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Novell Businesses Red Hat Software

Novell Linux Desktop 9 Vs. Redhat Enterprise WS? 83

Posted by Cliff from the when-the-IT-dept-finally-caves dept.
amorelock asks: "I manage a small group of 4-6 Linux software engineers / developers that are part of a larger engineering organization. Our IT department has finally, after several months of pushing-back, decided to support our Linux workstations. The have requested that we use an off the shelf distribution that will be fairly easy to manage and maintain (we're talking about Microsoft folks with practically zero Linux experience). We are evaluating both Novell Linux Desktop 9 and Redhat Enterprise WS. Have any fellow Slashdot folks had experience with either of these two distributions, and if so, what did you like or dislike about either of them?"
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Novell Linux Desktop 9 Vs. Redhat Enterprise WS? More

Novell Linux Desktop 9 Vs. Redhat Enterprise WS?

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  • Novell vs. RedHat? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ignorant_coward ( 883188 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @06:27PM (#13008664)

    It's a tough choice, but I guess I'd go with Solaris 10.

    • Solaris 10 is not a valid option here. They have to use a "an off the shelf [*Linux*] distribution that will be fairly easy to manage and maintain". But if *I* had a broader spectre for desktop systems then I'd say MacOS X.

      • Lack of a sense of humor is distasteful here on slashdot. Please find the restroom, take a dump, and lighten up.
      • My personal preference IS actually OS X. Not an option for my environment here. Kernel development, embedded distro's etc....
        • A little strange you are responsible for kernel dev. and "embedded distros" and struggle come up with an engineering report to decide on which dektop distro to use.

          Choices such as these are ones companies make on a very regular basis without ever having to Ask Slashdot. Come up with your requirements, come up with a test plan for those requirements and tick the boxes. Once all the boxes are ticked (or not :-) ) pick the winner or, as some companies do, pick the one you wanted to pick anyway whether or
      • Parent (currently modded redundant) has a very valid point. OSX is the easiest to maintain desktop *nix, and to boot the best common desktop in the world. Since it can run OSX, classic MacOS, BSD* and Linux* software it has considerably more options available to users.

        Personally, I'm very happy with SuSE 9.2 and I was very happy with SuSE 7.3. I view SuSE as the perfect middle ground of great support and installers and RedHat. More importantly, SuSE has always, without fail, just worked for everything.
  • It tries to be a 100% compatible RHEL clone. They're donation based and promise long term updates, basically just recompiling the upstream RHEL packages and rebranding whereever it's required by Red Hat's trademark license.

    • Re:Try CentOS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by damiangerous ( 218679 ) <1ndt7174ekq80001@sneakemail.com> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @06:46PM (#13008886)
      Why would he want to do that? CentOS is RedHat for free without the support. As a business that will rely on these machines, they're willing to pay money for the assurance that they'll have Red Hat's assistance if necessary. When someone is willing to pay to get what they need, it doesn't make sense to offer something that isn't what they need with the incentive that "it's free".
      • Subscription support models don't work for everyone. For about $300 a year per desktop, you get security patches and the possibility of support, if your problem falls within the limited scope defined on their site and if you think they can respond with the answer faster than you can find it on Google.
  • Redhat has fewer packages and is a simpler distrobution. I would use that except that it lacks a few things that SUSE has.

    But if you want to avoid support headaches, then you might consider just using Knoppix 4.0 DVD edition with the UnionFS . Just have each of your users store files using UnionFS on a separate hard drive.
    • actually, you need advice from other developers who are developing on Linux... someone who actually has experience...
    • I always had 3rd party package and compilation problems on SuSE. If you wanted to select from their recipie, it was the best thing going. Try and "roll your own", then you wondered why it was made so non-obvious.

      I hope this has changed in a year as Novell - but I'm guessing prolly not.

      • Nope, still pretty much the same. If you install apt4rpm on SuSE it helps somewhat, but the apt repositories for SuSE are lacking compared to what's out there for other major distros. Most of the stuff I had problems with, though, are things that I doubt would be of much interest in an office setting, though, so it might be OK to use SuSE/NDL in this case.
  • How many times do have to read these "shootouts" here that devolve into conversations, not about the two distributions and enterprise support and interoperability other distros that will never be seen in a production environment?
    • correction.... How many times do have to read these "shootouts" here that devolve into conversations, not about the two distributions and enterprise support and interoperability, BUT other distros that will never be seen in a production environment?
      • ur just a gentoo h8r! i spent weeks pimpin my CFLAGS and now ill bet i can engineer twice as fast as the looser who submitted this!
      • Well you would be suprised what ends up in a production environment. 2 shops ago we started out assuming that we'd want an enterprise Linux, in the end we found out that we needed to customize far more than even a "gentoo" type solution would allow and used a combination of two distributions which don't even make the top 10 and RedHat i.e. we really rolled our own. Its funny how little support matters compared to the advantages of truly open systems like Linux.

        That being the case I'd agree this is not a

  • Debian (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Mr2cents ( 323101 )
    I used Suse until 2.5 years ago, but I switched to Debian because of the different 'flavors', professional, enterprise, whatnot. The problem was that once you installed a certain version, and then you wanted to update via the net, you then ended up with another 'free' flavor, messing up the setup in my case. So I switched to Debian and the upgrades through apt-get are really sensational for an admin.

    I know it wasn't on your list of options, but because you didn't explain why you were limiting your options

    • Re:Debian (Score:2, Insightful)

      by amorelock ( 898009 )
      I've used Debian in the past and liked it (tho i'm currently a hardened gentoo user). I'm really just looking for a distro that is easy for non linux folks to manage / maintain.

      Thanks for the reply...
      • Are these people who are willing to learn and won't be annoyed or afraid by the idea of manually editing config files? Then Gentoo with a default --usepkg might be best. Or VidaLinux, if it's for the desktop.

        Otherwise, I'd go for a Debian-style (or Debian-based) distro. These days, Debian is seen to lack support; you might prefer Ubuntu, as a server or a workstation.

        I admit I haven't tried SuSE or RedHat. Perhaps when I have a hard drive with more than 10.2GB total, I'll try them.

      • I recently installed a Debian system for some windows user. I was surprised how easily he managed to deal with it, he had only had a basic unix course at school.

        I explained him by phone how to format an extra drive and put it in fstab, he did just fine after a minute of explanation.

        In my opinion Debian is quite easy to manage once properly set up, then awaits the task of reading hundreds of man-pages and HOWTO's over the next couple of years. Imho that's the best way to get a profound understanding of GNU

  • Ubuntu (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Beuno ( 740018 )
    I know this wasnt one of your options, but I have implemented Ubuntu very well with a very good reception from non-tech users.

  • you are missing the point of the question.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SatanMat ( 757225 ) <PowellS@gmail.com> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @06:51PM (#13008934) Journal
    I rather think that most of you so far have failed to grasp what SHOULD be the question here...

    he said we're talking about Microsoft folks with practically zero Linux experience

    I rather think IMHO the correct question is "WHO has the best support."

    If his MS folks are to feel good about this, pick the distro with the best support. phone, email, in person, or web.

  • NLD! (bias alert!) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by swerk ( 675797 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:08PM (#13009094) Journal
    ...I have to praise NLD. I'm a Novell employee. :^)

    Way back when, I used Red Hat as my first serious GNU/Linux rig. I'm glad I did, it was well suited for teaching me the ropes, and my buddies knew it, at least moreso than they knew any other distro. Of course, that was a different time, Red Hat was the undisputed king of distros. Eventually I ran out of patience for RPM hell, which I'm sure has gotten much better in recent years. I wound up taking a deep breath and diving into Slackware, where I knew I'd basically be on my own. I love it, I love basically building everything myself. I should try one of these new-fangled Gentoo type distros that promise to do the grunt work for me.

    At work, of course, it's SuSE and NLD, and I'm honestly very impressed with both. SuSE's my weapon of choice as a developer, but it's not hard for me to understand NLD's high marks in terms of usability and as a general Windows-replacement OS.

    I'm obviously biased, and I haven't even touched a Red Hat distro in some time, apart from a short fling with Fedora on some spare hardware. And it's not as though the stuff coming out of Red Hat's been getting bad press either, both Red Hat and Novell's offerings to the business world have been really solid lately from the sounds of it. It's probably little more than a matter of taste right now. Novell obviously hopes to shift that and do some very big things in the desktop space, and I think we will. So my knee-jerk recommendation stands; Novell's not going to let you down if you're looking for a solid GNU/Linux OS but don't have any experience with such things.

    Just don't let those of us with flamethrowers influence your decision. :^)
    • yum has helped a lot on RH/Fedora updating. There are still some packages that don't get into the update sites as RPMs quickly enough, but that's what the support subscription should be for, right?

      I've been meaning to try NLD but so far Fedora has met my simple needs.
    • ran out of patience for RPM hell...diving into Slackware...building everything myself

      Let me see if I got this straight. The Redhat Package Manager doesn't always work so you moved to Slackware where you build everything yourself. Did I get that right? Why did you have to move to Slackware? Can't you build what you need on a RedHat distro?

      I still use RedHat. Most of the time, the RPM works fine. When it doesn't, I install the source and build it. Sometimes I have to get into it to solve build errors but

      • Yeah, I didn't explain that too well. :^) I certainly could have stuck with Red Hat. There was more to it than being pissed off at RPMs though.

        I was still a relative newbie to GNU/Linux. I was using RPMs as a crutch, which led to extra irritation when they didn't work correctly. I thought that by presenting myself with a sink-or-swim situation, I'd force myself to get to the point where I knew what the heck was going on and would no longer use or need any crutches. Slackware jumped out at me as a good
  • How do you plan to updates these? Do you want people to comment on how Red Hat Network or Novell's (Ximian's) Red Carpet or Zenworks?
  • What you want these systems to do? Integrate into AD? Any Linux can do that... You *need* to pay for some kind of Linux? Well if you just *need* then toss the coin and decide... :)

    To be honest I don't quite get the problem. Maybe you should read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html [catb.org] - cause now you ask like "Which is better?".
  • it doesn't matter which one you choose. I bet for what you will be using them for the only difference you will need to look at will be vendor support. Both of these distributions are top of the line for business support and you will not go wrong by choosing either of them.

    Now, if I had to choose one I would suggest you go with SuSE all else being equal. The reason for this is that their newest desktop 9.3 is a very good distro and it will keep you happy. But if you went with Redhat you would be happy a
    • I have used both too, and have used about half a dozen flavors of SuSE over the past year too (9.0 Pro, 9.1 Pro, 9.2 Pro, 9.3 Pro LiveDVD (which I am in right this second), 9.3 Pro, 9.0 Enterprise Server) and although 9.3 is really good - you need a footnote that it uses a new Xwindows engine (like Xorg instead of XF86) and the latest kernel - and between being on the bleeding edge of both the GUI and kernel means a bunch of stuff isn't going to work out of the box (Sybase ASE 12.5 is proving to be a seriou

  • Having used both... (Score:2, Informative)

    by HexaByte ( 817350 )
    I prefer SuSE, hands down over RH.

    However, if I were looking for a WinDoze replacement, I think you should look at Xandros for the desktop.

  • Having Used Both (Score:3, Informative)

    by thegrassyknowl ( 762218 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:33PM (#13009310)
    Having used both RHEL (albeit only for a few days) and Suse recently, I can say that I feel RHEL is the better distro.

    Actually, I was looking on the Suse website and somehow ended up at a German page. Clicking back loaded the previous page in German as well, and so on. That made it even easier to justify downloading the RHEL evaluation.

    RHEL installed with minimal fuss. All the hardware in my PC was picked up, including the wireless networking and bluetooth. The installer is pretty-much Fedora but RedHat branded. The whole thing feels much like Fedora, but obviously there are some improvements and proprietary parts.

    We are trying to get ClearCase installed on RHEL ES4, but it's proving to be ellusive even though Rational claims it's fully supported. I'm going through the second round of ClearCase patches now to try and fix the userspace and stop the kernel panics (it is a ClearCase problem - doesn't do it until clearcase is installed).

    All I can suggest to the OP is download both the evaluations; Suse/Novel have a DVD download and RHEL comes as 4 CDs. You have to register with the respective companies and you get a 30 day trial. Run them on two similar machines, side-by-side and see how they stack up in terms of a few criteria that are important to you.

    • Re:Having Used Both (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Having used both RHEL (albeit only for a few days)...

      Hey, I'm wondering if there are any valet drivers from expensive resorts here, who can tell me whether I should go with the M5 or for about the same price I can get a Lotus...I just don't know, but I need a really solid driving car. Any tips?
  • It seems to me they should pick which one they want to support and give you a very cogent reason why. If they are not capable of even that, then why in hell would you let them have root access to your boxes? I know you probably don't want to be opositional here but they may waste your time more than anything else. What are you using today? Why not stick with it?

  • NLD rules (Score:2, Informative)

    by libra-dragon ( 701553 )
    YAST is a kickass tool for newbies to manage linux. I personally think the curses version is nearly identical to managing a NetWare console --as elegant as it is simple. NLD has a very easy installation.

    The integration work that Novell has done with the UI is quite nice. Novell has provided some nice OOo integration with network file access, dialog boxes and improved printing. Additional plusses include the fact that they aquired Ximian which means full Evolution support. I'm not sure how RH supports their
    • I have to agree RE Yast, especially for people coming from Windows.

      Everyone I've known that began their Linux experience with SuSE has ended up using Linux primarily or exclusively within 2 years, myself included. I can't say that about any other distro.

    • IMHO, NLD has a product that can enable them to lead the linux desktop movement. Now they just need to work on the marketing piece.

      Hasn't that always been the problem at Novell? Superior tech, lousy marketing.
  • I've used both, and I'd say the hardware support for SuSE is a bit better. Took RH forever to finally move over to the 2.6 kernel or any of the current video drivers. One of the things that turned me off to RH was the 'all your base' clause in the agreement - they have the brass to stipulate on site audits if the mood so swings. With 4-6 users, it is right on the edge... take a look at setting up a partnership with either company as you can save some major change.

    On a more practical note: BEA seems to

  • I'd have to say SUSE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by invisik ( 227250 ) * on Thursday July 07, 2005 @09:29PM (#13010069) Homepage
    I have somewhat of a bias being a Novell Gold Business Partner and previously being a SUSE Business Partner. But in our partnering decisions great time and painstaking care was involved evaluating and examining the market.

    As many others have said, RedHat and SUSE are both enterprise-class, stable products with great tech and community support. They run lots of commercial applications without modification. Either one is a great general purpose choice for your desktop environment. I feel the NLD product has a more unifed feel and management through YAST. Many RedHat admins dislike SUSE because of YAST, that it changes many config files and no one really knows what it is doing. Be that as it may, managing your network (and possibly having somewhat less skilled Help Desk staff) is made much easier by letting YAST take on the brunt of that work. YAST is a GUI and a command-line application, so you get the best of those two worlds as well. In my typical environments, you don't want the end-user going to the command-line at all if you can help it, as YAST is a great way to keep things straight.

    Both systems run Gnome or KDE, so your desktop choice would be more of a decision for how much training you can provide as well as what fits best in your environment. Again, both are enterprise-class environment and both a good choice. Both OS's can run pograms designed for either window manager (aka, you can run Gnome apps in KDE if you have the KDE libraries installed, and vice versa) so you aren't missing out on applications due to window manager issues or widget libraries.

    I think Novell is pushing further with more innovations on the desktop (or "features" they are not always new to the computer world) then RedHat is at this time. The SUSE Professional product is really a test-bed for what goes into Novell Linux Desktop. It seem Fedora Core is the same, but feels more like they keep it no-cost so people will continue to use RedHat products. I'll probably get flamed for that, but that's just my impression.

    Hardware support (for laptops anyway) seems better in SUSE. Fedora Core 4 won't work with my 802.11 wireless card in my IBM Thinkpad X31 (yes, have to jump through hoops to get it working). It has worked on SUSE since 9.0 out of the box (3 versions ago). But this is not a huge problem these days as you can buy your hardware with linux in mind, and more drivers for new hardware are available.

    Finally, determine your support needs and see what offerings both companies have. If you have really green linux admins (like your current Windows admins probably are) you may need many incidents the first year and then fewer after that. You should be able to get a fairly customized support package from either vendor.

    Best of luck on your journey!

    -m
  • With NLD, you can get these [novell.com]

    Well, you can get them anyway - just send a SASE. But it would be kind of silly to put a NLD sticker on your RH box...

  • Having used SUSE for quite some time, and having recently kicked all the Windows out, I would go with Novell for the support.

    Yast2 is dead simple. There's a lot of great material regarding migration on the Novell website, which is really geared towards Windows people.

    I also like that they seem to have reasonable self-study kits.

    Red Hat, no matter what they say, has always seemed to be more server-oriented anyway. I think your Windows guys would get confused. (My boss seems to get confused anytime I sugge

  • "Now that we've gotten management onboard with linux, how do we get support that is acceptable/valueable to both the end-user and IT management?"

    I have experienced first-hand the pain of turning over my linux box to the Windows only admins. It is very difficult to have your rights taken away, and have to walk the "admin" though a task that would have only taken seconds.
  • Redhat charges quite a bit for their support (server-wise, anyway, not sure about their desktop) and I'm not sure they have the best rep in the industry for that support.

    Novell has a long history of decent support of their customers and I believe their prices for workstations are less than Red Hat's (correct me if I'm wrong here, I haven't looked recently.)

    The only question you might have is Novell's long-term viability vrs Red Hat's. But since Novell HAS been around longer, has a lot of cash in the bank
  • If we're supposed to be comparing like distributions, then shouldn't it be SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS or Novell Linux Desktop vs. Red Hat Desktop? SLES is aimed at the enterprise workstation market just like RHEL WS is. ...though an argument could be made for SL Pro I think.
    • you do know that the WS stands for workstation?
      • You mean that WS used to stand for workstation. In fact, they changed it from "workstation" to WS because they wanted the product to be for more things than just workstations. For example, cluster nodes [redhat.com].

        Regardless, SLES (despite the name) is Novell's enterprise code base and goes beyond servers. In fact, Novell Linux Desktop is based on SLES.
        • I should also note... Novell Linux Desktop is for the commercial desktop market and isn't intended to be a workstation product like RHEL WS is.

          Yeah yeah; "desktop" and "workstation" are both clients, but us marketing people see the world a little differently. You wouldn't run a CAD program on an eMachine, would you?
          • I probably would, toss in soem more ram and a nice video card and it's probably still cheaper than a lot of fancier brands. the line between desktop and workstations is a lot fuzzier than the line between workstation and server.
        • Well when it seem like horrible marketing on thaeir part to call their offering that they would reccomend for work stations "Enterprise Server," furthermore after reading descriptions it seems like NLD is closer to RHEL WS than SLES is even if NLD is close to Red Hat Desktop as well, though they also have Suse Linux Pro in that market.

          And the main difference between RHD and RHEL WS seems to be suppoert for 2 CPUs, Itanium (a market failure), and 4gb of ram (I'm sure this limitation will disappear in a few

  • You should consult your marketing people... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by biglig2 ( 89374 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @04:08AM (#13011806) Homepage Journal
    Seriously, they know what distro you should use.

    You see, if you read your question carefully, you'll notice that you are Linux developers. Which means you are making a Linux product, that your company sells. Which means you should be using whatever distro your customers use. Marketing should have those figures for you.

    Even if you're writing for some embedded box or such, find the distro closest to the one being used.

  • It's pretty much of a muchness for 6 machines (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ZG-Rules ( 661531 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @06:27AM (#13012130) Homepage
    I run RHEL WS (3 and 4) for a University. There are some great things you can do for automated deployment, it's rock solid stable, works on everything but bleeding edge hardware and it does everything most people want.

    That said, it's crippled in that it ships without mp3 and avi support. This is fixable (on an enterprise scale if you know what you are doing), but annoying.

    If something's broken (ACLs over NFS for one) it takes RedHat a long time to acknowledge that it's broken and even longer to release a fix - despite the fact we have 16000 licences and a support contract! This is however a disadvantage of any "Enterprise" distribution.

    RedHat is also gnome-centric. This is not a bad thing in itself unless you must have KDE - in which case you must be prepared for RH to say "I'm sorry we won't include because we focus on Gnome."

    That said, the enterprise management tools (RedHat Network) absolutely rocks my world, but will be much less useful for 6 machines. I don't think SuSE/Novell have anything that come close to rivalling this. But YMMV of course.

    I haven't used Novell Desktop 9, but I have used SuSE extensively and nominally support it for academic use. YaST is good, but then so are the redhat-config-* tools. Novell is much more KDE driven - if you like that kind of thing. SuSE Pro is much better with newer hardware and automating NVidia binary driver install (among others) - but NLD may well suffer from the same stale odour as RHEL (in the same way that Fedora Core works much better on newer hardware than RHEL - but then it is the test-bed for stuff to be included in RHEL)

    To be honest, I would push your IT department to either recruit or train one or two guys up to a minimum level of Linux experience alongside their Windows Duties and pick whichever Enterprise Distribution has the best support/price balance for you. At your scale of deployment, you won't see the benefits of RHEL over NLD.
  • I don't know what capabilities are you looking for, but It's the most windows-friendly Linux distro I know.
    This will make things easier for them, not for you I guess.
  • There is only one real solution. You can choose whatever OS you want, but the true answer for you is Solaris. If you are really into Linux, remember that just because RH and Novell give proprietary distributions, they don't necesarrily provide the best Linux distributions. If not Solaris or BSD, use Slackware or Debian Linux.

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