[lug] SuSE vs. RedHat distro differences

[John Karns]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Ferdinand Schmid said:

> RedHat currently seems to publish all of their software on the net.  
> What you get extra for purchasing a distro is support.  Now I haven't 
> every received any real help from RH so they last saw money from me over 
> three years ago.  I am sure their support has improved significantly. 
> Anyway - SuSE releases 3 distros per year, that is $210 per year for the 
> upgrades.  FTP however doesn't cost me anything since I have a T1 
> available.  If I only have one system to maintain then SuSE is more 
> expensive than Microsoft as far as the license goes. 
> It may be that SuSE is making their money mostly on sales where RH is 
> more focused on charging for support. 

I'm not sure about the current situation with SuSE since they're now
offering a "pro" version (includes both the regular 6 CD set plus a
single DVD), but as of ver. 6.4 I was buying it at CompUSA for $30 - which
would make it $90 for the 3 annual releases.

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John Karns                                              jkarns at csd.net