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HP To Sell And Support Red Hat Linux

Posted by timothy on Wed Mar 19, 2003 03:13 PM
from the howdy-pardner dept.
Linux Business Businesses HP Red Hat Software
Dman33 writes "Redhat Linux seems to be gaining an even stronger share in the server and workstation market as HP is announcing worldwide sales and support of the popular distro. Infoworld has a writeup on the announcement and the press release straight from HP is a good read regarding the initiative."
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  • yeah, but (Score:5, Funny)

    by geekoid (135745) <<moc.oohay> <ta> <dnaltropnidad>> on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:15PM (#5546667) Homepage Journal
    is it big enough to hate yet? ;)

  • Big blue supports it, Dell supports it, and now HP is supporting it. More and more, sounds to me like its taking the Microsoft and Unix world by storm.

    • Of course it is, how could you go wrong with a business model that is 100% profit.

      RedHat ISOS - $0
      Charging people for CDs - $ profit
      Charging people to install OS - $ profit
      Charging for support - $ profit

      For everything else, theres Windows.
    • This is Red Hat though, a well packaged Linux distribution.

      Not (IMHO) a technically good Linux distribution, others are leaner and meaner. But for the corperate environment it's ideal. But I do have concerns about the very short length of the security update subscription provided with Red Hat. Installing apt4rpm provides a way around this in some cases.
      • Not a problem. Advanced server offers a five-year minimum timeline for updates, and that's what they have certified - the three new flavours of Advanced server.

      • Uh...I've used Red Hat for years. I download updates when they come out via apt-get, yum, manually when advisories come up on securityfocus...and the problem is that I don't get an email from Red Hat personally?

        The subscription may be more than worth it to a business, but the consumer is hardly under any onus to purchase it.

  • makes you wonder what they'll do with HP-UX... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by term8or (576787) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:17PM (#5546680)
    There are far too many customers using HP-UX to shut it down, but if they are supplying Linux on-the-cheap, why would any new customers buy in to HP-UX?

    Sounds like "pi*sing in the company soup"

    • Re:makes you wonder what they'll do with HP-UX... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stratjakt (596332) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:22PM (#5546732) Journal
      Completely different target customers, at least for the time being.

      HP will probably ship linux on it's x86 based servers, but for the various HP3000/9000 etc big-iron servers, it'll still be HP-UX. I sincerely doubt that linux will have the punch that HP-UX carries on a bigass HP9000 N-class server.

      Eventuall HP-UX and Tru64 will no doubt follow MPE into the lands of obscurity. Although, there are still a ton of MPE users/customers out there (my company being one of them with a few dozen MPE based sites installed).
      • So you are also going through MPE/3000 end of life. :) I feel for you.

        Yup MPE is still *huge* in some places. For example if you do business with a credit union there is a very good chance that they run on a HP 3000 and are working on moving to the HP 9000. And you are right that is not going away for a very long time.
        • It was supposed to be gone by now, AFAIK, but there was enough customer backlash that HP extended support for the 3000 series for another 5 years.

          We've committed to supporting our customers for another 5 years beyond HPs cut-off date. Of course, we're just itching to sell them all unix or NT (powered by Stratus) based replacements.

          The 3000s just dont break, and for the types of systems we sell on 'em, they'd be perfectly adequate chugging along until the end of time. So luckily HP phases em out for us s

    • Re:makes you wonder what they'll do with HP-UX... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mrcparker (469158) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:28PM (#5546798)
      Not for what we use it for. Linux is great for smaller servers and development, but we have machines with terabytes and terabytes of data running on super stable hardware that has features the Linux people are just talking about.

      Plus, if/when Linux is ready it won't be too hard to switch as most of what we run on these machines is pretty standard, they are moving from PA-RISC to Intel Itanium, and support contracts only last a few years. Either way, HP gets our money.

    • Re:makes you wonder what they'll do with HP-UX... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 4of12 (97621) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:28PM (#5546801) Homepage Journal

      why would any new customers buy in to HP-UX?

      Because they're willing to pay a premium for high performance PA-RISC system with loads of processors. Same market as big Sun and IBM machines. Same market that Linux won't eat yet for a couple of years. But you're right - if price is the determining decision in the purchase, Lintel is The Way to Go.

      • ...Same market as big Sun and IBM machines. Same market that Linux won't eat yet for a couple of years...

        Too true (though more than a couple of years I'd say). Most people here don't understand enterprise computing (or they mostly keep quiet). It needs saying again, and again. Linux is not ready. This is not flamebait. It will get there in the end with enough support, but it will require hardware vendor support.

        I think everyone here (that matters :) supports UNIX. Linux is sort of mostly UNIX, I would th
    • I think the problem here is that HP is stuck with, four distinct architectures (IA32, IA64, Alpha, and whatever HP's own CPUs are called) and some five operating systems (Windows, Linux, Tru64 Unix, OpenVMS, HP-UX). While HP is forced to support all those platforms and all possible combinations thereof for legacy reasons, it can certainly pick a direction to go for future development. I think HP's sending very mixed signals on this one, but it's possible that they view Linux as a unifying OS for all their
    • HP announced long ago that they were going to be supporting the next release of Pro/Engineer on Linux and that RedHat was their distro of choice. Pro/E was recently released to the people on service contracts (like us, we have copies here) so it is probably in their best interests to fill out their product line.

      This is no doubt to make that official.

  • HP already has a unix though (Score:3, Interesting)

    by t0qer (230538) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:19PM (#5546704) Homepage Journal
    I couldn't understand why dell dropped linux support, they don't have a UNIX product like HP does. HP with HPUX, why would they want to sell and support linux?

    I guess I could see them doing it for a number of reasons, mainly because it would be a gateway into the small/medium sized business market.

    • Re:HP already has a unix though (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      HP-UX doesnt run on x86 architecture.

      Linux doesnt run (remotely well) on the HP3000/9000 big momma mainframes.

      Two different OS's for two different product lines.

    • Re:HP already has a unix though (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fastball (91927) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:42PM (#5546929) Journal
      HP with HPUX, why would they want to sell and support linux?

      Answer: cheap R&D. HP can leave the development to someone else and focus its efforts on sales. HP is sure to have RedHat's ear when it wants it too. You have to figure that they see the writing on the wall: open source can do what the big boys do and sometimes can do it better. This move helps preserve their hardware sales a la Apple with OSX. Smart. Selling software anymore seems like selling ice to eskimos.

  • I'm glad to see this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by greechneb (574646) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:20PM (#5546709) Homepage Journal
    Speaking from personal experience, my CEO is relucant to approve software with no point of support. The more support open source gets, the easier it makes my job of trying to convince him to move to more open source software.

  • Serious money (Score:3, Insightful)

    by soorma_bhopali (643472) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:23PM (#5546750)
    "HP, in Palo Alto, Calif. , generated about $2 billion in Linux-based revenue in 2002, the company said in Wednesday's statement. "

    Thats freaking huge :) Who said u cannot make money by using linux?

  • What about laptops? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Azog (20907) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:23PM (#5546751) Homepage
    Announcements like this always say "workstations and servers". Don't they think that Linux users want portable devices?

    I just want a good quality Linux laptop with firewire, a built-in CDR, lots of RAM, and a power-efficient CPU. I don't want to pay the Windows tax and I don't want an expensive, high speed CPU.

    (Why the heck anyone needs a 2 GHz CPU in a laptop is a mystery to me. )

    The Lindows "$799" machine would have been perfect but it has no built in CD drive - a fatal deficiency, at least to me.

    • Why the heck anyone needs a 2 GHz CPU in a laptop is a mystery to me.

      Not to me, I know a few people who do graphic design, and having that kind of horsepower in a laptop is absolutely necessary to them.

      A high end laptop and a docking station is also more cost/space effective than a high end desktop and a low end laptop. There are a lot of people who need/want such a portable PC.

      The fact that you dont need or want something obviously means nothing. They sell like hotcakes and HP/Dell/Compaq/Sony rake i

    • I have already said this [slashdot.org], but this announcement is not aimed at selling Linux on HP hardware to Joe consumer. They are selling/supporting the Entrerprise versions of RedHat that are aimed at corporate accounts.

      • Re:What about laptops? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by D'Arque Bishop (84624) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @04:03PM (#5547070)
        I have already said this, but this announcement is not aimed at selling Linux on HP hardware to Joe consumer. They are selling/supporting the Entrerprise versions of RedHat that are aimed at corporate accounts.
        That doesn't mean that corporate laptop users won't want to run Linux. At where I work, we're beginning a rollout to move some of our servers to Linux. Seeing as I'm often on-site at our subsidiaries doing support work, my laptop is my primary PC. However, I'm also going to be one of the primary people supporting Linux, so I'd like to have a "best of both worlds" solution where I have a laptop that runs Linux. I know my boss is trying to get approval for a new laptop for me; it'd make getting me a laptop easier if we could find a manufacturer like Dell or HP/Compaq who sells machines with Red Hat pre-installed.

        Just my $.02...
    • (Why the heck anyone needs a 2 GHz CPU in a laptop is a mystery to me. )

      Portable Maya Machine. I currently carry my desktop to my night job so I can have the ponies for doing 3D work that my Sony Vaio 505FX just can't handle (in fact, maya doesn't even run on it). I'd like to grab a laptop because it would greatly simplify the breakdown/portability issues that carrying a mid-tower case and monitor around pose. The Alienware top-end machine would be a godsend (and yes, I plug it in at work.. I realize th
  • I can't help but think that people will start to associate HP's overall lackluster in the home pc market with linux? Hopefully this is just a server type thing because HP does make some pretty sweet servers. And we definatly don't need noobies with HP's thinking they can tackle red hat just becuase they can change the properties of a shortcut in windows.
  • Wasn't HP making claims to use and support Debian?
    I remember reading articles about HP picking Debian because it was non commercial and the most stable disto out there.

  • Predictable (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ars-Fartsica (166957) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:26PM (#5546776)
    The corporate world is not quite ready to roll out a community based distro, and they probably never will be. While there is support for these distros as well (from third parties), most companies like getting support from the original vendor, for obvious liability reasons.

    The real issue is if this will see HP really pushing linux through its sales channels instead of just being another "we recommend Windows 2000" shill.

  • FWIW HP sponsors Debian.org (Score:5, Funny)

    by cyber_rigger (527103) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:28PM (#5546790) Homepage Journal

    Check out the site sponsor in the lower left corner.

    http://www.debian.org/ [debian.org]

  • déjà vu (Score:5, Informative)

    by gohai (554042) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:29PM (#5546805)
    HP To Sell Custom High-Security GNU/Linux Distro [slashdot.org]
    HP to give 24/7 support for Linux [slashdot.org]

    seems not to be the first time...

  • Free? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jmays (450770)
    So what price will we _pay_ for finally seeing a large consumer desktop/server seller (HP) support and sell _free_ software?

  • Worried... what does this do for x86-64 support? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by onethumb (4479) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:33PM (#5546845) Homepage
    I'm a little concerned that this may lead to no x86-64 (Opteron, Althon64) support from RedHat. :(

    HP co-owns the IP for Itanium with Intel, so they have a vested interest in seeing Itanium get lots of support, and AMD x86-64 get none. RedHat has already announced Itanium versions of Advanced Server [redhat.com], but AFAIK, has been silent on the x86-64 front.

    SuSE has announced [suse.com] long ago that they'd release x86-64 versions of their distro to coincide with Opteron's release, and they seem to be actively involved [x86-64.org] with that process.

    Am I being paranoid here? Or does it look like RH might not support the most cost-effective 64bit platform going? Not all of us have deep pockets for I2. :(

    Don
    my smug mug is on smugmug [smugmug.com] ... is yours?
    • HP is selling and doing phone support for Red Hat. They dont own Red Hat, conrol Red Hat, or any of the such.

      If HP chooses only to sell Itanium based rigs, that's their perogitive. If you want a hammer-equiped red hat rig, dont get it from HP.

      So just relax. This is just HP making sure the latest IT buzzword is prominent in their marketing literature.
  • An HP/Red Hat support partnership is sort of no big deal. It's great to see, but not a surprise.

    What left me semi-stunned (until I regained my natural skepticism) was the following sentence:

    Today's announcement builds on our $2 billion in Linux-based revenue in 2002 and our decade of commitment to the open source and Linux communities," said Peter Blackmore, executive vice president, HP Enterprise Systems Group. (emphasis mine.)

    Where the heck does HP get this figure from? (And if VA Linux couldn't make it in the Linux hardware biz, how come HP is making $2 billion revenues just a couple years later?)

    "Sniff test" problems here... but I wouldn't mind being enlightened by someone from HP.

    --LP

    • Re:The real surprise: HP, $2 billion in Linux reve (Score:4, Informative)

      by borroff (267566) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:49PM (#5546986) Journal
      Remember, HP isn't only hardware; they have a large share of the systems management software market (Openview), and a consulting group as well. If you count all the Openview agent licenses for Linux boxes (which aren't cheap), plus consulting income, plus embedded linux revenue, $2B seems within reach.

    • Re:The real surprise: HP, $2 billion in Linux reve (Score:5, Interesting)

      by McSpew (316871) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @04:10PM (#5547119)

      Where the heck does HP get this figure from?

      ISTR HP snagged a huge Linux deal at Dreamworks [com.com] last year. And they also scored a big Linux deal at Disney [theregister.co.uk].

      The entertainment industry (especially the movie industry) are ironically moving to Linux big-time. The visual effects industry essentially told all their tools suppliers to port to Linux or else. The tools vendors have complied. Expect to see tasks that were traditionally done on SGI or Sun machines to be done pretty much exclusively on Linux machines from now on.

      James Cameron pretty much set the tone for Linux in Hollywood with the renderfarm he used for Titanic [imdb.com]. That farm was built with Digital Alpha processors, but instead of buying DEC Unix (or Tru64 or whatever it was called then), his effects guys put Linux on the machines and saved a couple of hundred grand.

      I find it endlessly amusing that Hollywood is so staunchly in support of intellectual property rights, but is more than willing to enjoy the benefits of Linux.

      • That farm was built with Digital Alpha processors, but instead of buying DEC Unix (or Tru64 or whatever it was called then), his effects guys put Linux on the machines and saved a couple of hundred grand

        Even worse for DEC/Compaq, they weren't really DEC Alphas, but Alpha clones. Was weird to see them rave about this "Titanic made using Alpha technology", when they didn't use DEC hardware or software, just use Alpha chips from someone else. They may have got a few bucks on Alpha licensing for those clone

  • Would the Real HP please step forward (Score:5, Insightful)

    by demo9orgon (156675) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @04:06PM (#5547088) Homepage
    Anyone who had to mess with the wacky 9u Compaq server hardware of a couple of years ago and wanted to run Linux on knows that Compaq (before HP) and RedHat we're holding hands a long time before this announcement. Not kissing or petting, but there was a tacit agreement that Compaq supported the RedHat distros (6.x and 7.x series) and RedHat made sure to roll their SCSI array drivers into the mix. They were good friends, and probably even exchanged a couple of "partner" trinkets over the years.

    Before this, Dell was the RedHat "Daddy". That was probably before Michael Dell and Steve Ballmer had a couple of meetings and came to the agreement that Linux was bad for Dell in the "consumer space", which somehow included their laptops, and their website. Anyone remember the "powerapp" boxen. They were good, and came with RH 6.2 and 7.0 distros. That was before "Red the Hat", decided to really mess up their distro.

    This latest announcement is a "Stock market Ad" designed to make both HP and RedHat look better than usual (warty beasts with scrabbling claws and pale lidless eyes which cannot withstand the brilliant light of full-disclosure) and to signal that server clients and channel partners can "Have RedHat, we mean Linux, with that".

    And after RedHat's 8.x they can eat their distro one mylar shard at a time...I'll be nice and let them choose which end they want it in, because it's never going to see my servers again. Ever.

  • HP Not So Great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nuintari (47926) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @08:33PM (#5549263) Homepage
    Saw HP at a trade show a few months back, IBM was also present. They both were doing blade servers, and let me tell you, HP's look like crap compared to what IBM offers for a similar price. IBM's will share the console fully digitally, whereas HP's comes with a piece of hardware that has to be snapped into place on the front of the blade, and moved around to share the console. And its too big to just buy a ton of them and put one on each blade, so you can't even go buy a phat kvm to save your sanity.

    Did I mention that IBM brought a full rack of working blades with redhat, windows 2k, openbsd, freebsd, suse, and a few other linux distros, and showed off the awesome power? HP brought two broken blade servers and pointed at the Xeon's inside and said, "Intel! Intel!"

    Not saying its bad to see Red Hat get exposure, but HP doesn't rate high in my book, and I know a lot of other people who feel the same way. This might give Red Hat a bad name.

    If my HP sales rep is reading, this is why everytime you send me a new offer, I go right to my customers and say, "IBM! Pro Micro!"

    • Re:A hardware monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gortbusters.org (637314) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:24PM (#5546757) Homepage Journal
      The question is when I walk into CompUSA, Circuit City, and all those other consumer heavens of electronics.. will I see a HP workstation running RedHat?

      Or will it just be an obscure option burried in their website?

      • Re:A hardware monopoly (Score:5, Informative)

        by irix (22687) on Wednesday March 19 2003, @03:49PM (#5546984) Journal
        Did you read the article?

        "The Red Hat operating systems covered by this agreement include Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS, used in high-end servers for demanding tasks such as database and enterprise applications; Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES, used in smaller, departmental servers, such as mail, Web and print servers; and Red Hat Enterprise WS, used in workstations."

        CompUSA will still just be selling HP home PCs bundled with WinXP home. This is for commercial accounts who want RedHat Linux with their HP servers or workstations and are prepared to pay for it.
    • Carly and Capellas went above and beyond the call of duty to destroy most of the interesting engineering that was done at DEC and the other firms (Tandem, etc) that have been borged over the years. The result has been the creation of the ultimate outsourcer of commodity junk "me-too" product on the market. Hopefully they will succeed through sheer scale at this point, since that is all they have left.
    • Score:1, Insightful???

      This must have been moderated by some gentoo douchebag (on his mom's PC) via a wget cronjob that checks slashdot every 20 min for pro gentoo comments.

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