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Anatomy of a Successful Enterprise Linux Distro?
phenix asks: "With the new release of Novell Linux Desktop, and the upcoming release of Sun JDS3, I am curious to hear how these two suites, and their underlying enterprise infrastructures (JES and OES) compare. Specifically, I am interested in their ease of management/deployment in these areas: directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation. All of these, of course, without the use of Windows products like Exchange and Windows technologies like Active Directory. Is there a better alternative?"
The question to ask/consider would be...Successful as defined by who? To me, SuSE is successful but after heavy modification of KDE as discussed here at slashdot many times, and installing MPlayer to handle all my multimedia needs. I also use streamtuner because I have not been able to fine any other KDE based directory browser, that will let you record a stream too.
Unfortunately, I have never had any success with amaroK and Kmail. Amarok keeps crashing, and its equalizer sucks, the analyzer is always behind...while Kmail cannot connect to my ISP, even after letting it detect what the ISP supports. It would be interesting to know that Evolution is just fine.
> At risk of wandering offtopic, the parent post is a microcosm of why people don't try OSS.
/. articles that plain suck. This one DOES NOT suck as bad. Usually the very nature or reaching /. and getting a question posted should suggest that the submitter is competant in that field. If the submitter knows about and have interested in Sun JDS & Novell OES (geez, we aren't talking about newbie how to fix a b0rked MBR or even easy linux Linsipre or Xandros) then how about doing something with them? He is just as empowered to assess the products as I am.
Funny that you might mention the word try.Unlike some volunteer distros or FOSS dudes hanging out on an IRC channel, Novell & Sun have made is real easy to get the software & it's documentation. They are real companies ready to stand behind their products with real people.
As the parent, I admit that yes perhaps it seems like RTFM. But I did just the same amount of work that the submitter did. I found some links/info & dumped them on a page. Why exactly does everyone want a accurate technical answer for free (not $$$, but zero work)? If he can copy & paste some links into a question, then why am I demonized if I copy & paste some links into an answer & suggest that he try them out for himself. If I can download the ISOs & install linux, then so can he. Why must I go out of my way to create a technical assesment?
Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm freakin Loony Toons. Maybe I expect people to *gasp* do the absolute very first steps and try it for themselves. If he fails after the first steps, then either myself or more likely in this case Sun/Novell can help him out. Too often we see Ask
Most of these features you wish to compare are not part of a Linux operating system. Most are applications that are installed on top of a Linux operating system.
So, among the Linux distributions, all of these features are roughly eqivalent, providing that you are using the same software to meet the need for the particular feature.
Now in comparison between Linux and something else, Solaris, Windows, whatever... the ability to compare becomes much more difficult; because, you are comparing different products. In some platforms (Windows for example) the product can be part of the operating system, while in others it may require the purchace of "3rd party" software. In a few cases (Oracle, et. al.) you get lucky, you are really comparing the same product on two different platforms.
When comparing different products, you are usually comparing different solutions, and such comparisons often break down to personal preference, familiarity, and comfort factor.
As far as the base Linux operating system, a company can't go far wrong with either RedHat or SuSE. I'd pick RedHat personally, but Novell's backing of SuSE is not to be discounted. Both products support many of the solutions businesses will need, but neither will perfectly act as a Microsoft server clone.
Lack of a feature is not a defficency, when the feature itself creates more problems than it solves.
"a decent admin" would do it once, properly, in a couple of days, get things online in a week, and from that point on be doing proper clones of the OS partition, when and where needed. a proper enterprise would have a plan to accomodate this. it does not take 6 months to get a working linux system online, it takes working hardware and a competent build engineer. good enterprise has those, whether its a hat worn by one or many ..
and i believe it is true that i need to 'get a life'. alas, my life has been spent in far too many computer operating environments, computer rooms, vaults, cellars, etc.
Then they go for a beer, because everything works.
'a decent admin' goes for a beer, because everything works, and also because he knows precisely how everything works.
distro-fed linux newbies seem to think 'redhat'==business, but in fact, good business does roll its own.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
is that they're busy working away (especially Thomas Fitzsimons) on GNU Classpath to make sure that with that and gcj there's a full Free/Libre java environment
You would think that a serious enterprise Linux distro would support filesystems beyond ext3.
Ext3 is good and stable and all, and is fine for pretty much any general purpose use. But Reiserfs and XFS both have advantages in certain areas. Reiserfs for tons of small files (like mail spools) and XFS for monster files. Either of those could have uses in the enterprise.
So I'm a little disappointed that RHEL4 only supports ext3, and even removed Reiser from the distribution entirely. We were going to use Reiser for our new RHEL based mail server, but now it will have to be ext3.
I'll second that vote for Ubuntu.
It just works. I was a big fan (still am) of SuSE... but Ubuntu is even easier...and runs very very smoothly even on a 650 mhz duron machine with an old ati video card.
In fact, I would say it's desktop ready.
Err... Red Hat has had this for something like over 5 or 6 years. Need to install something on 60,000 desktops? No problem, just click go. Need it customized per user, per their profile or groups that they belong to, also not a problem. This and many other reasons are why enterprises almost always go with Red Hat, especially after you take in to consideration the support and licensing costs of other distros, i.e. Novell (The same level of support will typically cost you just as much, but in some cases can be up to 5 times as great).For those who think I'm trolling, please see Novell's pricelist for the SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 costs per year.
Regards,
Steve
All good points.
You just fairly well described Mandrake 10.1...
I just hope they stop adding acpi=ht in the default lilo setup, as that rather kills off USB on several Athlon based boards.
Unfortunately (for political reasons) you must add contrib and PLF packager sources, easiest by googling for "easy urpmi"
I think there's been a GNU/Linux-native NDS implementation for a while now: