Red Hat, SUSE Announce Educational Discounts 242
geoff313 writes "Good news week for Linux users in the education field, as both Red Hat and SUSE have announced that they will
provide academic discounts in an effort to attract "students and
educational institutions." According to this article published
on CNET, while both companies have decided to offer discounts,
they are each going about it a different way. SUSE has begun to offer
"schools, students, universities and nonprofit customers a discount of
more than 40 percent through two sales partners, CCV Software and Ricis." Red Hat, on the other hand,
plans to offer two new versions of its distributions, based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux
(RHEL) line. The first, aimed at students and named Red Hat
Academic Desktop, will sell for $25 and is based on RHEL WS. The
second, to be sold to schools and named Red Hat Academic Server, will sell for $50 and is based off RHEL ES. Both products will include online
updates (presumably through its Red
Hat Network) but will not include telephone support. Bulk pricing
is also available, and administrative licenses will be available
soon."
Free as in $25 (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, what a world, when Windows is cheaper for students than Linux.
Well (Score:3, Interesting)
Non-Profit and serious discounts! (Score:5, Interesting)
No thanks Redhat (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No thanks Redhat (Score:3, Interesting)
RTFA!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Our univ. is on RH 9.0 now, and they use the free Pink Tie CD's. After the reports of Fedora's instability, the SysAdmins have kind of 'rebelled' and are asking for RH WS for the systems they admin. This agreement for $2,500 makes perfect sense in this scenario. The Uni already has substantial support people, and are going to require RH resources very very infrequently.
So RTFA before you assume the RH solution is going to be more expensive...
Great timing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of days ago, Slashdot announces an interview with the CEO of Red Hat. I ask, more or less, "Why the hell don't you have educational discounts?" The question goes to +5, which presumably means it gets forwarded to CEO Szulik. Other posters from educational institutions follow-up my post, to the effect that they are already planning to abandon Red Hat rather than eat the steep price hike to Red Hat Enterprise.
And now, Red Hat has educational discounts.
Re:I thought universities just downloaded it for f (Score:4, Interesting)
Rubbish. Slackware can be used perfectly well on an extended-lifetime basis, and so can Debian. In fact, I guess Debian has extended lifetime by definition, since new releases occur about once a decade :-).
Re:No thanks Redhat (Score:5, Interesting)
However, RH's move has made my business lose a lot of crediablity because RH had started to build a brand for Linux in the business market. The SMB's I work with are always looking for anything that help their bottom line. One bussiness would have saved an estimated $10,000 over the next three years in licing fees for OS's and Office Software. They are still going to use OpenOffice, only for Windows now.
I have to give kudos to M$ about one thing, they support products for 5 years and give 6 months notice its going away. People expect that after 5 years in the tech world, programs wouldn't be supported.
First off, it seemed like to me that 7.2 was around a while then 7.3, 8, and then 9 suddenly came out almost back to back. The about a year after 9 is released we get the, "This product will not be supported". The idea that Linux would have a longer support life for older versions longer than that of Windows was a selling point, and one that has turned into a myth. Ever try to find working RPM's for the latest PHP release for RH 7.3? After 3 hours of searching, I gave up and installed FreeBSD 4.8.
As a consultant, I was seeing Linux having a huge push onto corperate desktops by 2006. Especially in Europe and SE Asia. RH's choice to end the biggest brand in NA Linux was a major blow for the Linux adoptation in the US. Now with SuSE in the hands of a North American Company I wonder how much that will impeed their sucess. Part of SuSE's appeal in Europe, I studied in Germany for a year in a college that had 2 SuSE labs, and 1 Windows lab, I noticed how students were learning how to use Linux. Also, as the EU emerges as an economic giant, there was emerging this, "Use EU products" ideal going on and SuSE provided that ablity. It was a German product made in the EU that could give the Europeans a major leg up in providing leading edge software and technology to the rest of the world as the Anti-AMerican back-lash continues to grow.
Now I am not sure what direction things will go. Most people, including myself, are taking a wait and see additude with Novell. Its not clear if Novell is aiming for the Enterprise level, where they are already experts at delivering great enterprise software like eDirectory, or if they will continue the Desktop line. I am still waiting for Novell to make their Linux strategy clear. If they decide to push Linux into corperate desktops, then I beleive that will help to increase the adoptation of Linux in the business market. If not, it will set back Linux on the desktop at least another three to five years.
I had three potential clients looking at switching their desktops to Linux. These had 20 - 40 employees using computers. With one it was time to replace their AS/400 server and Desktops. Linux looked to be the way to go, but with the Linux limbo, we are looking again. They love IBM products and were going to go IBM eServers with RH Linux. However, this move has made them unwilling to trust RH. They see it has RH is either having business, ie cash flow, problems or "Well they did this, what is to keep them from being like M$ and say that six month later we'll have to use something else?". The other client decided to ditch Linux completely and all their Linux boxes will be replaced with 2k3 servers by Jan and all new Dell desktops.
I know that I can not professionally recommend Red Hat Linux because I no longer trust them and the reputation blow I have taken has caused some personal Angst. In fact, this was the final blow for me and Linux for most applications. Those needing a kiosk solution I will recommend the linux-based FirecaseOS and needing a flexiable embedded OS will get the nod to look at Linux, but I am now recommending FreeBSD for Servers and Apple Macintosh OS X for Unix desktops.
Free as in The First One's Always Free... (Score:3, Interesting)
The first one's always free, boyo. Guess what will happen when you graduate? Poof! Your license goes up in a puff of bits. You have two choices after that:
Actually there is a third choice: tell Microsoft to stuff themselves, and run a F/OSS operating system instead. This is why more Colleges and Universities should have LUGs, particularly Colleges and Universities with site licenses with Microsoft.
And last I checked, Knoppix is still 100% free, as in beer, speech and freedom. You can't beat that.