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SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Released
MrHoolio writes "SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 has been officially released. This long-awaited/anticipated release is a make-or-break release for Novell. It promises not only a new sleek improved interface but also increased productivity with stability and less worry about viruses and the like. The pricing for the Desktop is $50 a year if you want product updates and support. Otherwise ... like other linux distros you can download it for free, but with no support."
"...why do enterprises seem to most frequently use RHEL, or something like this SuSE LE 10?"
Because many decisions in enterprises (like mine) are relationship driven.
We have a strong relationship with Oce and Oce has a strong relationship with SuSE (both with German roots). So, our Oce print servers all run SuSE.
On the app hosting side, our IT department has always had good relationships with RTP companies, so they prefer RedHat.
Mainly it's support (managers like having official channels better than posting on Ask Slashdot), but there's also issues of product lifecycle and (for those who want them) the inclusion of non-FOSS apps and drivers.
The lifecycle generally goes like this:
1. Test releases of the free version
2. Full release of the free version
3. Repeat 1-2 a couple of times.
4. Release of an enterprise version
Stability improves at each stage, so by the time you get to SUSE Enterprise, or RHEL, etc., you've got something much more stable than openSUSE or Fedora Core.
Then you get 5-7 years (depending on the company) of guaranteed updates without having to worry about upgrading your system. Sure, you can usually perform an online upgrade to a new release using apt-get or yum, but upgrading from Release N to Release N+1 is always more risky than updating components within a release.
I had the privilege of using this through the beta versions and have to say that the desktop provides a great interface that even rivals OS X. It has elements that are similar to both XP (access to programs through a Start button-type feature) and OS X (a portion of the function of Expose is recreated). IMHO, this desktop fits in well with what corporate users are used to. Also, the Novell distribution of OpenOffice is very stable and handled every doc created with MS office apps that I threw at it. Installation and configuration were a little more complex than Mac OS X but aproximately on par with a clean Windows install. I strongly recommend taking the time to check it out.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
In the environments I run, it's entirely due to the release cycle. Once I've installed RHEL 4, I'm guerenteed that they'll keep doing security and bug-fix patches for 5-7 years. And those will be REAL patches, not forced upgrades (RedHat backports fixes to the old versions rather than forcing packages to new versions.)
This means that my company doesn't have to constantly pay to re-test and re-verify the software we write every time someone feels like adding a nifty new feature, yet I can still keep the systems patched and secure. Re-doing QA is really expensive.
I run fedora on my desktop at home. But every time I install a new version, I end up with things breaking that I've got to fix. Imagining doing that with all of the hundreds of machines i run, and then having to explain to management why so many of our applications had downtime down due to a little OS upgrade... that gives me nightmares. I'll stick to enterprise-level stuff on the job.
The difference lies in what businesses want vs. what enthusiests want. Businesses want a stable platform that will undergo minimal change - generally, security and driver updates only in the Kernel and major packages. The reason is that they sometimes run closed-source (gasp) packages on top on Linux (such as Oracle, Domino, etc.) that can't be recompiled if something significant changes. The vendor (Red Hat or Novell) will take care of back-porting appropriate patches to the previous kernel versions, etc., and continue to provide a "stable platform" for at least two years. This way, your IT staff and third-party suppliers (IBM, Oracle, etc) can have a slowly-moving target for their applications and not waste a lot of time figuring out which kernel structure changed to break such and such application. Enterprise hardware vendors (HP, IBM, Sun, etc) can develop, test, and certify their device drivers (let's face it, not many enthusisasts own $10,000 - $500,000 servers) against a stable platform as well.
:-) ) systems. When we do have problems (which is reasonably rare), we don't have to go into endless discussions over the astronomically huge possible combinations of patches and updates and which combinations are functional. 99.99% of the time everything Just Works (and the other .01% is usually because you did something out-of-spec).
Most of use that support these servers are happy to trade being a year or so behind the latest and greatest features for the joy of not worrying over whether some update or other is going to break our critically important (at least to our companies and our carreers
This isn't to knock community-developed distributions - all of my personal systems run them, and I've used them on occasion in enterprise environments where we were just running stuff included in the distro. But like most things, you need to choose the write tool for the job...
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Plenty of people have pointed out the different life cycle of the Enterprise editions, so I won't belabor that point. Besides, it's something I consider sort of moot given the stability of Debian's Stable branch.
More importantly, IMO, is that RHEL and SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) include some semi-proprietary or fully-proprietary code that's useful for integration with other systems. Additionally, a lot more time has been invested in creating an environment that allows the sort of point-and-click administration that Windows admins and PHBs are accustomed to using and seeing (respectively). This is actually incredibly nice for organizations that are just beginning to build Linux expertise.
Additionally -- and perhaps most importantly -- you're paying for access to specific update servers that have a guaranteed availability -- something you simply can't get with "lesser" versions of these products. This single point is what keeps my clients buying RHEL and SLES instead of implementing Debian. Of course, one can argue that Debian's extensive world-wide mirror system is probably more stable than the centrally-controlled RHEL and SLES servers, but explaining the advantages of decentralized controls to PHBs can be challenging at best.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
But you can get what you're calling 'Enterprise support' for Debian - from multiple vendors. From names like IBM and HP, for instance, both of whom will provide this level of support for large customers that choose to run Debian on hardware bought from them.
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