Paid Support Not Critical For Linux Adoption

ruphus13 writes "At the LinuxWorld expo, an analyst for the 451 Group pointed to a growing trend in enterprise — the increase in adoption of community-supported Linux distros. From the article, 'Companies are increasingly choosing free community-driven Linux distributions instead of commercial offerings with conventional support options. Several factors are driving this trend, particularly dissatisfaction with the cost of support services from the major distributors. Companies that use and deploy Linux internally increasingly have enough in-house expertise to handle all of their technical needs and no longer have to rely on Red Hat or Novell.'"

Comments

We started with Red Hat

[JoeCommodore]

We started with RHEL3, especially since we ordered a Dell Server and it could come with the server, thus I knew RH would just work on it. Never seemed to get my money's worth out of support (if you are going to administer it, you might as well learn it, so I answered most questions by myself.) A year or so later, instead of going RHEL4 I went to CentOS 4 next, as it had the same necessary apps and updates, support didn't matter so I had the OS without the bothersome RedHat Network license validation nag screens.

About a year after that I got tired of CentOS - when I started looking at options for a cross-platform backup solution, CentOS was the low man on the compatible distribution totem pole, sometimes not even there at all, most support requestes ended with some vague problem with dependencies and an 'oh well'.

Also learned to shy away from SuSE then too, as I noticed around that time any Novell associated projects usually dropped any non-SuSE binaries (i.e. iFolder).

But Ubuntu had just about everything there, was well updated, and a lot of forums with solutions. Granted, Ubuntu lacked the nice SAMBA admin program (GSAMBAD needs help), but I never have any problems finding apps or resolving installation issues quickly.

How did Ubuntu get it's community?

[VoyagerRadio]

How did Ubuntu get such a huge community so quickly? I remember hearing about Ubuntu shortly after I installed Xandros on my system, about three or four years ago. I began looking into Ubuntu, and its community was exploding, and still seems to be. I wouldn't be surprised if alot of enterprises are installing this distro now, based on its community. Yet still: why Ubuntu? Why not one of the other similar distros? Is it the name? The slogan? The color scheme? Mark Shuttleworth? What's the deal?

Re:How did Ubuntu get it's community?

[theheadlessrabbit]

because after installing some other linux distros and having a horrible time getting anything to work right, i gave ubuntu a shot, and everything just worked right away.

why ubuntu?
because it works.

i want my time on the computer to be wasted reading slashdot, not wasted by pointless driver/hardware issues.

Re:How did Ubuntu get it's community?

[rtb61]

It really was a combination of factors.The slogan? So Mark Shuttleworth choices in establishing the principles of Ubuntu certainly had a lot to do with it. The logo, the slogan and the principles behind them had a lot to do with it. The friendliness of the support forums had a lot to do with it. The quality of the distribution had a lot to do with it. The variants possible within the distribution Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edbuntu, Xubuntu and now Gobuntu had a lot to do with it.

It all really points to the choice that open source provides and the principles of sharing the effort. Once any open source product gains a bit of a lead and of course adheres to the principles upon which it is founded, it gains additional users, which provides greater numbers for support, development and distribution, which gains additional users, which naturally enough creates greater numbers for support, development and distribution , etc. What tends to disrupt that cycle is a change in principles of the founders of that particular open source product and this happens because a variant can so readily be created which does adhere to the preferred principles of the majority of actual end users.

So redhat went a bit corporate, SuSe via Novell went a bit M$ ie. nucking futs, mandrake was struggling with finances, Sun was struggling to get a handle on it, IBM like a millipede is pretty smartly keeping a foot in every door possible and most of the others were not really seeking a broad Linux market, so Ubuntu, right principles at the right time and a very good job they done of it indeed.

I work at a 900+ seat Red Hat shop

[Jailbrekr]

And while we *do* pay for support and it has come in handy on occasion, I have found that google is a far more valuable tool than their support services. First off, it doesn't take 2 days to get a response when you are using google. Second, you aren't forced to do a sysreport by some 1st tier keyboard jockey in Bangalore before they will even consider thinking about the problem you are reporting.

Now, having said that, when you manage to escalate your problem to someone high enough up, you do get quality support. you just have to jump through hoops to get there, which really does IMO make the value of the paid support rather questionable.

Re:Support is Better

[zappepcs]

Can I add a bit to that? ok, sure I will.

Businesses like to have 24/7 support so they can point fingers at someone else. Anyone who has supported Solaris for the last 10 years knows that supporting Linux is a walk in the park. Having forums and "The Google" is a bonus.

In my current day-time job, they are adopting F/OSS based on cost. After the initial 2-4 year honeymoon the PHBs have finally realized that the knowledge base in-house is as good as what they can pay for, and community support is often faster than a phone call, things have worked out smoothly. We pay for minimum support to ensure timely patches, that's it. Some systems that are not 100% mission critical fall to Fedora or CentOS and in-house admins to manage it.

We have 40-75% of hardware hitting end-of-life and the choice to move to commodity hardware with Linux OS is becoming very easy, almost expected. Its a point where is seems a no-brainer, just whack in a blade server with a LAMP stack and configure.. what's the hold up? what do you mean it will be 3 weeks? Seriously. Now that they see the competence of F/OSS on commodity hardware it is the go-to configuration because of in-house knowledge and skill and the fact that owning the skills makes it a true zero cost option compared to others.

Re:Support is Better

[spandex_panda]

The Ubuntu forums are very helpful. I resent them being referred to as 'kiddie' forums. I do agree that there is a difference between these busy forums and those more edgy, maybe hardcore forums though.

One example from my experience as a new less than 3 years Linux user is that I started on debian and their IRC was fantastic, folks in there would walk me through "read the man page"! but they have no forum that I know of (maybe a mailing list). Ubuntu IRC is clogged up most of the time, but you can get questions answered there too, its just that the help isn't always as fast/good. I now pretend to be using debian and ask them for help and they are very helpful 'till they discover that I use Ubuntu and then they go all dark and silent on me!!!!

Having said that, in Ubuntuforums there are fantastic walkthroughs, howtos and other folks with the same problem who found a solution all over the place and I highly recommend it. Its not just full of kiddies.