using RHx who were abandoned). Of course they have explicitly said they're not interested in that business, (probably abandoned to protect margins in the Enterprise business). Why anyone would pretend this is all rosy and RH are doing a great job after leaving such a gaping wound on the Linux desktop is beyond me.

  6. My experience 3 years ago by div_2n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I dunno about now but three years ago I was trying to get a sendmail (don't ask) box up and running for a client and was a complete newbie to Linux. I purchase a one time incident for like $250 and spent about 3 hours on the phone with them. They put me on the phone with their e-mail admin and he helped me get it up and running.

    I will probably fork out the dough for the enterprise version for my home machine simply because I think Red Hat is great at what they do, play nice as a community member and produce quite a great product as far as I can tell.

    There is no louder way to vote than with your wallet. As for me, I vote for Linux and Red Hat seems like a great company to push for. Don't forget they didn't hesitate to fire back at SCO. I will gladly help fund that effort.